The Teeth of Cadmus
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Ó míseros Cristãos, pela ventura, Sois os dentes de Cadmo desparzidos, Que uns aos outros se dão a morte dura, Sendo todos de um ventre produzidos? Não vedes a divina sepultura Possuída de cães, que sempre unidos Vos vêm tomar a vossa antiga terra, Fazendo-se famosos pela guerra?
O wretched Christians, are you by chance the scattered teeth of Cadmus, who deal one another a hard death though all of you were brought forth from a single womb? Do you not see the holy sepulchre held by dogs who, always united, come to take from you your ancient land, and make themselves famous by war?
Camões breaks off from the voyage to address Christian Europe directly. Having just catalogued the nations of the West, he turns on them for fighting each other while the Holy Sepulchre stays in Muslim hands.
Camões stops the story and turns on his own readers. He has just finished naming the kingdoms of Christian Europe, and instead of praising them he asks whether they are the teeth of Cadmus: in the myth, Cadmus sows a dragon's teeth, armed men spring from the ground, and they immediately kill each other. Europe, in this reading, is a crop that exists only to destroy itself. The insult in line 6 is deliberate and ugly, and it is aimed as much at the Christians who let the Sepulchre go as at the men holding it.
The thing a first reader misses is the envy inside the attack. "Sempre unidos" is the real charge: Camões concedes that his enemies have the one thing his own side lacks, and he says so in a poem written to glorify his side. The stanza is not calling for a crusade so much as admitting that Portugal's neighbours would rather fight each other, which is exactly why Gama had to go the long way around Africa alone.
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