Your Own Enemies
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Vedes que têm por uso e por decreto, Do qual são tão inteiros observantes, Ajuntarem o exército inquieto Contra os povos que são de Cristo amantes; Entre vós nunca deixa a fera Aleto De semear cizânias repugnantes: Olhai se estais seguros de perigos, Que eles e vós sois vossos inimigos.
You see that they hold it as custom and as decree — and of that decree they are such unswerving keepers — to gather their restless army against the peoples who love Christ; while among you the savage Alecto never stops sowing her loathsome quarrels. Consider whether you are safe from danger, when they and you both are your own enemies.
Monçaide, the Muslim from Tangier who befriends Gama at Calicut, is not yet speaking here — this is the poet himself, breaking off his narrative to address the Christian kings of Europe. He points east at an enemy that acts as one, then back at a Christendom that cannot.
Camões is doing bookkeeping, not preaching. He sets one column against the other: they have a uso and a decreto and they keep it; you have Alecto. The praise of the enemy is the point of the insult — the thing he admires in them is only that they can agree, and that is precisely the thing Europe cannot manage.
The closing line is sharper than it looks in English. "Eles e vós sois vossos inimigos" does not mean they are your enemies and so are you; it means both of them and you count as yours. Europe's Muslim adversary and Europe itself are filed under the same heading, and the second entry is the one that costs more. Alecto is one of the three Furies Virgil sends in Aeneid 7 to poison a peace that was already agreed — Camões picks her rather than a Fury of war because she does not fight anyone, she only whispers until people who had no quarrel discover one.
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