This one is Luso
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Estas figuras todas que aparecem, Bravos em vista e feros nos aspectos, Mais bravos e mais feros se conhecem, Pela fama, nas obras e nos feitos: Antigos são, mas ainda resplandecem Co'o nome, entre os engenhos mais perfeitos Este que vês é Luso, donde a fama O nosso Reino Lusitânia chama.
All these figures that you see appear, fierce in their looks and ferocious in their bearing, are known to be fiercer still and more ferocious by their fame, in their works and in their deeds. Ancient they are, yet they still shine in name among the most perfect of minds. This one you see is Luso, from whom fame calls our kingdom Lusitania.
Paulus, the King of Malindi's minister, is being shown the painted figures on the Portuguese banners. Gama's interpreter begins the roll of heroes with Luso, the eponymous founder from whom Lusitania takes its name.
The interpreter turns the painted banners into a catalogue of heroes, promising Paulus that each fierce-looking figure is in fact fiercer than his portrait, once you know the record behind him. The stanza works as a hinge: it stops describing images and starts naming men, opening the long procession of Portuguese history that fills the rest of the canto.
The quiet claim underneath is genealogical. Luso is not a documented king but a figure Camões takes from Roman antiquity, where Lusitania was tied to a companion of Bacchus; by making him the eponymous father of the nation, the poem gives Portugal the same kind of legendary founder Virgil gave Rome in Aeneas. "Donde a fama / O nosso Reino Lusitânia chama" is doing heraldic work: it roots the present kingdom in a name old enough to sit beside the classical world.
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