The Counseling Tongue
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Ó quanto deve o Rei que bem governa, De olhar que os conselheiros, ou privados, De consciência e de virtude interna E de sincero amor sejam dotados! Porque, como este posto na superna Cadeira, pode mal dos apartados Negócios ter notícia mais inteira, Do que lhe der a língua conselheira.
Oh, how much it matters to the King who governs well to see that his counselors, or favorites, be endowed with conscience, with inner virtue, and with sincere love! For, since he who is seated on the lofty throne can scarcely have any fuller knowledge of far-off affairs than what the counseling tongue gives him.
A narratorial aside on kingship set inside the Calicut episode, where the Samorin's officials have been turned against Gama. Camões warns that a king enthroned depends wholly on the honesty of those who advise him.
The narrator steps out of the action to deliver a maxim on kingship: a good king must make certain his advisers are honest, because a ruler enthroned cannot know distant matters except through what his counselors choose to tell him. The whole weight of the stanza lands on its last word, conselheira, the "counseling tongue" on which the throne wholly depends.
What a first reader misses is that this is not abstract civics. It sits inside the Calicut episode, where the Samorin's officials have been bribed by Muslim merchants to poison the ruler against Gama. The lofty seat that "can scarcely have fuller knowledge" is precisely the trap Camões is describing in real time: a king who sees only what corrupt advisers let him see, and who nearly wrecks the voyage because of it.
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