Consolation to Pompey
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Ó famoso Pompeio, não te pene De teus feitos ilustres a ruína, Nem ver que a justa Némesis ordene Ter teu sogro de ti vitória dina, Posto que o frio Fásis, ou Siene, Que para nenhum cabo a sombra inclina, O Bootes gelado e a linha ardente, Temessem o teu nome geralmente.
O famous Pompey, let not the ruin of your illustrious deeds grieve you, nor the sight of just Nemesis ordaining that your father-in-law win a worthy victory over you — even though the cold Phasis, or Syene (which casts its shadow to no side), the frozen Boötes, and the burning equator all feared your name the world over.
In the middle of narrating Portugal's history, Camões pauses to address the defeated Roman general Pompey, using his fall as proof that even world-spanning fame can crumble.
Camões breaks off from the Portuguese chronicle to speak directly to Pompey the Great, defeated by Caesar. The consolation is simple: do not grieve your fall, even though your fame once reached the ends of the earth. The four place-names — the Caucasus river Phasis, Egyptian Syene, the northern Boötes, the equator — sketch the whole known world in a single sweep, north to south and cold to burning.
The word a first reader trips on is 'sogro,' father-in-law: the man who beat Pompey was Julius Caesar, whose daughter Julia Pompey had married. Their war ended at Pharsalus. Camões lifts the whole apostrophe from Lucan's Pharsalia, and the geographic catalogue is his shorthand for 'the entire world feared you, and still you lost.' Syene (modern Aswan) was the famous point where the noon sun casts no shadow at the solstice.
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