The Queen of the Nymphs
Read the full text in our reader
Uma delas maior, a quem se humilha Todo o coro das Ninfas, e obedece, Que dizem ser de Celo e Vesta filha, O que no gesto belo se parece, Enchendo a terra e o mar de maravilha, O Capitão ilustre, que o merece, Recebe ali com pompa honesta e régia, Mostrando-se senhora grande e egrégia.
One of them, greater than the rest, to whom the whole choir of the Nymphs bows and gives obedience, who they say is the daughter of Uranus and Vesta (as the beauty that shows in her lovely face makes plain), filling both earth and sea with wonder, receives the illustrious Captain there, who deserves it, with seemly and royal pomp, showing herself a great and eminent lady.
On the Island of Love, one Nereid outranks all the rest. The narrator reveals her as Tethys, daughter of Uranus and Vesta, who receives Gama's Captain with royal ceremony.
The stanza sets one Nereid above all the others and hands her a royal genealogy: daughter of Celo (Uranus, the Sky) and Vesta. Camões is naming Tethys, the sea-goddess who will presently take Gama up the mountain and unfold the workings of the universe to him. Everything here is protocol: the lesser nymphs bow, the sovereign one receives, and the Captain is judged worthy of the reception.
What a first reader can miss is that the courtly language is doing real work. "Honesta" here does not mean truthful but decorous, fitting; the whole scene is staged as a formal reception at court, with rank, obeisance, and a queen who "merits" an honored guest. The Island of Love has quietly turned from erotic reward into an initiation, and the marriage of sailor and sea-nymph is being dignified into something closer to a coronation before the cosmic vision that follows.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Os Lusíadas 9.85 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 9.85 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/lusiadas/9.85/