The Renegade Castilian
Read the full text in our reader
Não vês um Castelhano, que agravado De Afonso nono rei, pelo ódio antigo Dos de Lara, com os Mouros é deitado, De Portugal fazendo-se inimigo? Abrantes vila toma, acompanhado Dos duros infiéis que traz consigo. Mas vê que um Português com pouca gente O desbarata e o prende ousadamente.
Don't you see a Castilian who, wronged by Afonso the Ninth, the king, and driven by the old hatred of the house of Lara, has thrown in his lot with the Moors, making himself an enemy of Portugal? He takes the town of Abrantes, accompanied by the hard infidels he brings with him. But see how a single Portuguese, with few men, routs him and boldly takes him prisoner.
On the banners shown to the Catual, Paulo da Gama points out a Castilian noble who, embittered against his own king Afonso IX, joined the Moors and turned on Portugal — only to be routed by one Portuguese with a handful of men.
Paulo da Gama is still working down the banners for the Catual, and here the villain is not a Moor by birth but a Christian who defected. Aggrieved by his own Castilian king and the feuding house of Lara, this noble crosses over to the Moors and marches on Abrantes — until one Portuguese with a small band beats and captures him. The stanza turns on the gap between the Castilian's large, borrowed army and the lone "Português" who undoes it.
What a first reader misses is that "deitado" here is not "lying down" but the idiom deitar-se com — to throw oneself in with, to take a side. The word quietly frames his treason as a choice of bed rather than a battle lost: he did not fall to the Moors, he joined them. Camões lets the renegade damn himself before any Portuguese sword touches him.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Os Lusíadas 8.22 in the full reader
Always open passages in the reader
You are reading a page of the Os Lusíadas — the whole book is free in our interlinear reader.
The Great Library Project presses the classics in their original languages, glossed word by word — free to read, always. Browse the whole library.
Also on our shelves:
Os Lusíadas 8.22 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/lusiadas/8.22/