The Field of Damascus
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Aqui dos Citas grande quantidade Vivem, que antigamente grande guerra Tiveram, sobre a humana antiguidade, Co'os que tinham então a Egípcia terra; Mas quem tão fora estava da verdade, ( Já que o juízo humano tanto erra) Para que do mais certo se informara, Ao campo Damasceno o perguntara.
Here dwells a great multitude of Scythians, who in ancient times waged a great war over the question of human antiquity with those who then held the land of Egypt. But whoever stood so far from the truth — seeing how greatly human judgment errs — in order to be informed of the surer answer, ought to have put the question to the field of Damascus.
Gama, narrating the geography of the world to the King of Melinde, reaches the far north and its Scythians, who once quarreled with Egypt over which nation was the older. He turns the ancient dispute into a joke about human judgment.
Gama is reciting world geography to a foreign king, and when he reaches the frozen north he pauses on an old learned quarrel: which people is the most ancient, the Scythians or the Egyptians? Both nations claimed to be the first, and Camões lets the boast hang in the air only to deflate it. The stanza is built as a single dry sentence that promises grandeur and delivers a shrug.
The punchline hides in the last line. The "campo Damasceno" is the field near Damascus where tradition held that God shaped Adam from the earth. So the real answer to "who is oldest" is: neither Scythian nor Egyptian — humanity begins with one man, made of that clay. A first reader takes the line as one more place-name in the travelogue and misses that Camões has quietly overruled all pagan pride of antiquity with the Genesis account, and mocked "human judgment" for arguing about a question it had already been given the answer to.
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