Arsinoe, Now Suez
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Lá no seio Eritreu, onde fundada Arsínoe foi do Egípcio Ptolomeu, Do nome da irmã sua assim chamada, Que depois em Suez se converteu, Não longe o porto jaz da nomeada Cidade Meca, que se engrandeceu Com a superstição falsa e profana Da religiosa água Maumetana.
There in the Erythraean gulf, where Arsinoe was founded by the Egyptian Ptolemy — so named after the name of his own sister — which afterwards was turned into Suez, not far off lies the port of the renowned city of Mecca, which grew great on the false and profane superstition of the religious Mahometan water.
The Nau Catrineta's course home leads the poet to the Red Sea, and to a digression on the geography of the Muslim East — the founding of Arsinoe (later Suez) and the nearby fame of Mecca.
The poet pins the homeward voyage to a real map. Along the Red Sea (the "Erythraean gulf") he threads three place-names into a single sentence: Arsinoe, the port Ptolemy II named for his sister-wife, which time and silt converted into Suez; and, a little off, the port serving Mecca. It is a compressed lesson in how names and cities outlive the people who made them.
What a first reader misses is the sting in the last two lines. "Religiosa água Maumetana" — the religious Mahometan water — is not neutral geography. Camões, writing for a crusading Catholic Portugal that fought Muslim powers all down this coast, calls the sacred well of Mecca (Zamzam, drunk by pilgrims) a "false and profane superstition." The travelogue quietly turns into polemic exactly where it names the enemy's holy city.
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Os Lusíadas 9.2 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/lusiadas/9.2/