Killed by Cunning, Not by Force
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Com força, não; com manha vergonhosa, A vida lhe tiraram que os espanta: Que o grande aperto, em gente ainda que honrosa, As vezes leis magnânimas quebranta. Outro está aqui que, contra a pátria irosa, Degradado, conosco se alevanta: Escolheu bem com quem se alevantasse, Para que eternamente se ilustrasse.
By force, no; by shameful cunning they took the life of the man who astounds them: for great desperation, even in honorable people, sometimes shatters the most magnanimous laws. Another stands here who, exiled and enraged against his homeland, rises up alongside us. He chose well the companions with whom to rebel, so that he might be made illustrious forever.
Paulo da Gama, explaining the figures painted on the Portuguese banners to the Catual of Calicut, finishes the story of Viriato — undone by treachery, not arms — and turns to the Roman exile Sertorius, who joined the Lusitanians against Rome.
Paulo da Gama is still reading the painted banners aloud, and these lines close one hero and open another. The first four verses finish Viriato, the Lusitanian who beat Rome in the field and was killed only by bribery and betrayal: force could not touch him, so his enemies stooped to guile. The excuse Camões offers them — that dire straits make even honorable men break their own noble rules — is half apology, half accusation. The last four verses turn to Sertorius, the Roman general driven into exile who took up the Lusitanian cause against his own city.
What a first reader misses is how carefully the praise is split. Viriato is honored by naming the shame of the men who killed him; Sertorius is honored for choosing the Lusitanians as the people worth rising with — "escolheu bem com quem se alevantasse." The compliment runs backward: the exile becomes illustrious because of the company he kept, which means the real subject of the flattery is not the Roman at all but the Portuguese ancestors listening through the Catual's eyes.
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