The English King Takes His Seat
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" Já num sublime e público teatro Se assenta o Rei Inglês com toda a corte: Estavam três e três, e quatro e quatro, Bem como a cada qual coubera em sorte. Não são vistos do Sol, do Tejo ao Batro, De força, esforço e de ânimo mais forte Outros doze sair como os Ingleses, No campo, contra os onze Portugueses.
Already the English King is seated on a lofty public stage with all his court; they were arranged three and three, and four and four, just as the lot had fallen to each. From the Tagus to Bactra the Sun sees no other twelve come out into the lists, stronger in force, valour and spirit than the English, against the eleven Portuguese.
Veloso, entertaining the night watch aboard ship, tells of the Twelve of England: Portuguese knights who sailed to London to defend twelve English ladies slandered by twelve English lords. Here the day of the duel arrives and the court assembles.
The stanza is pure staging. Camões builds the scene from the top down: the platform, the king, the court sorted into its ranks by lot, and only in the last line the two lines of fighters facing each other. Nothing has happened yet; he is arranging the furniture so the fight can begin.
The number in the last word is the point. Twelve English, eleven Portuguese. The twelfth Portuguese, Magriço, went overland to see the world and has not shown up. Camões does not explain the gap here, and a first reader can slide past it as a copyist's slip. He is letting the arithmetic do the suspense, and the whole episode is an interruption anyway: this is Veloso talking, keeping the night watch awake on a ship in the Indian Ocean, and the storm Bacchus is preparing is closer than any duel in London.
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Os Lusíadas 6.60 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/lusiadas/6.60/