No Marcellus for These Hannibals
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Não menos têm mostrado esforço e manha Em quaisquer outras guerras que aconteçam, Ou das gentes belígeras de Espanha, Ou lá dalguns que do Pírene desçam. Assim que nunca enfim com lança estranha Se tem, que por vencidos se conheçam, Nem se sabe ainda, não, te afirmo e asselo, Para estes Anibais nenhum Marcelo.
No less have they shown valor and cunning in whatever other wars may come, whether against the war-waging peoples of Spain, or against some over there who come down from the Pyrenees. So that never, in the end, has any foreign lance managed to have them acknowledged as beaten; nor is any such thing known yet — no, I affirm it and seal it — no Marcellus for these Hannibals.
Monçaide, the Muslim from Tangier, is telling the Indian ruler's official what the Portuguese are like as fighters. Having praised their record against the Moors, he now turns to their wars in Europe.
This is Monçaide finishing his report on the Portuguese to the Catual at Calicut. He has covered their wars against the Moors; now he covers Europe — Castile to the east, France beyond the Pyrenees — and lands on a flat claim: no one has ever made them admit defeat.
The last line only works if you catch the reference. Hannibal beat Rome repeatedly and was never checked until Marcellus, the Roman general who finally stopped him at Nola. Monçaide is calling the Portuguese Hannibals — the winning side of that comparison — and saying their Marcellus has not been born. It is worth noticing who says it: a Muslim from Tangier, praising the Portuguese to an Indian official. Camões puts his loudest boast in a foreigner's mouth, which lets it sound like testimony rather than bragging.
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