Venus Recalls the Ox-Hide Trick
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Tal manha buscou já, para que aquele Que de Anquises pariu, bem recebido Fosse no campo que a bovina pele Tomou de espaço, por subtil partido. Seu filho vai buscar, porque só nele Tem todo seu poder, fero Cupido, Que assim como naquela empresa antiga Ajudou já, nestoutra a ajude e siga.
Such a cunning stratagem she had once sought before, so that he whom she bore to Anchises might be well received in the land which the ox-hide, by a subtle scheme, measured out of open space. She goes to seek her son, because in him alone lies all her power—fierce Cupid—so that, just as he helped her once in that ancient enterprise, in this new one he may help her and follow her lead.
Venus, plotting to make the sea-nymphs love the Portuguese sailors, remembers how she once used the same weapon at Carthage. She goes to fetch her son Cupid, the source of all her power.
Venus is laying a trap of love, and she reaches for the same tool she used generations ago. The whole stanza is memory: she recalls Carthage, where she made Queen Dido receive Aeneas—the son she bore to the mortal Anchises—and now plans to repeat the trick on the sea-nymphs waiting for Gama's crew. The engine of both schemes is Cupid, "in him alone" her entire power.
The buried allusion is the ox-hide itself. When Dido founded Carthage she was sold only as much ground as a single bull's hide could cover; she cut the hide into thin strips and ringed a whole hill—land "measured out of space by a subtle scheme." Camões folds Virgil's Aeneid into one dense clause, so the reader who catches it sees that Venus treats the Portuguese exactly as she once treated the Trojans: as pieces in a love-plot she has run before.
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