The Death of Old Afonso
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De tamanhas vitórias triunfava O velho Afonso, Príncipe subido, Quando, quem tudo enfim vencendo andava, Da larga e muita idade foi vencido. A pálida doença lhe tocava Com fria mão o corpo enfraquecido; E pagaram seus anos deste jeito A triste Libitina seu direito.
Old Afonso, that exalted prince, triumphed over such great victories, until he — who in the end went on conquering everything — was himself conquered by long and abundant age. The pale sickness touched him, laying its cold hand on his weakened body; and in this way his years paid to grim Libitina her rightful due.
Canto 3. Gama's narration closes the reign of Afonso II line... here the aged king Afonso — conqueror of so much — is at last conquered by old age itself, and death claims her due.
The stanza turns a lifetime of conquest into a single grammatical trap. Afonso is the man who "vencendo andava" — went about conquering everything — and the verb that governs him for seven lines is finally reversed on him: "foi vencido," he was conquered. Not by an enemy, but by age. Camões lets the same root, vencer, do the killing.
The detail a first reader slides past is Libitina in the last line. She is not decoration: she was the Roman goddess in whose grove funerals were registered and burial gear was sold, so "her due" is literally the undertaker's fee that every life owes. Camões closes a king's obituary not with heaven or fame but with a bookkeeping metaphor — the years pay a debt — which is colder and more Roman than any Christian consolation.
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