Codrus, Regulus, and the Prince Who Stayed
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Codro, porque o inimigo não vencesse, Deixou antes vencer da morte a vida; Régulo, porque a pátria não perdesse, Quis mais a liberdade ver perdida. Este, porque se Espanha não temesse, Ao cativeiro eterno se convida: Codro, nem Cúrcio, ouvido por espanto, Nem os Décios leais fizeram tanto.
Codrus, so that the enemy should not win, let death conquer his life instead; Regulus, so that his homeland should not be lost, chose rather to see his own freedom lost. This man, so that Spain should not live in fear, invites himself to captivity without end. Codrus, and Curtius too, whose stories are heard with astonishment, and the loyal Decii as well: none of them did as much.
Gama, telling Portuguese history to the King of Melinde, is still on the Infante Fernando, who let himself be kept prisoner by the Moors rather than let Ceuta be traded away. Here he measures that choice against the famous self-sacrifices of antiquity.
The stanza is a scorecard. Camões lines up three Roman-era names famous for dying on purpose for their people, then sets the Infante Fernando beside them and declares he outdid all of them. The grammar carries the argument: each of the first three gets the same frame, porque plus a subjunctive of what they refused to allow, so the reader hears the pattern before the verdict lands in the last two lines.
What is easy to miss is the one word that breaks the pattern. Codrus, Regulus, and the Decii all died; dying ends the matter. Fernando's verb is convida, present tense, and his sentence is cativeiro eterno, captivity with no end. He was not killed at Fez; he was left there for years while Portugal declined to trade Ceuta back for him, and he rotted. The claim that he did more is not rhetorical inflation. Camões is pointing out that the harder thing was to keep on living in it.
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