The Lusiad Part 31

[68] Alexander the Great, who claimed to be the son of Jupiter Ammon.

[69] Vasco de Gama is, in a great measure, though not exclusively, the hero of the Lusiad.

[70] King Sebastian, who came to the throne in his minority. Though the warm imagination of Camoens antic.i.p.ated the praises of the future hero, the young monarch, like Virgil's Pollio, had not the happiness to fulfil the prophecy. His endowments and enterprising genius promised, indeed, a glorious reign. Ambitious of military laurels, he led a powerful army into Africa, on purpose to replace Muley Hamet on the throne of Morocco, from which he had been deposed by Muley Molucco. On the 4th of August, 1578, in the twenty-fifth year of his age, he gave battle to the usurper on the plains of Alcazar. This was that memorable engagement, to which the Moorish Emperor, extremely weakened by sickness, was carried in his litter. By the impetuosity of the attack, the first line of the Moorish infantry was broken, and the second disordered. Muley Molucco on this mounted his horse, drew his sabre, and would have put himself at the head of his troops, but was prevented by his attendants. His emotion of mind was so great that he fell from his horse, and one of his guards having caught him in his arms, conveyed him to his litter, where, putting his finger on his lips to enjoin them silence, he immediately expired. Hamet Taba stood by the curtains of the carriage, opened them from time to time, and gave out orders as if he had received them from the Emperor. Victory declared for the Moors, and the defeat of the Portuguese was so total, that not above fifty of their whole army escaped. Hieron de Mendoca and Sebastian de Mesa relate, that Don Sebastian, after having two horses killed under him, was surrounded and taken; but the party who had secured him, quarrelling among themselves whose prisoner he was, a Moorish officer rode up and struck the king a blow over the right eye, which brought him to the ground; when, despairing of ransom, the others killed him. About twenty years after this fatal defeat there appeared a stranger at Venice, who called himself Sebastian, King of Portugal, whom he so perfectly resembled, that the Portuguese of that city acknowledged him for their sovereign.

He underwent twenty-eight examinations before a committee of the n.o.bles, in which he gave a distinct account of the manner in which he had pa.s.sed his time from the fatal defeat at Alcazar. It was objected, that the successor of Muley Molucco sent a corpse to Portugal which had been owned as that of the king by the Portuguese n.o.bility who survived the battle. To this he replied, that his _valet de chambre_ had produced that body to facilitate his escape, and that the n.o.bility acted upon the same motive, and Mesa and Baena confess, that some of this n.o.bility, after their return to Portugal acknowledged that the corpse was so disfigured with wounds that it was impossible to know it. He showed natural marks on his body, which many remembered on the person of the king whose name he a.s.sumed. He entered into a minute detail of the transactions that had pa.s.sed between himself and the republic, and mentioned the secrets of several conversations with the Venetian amba.s.sadors in the palace of Lisbon. He fell into the hands of the Spaniards, who conducted him to Naples, where they treated him with the most barbarous indignities. After they had often exposed him, mounted on an a.s.s, to the cruel insults of the brutal mob, he was s.h.i.+pped on board a galley, as a slave. He was then carried to St. Lucar, from thence to a castle in the heart of Castile, and never was heard of more. The firmness of his behaviour, his singular modesty and heroical patience, are mentioned with admiration by Le Clede. To the last he maintained the truth of his a.s.sertions: a word never slipped from his lips which might countenance the charge of imposture, or justify the cruelty of his persecutors.

[71] Portugal, when Camoens wrote his Lusiad, was at the zenith of its power and splendour. The glorious successes which had attended the arms of the Portuguese in Africa, had gained them the highest military reputation. Their fleets covered the ocean. Their dominions and settlements extended along the western and eastern sides of the vast African continent. From the Red Sea to China and j.a.pan, they were sole masters of the riches of the East; and in America, the fertile and extensive regions of Brazil completed their empire.

[72] Lusitania is the Latin name of a Roman province which comprised the greater part of the modern kingdom of Portugal, besides a considerable portion of Leon and Spanish Estremadura.--_Ed._

[73] _The sun._--Imitated, perhaps, from Rutilius, speaking of the Roman Empire--

_Volvitur ipse tibi, qui conspicit omnia, Phbus, Atque tuis ortos in tua condit equos;_

or, more probably, from these lines of Buchanan, addressed to John III.

King of Portugal, the grandfather of Sebastian--

_Inque tuis Phbus regnis oriensque cadensque Vix longum fesso conderet axe diem.

Et quaecunque vago se circ.u.mvolvit Olympo Affulget ratibus flamma ministra tuis._

[74] _i.e._ poetic. Aonia was the ancient name of Botia, in which country was a fountain sacred to the Muses, whence Juvenal sings of a poet--

"Enamoured of the woods, and fitted for drinking At the fountains of the Aonides."

JUV. Sat. vii. 58.--_Ed._

[75] _To match the Twelve so long by bards renown'd._--The Twelve Peers of France, often mentioned in the old romances. For the episode of Magricio and his eleven companions, see the sixth Lusiad.

[76] Afonso in Portuguese. In the first edition Mickle had Alfonso, which he altered to Alonzo in the second edition.

[77] _Thy grandsires._--John III. King of Portugal, celebrated for a long and peaceful reign; and the Emperor Charles V., who was engaged in almost continual wars.

[78] Some critics have condemned Virgil for stopping his narrative to introduce even a short observation of his own. Milton's beautiful complaint of his blindness has been blamed for the same reason, as being no part of the subject of his poem. The address of Camoens to Don Sebastian at the conclusion of the tenth Lusiad has not escaped the same censure; though in some measure undeservedly, as the poet has had the art to interweave therein some part of the general argument of his poem.

[79] This brave Lusitanian, who was first a shepherd and a famous hunter, and afterwards a captain of banditti, exasperated at the tyranny of the Romans, encouraged his countrymen to revolt and shake off the yoke. Being appointed general, he defeated Vetilius the praetor, who commanded in Lusitania, or farther Spain. After this he defeated, in three pitched battles, the praetors, C. Plautius Hypsaeus and Claudius Unima.n.u.s, though they led against him very numerous armies. For six years he continued victorious, putting the Romans to flight wherever he met them, and laying waste the countries of their allies. Having obtained such advantages over the proconsul, Servilia.n.u.s, that the only choice which was left to the Roman army was death or slavery, the brave Viriatus, instead of putting them all to the sword, as he could easily have done, sent a deputation to the general, offering to conclude a peace with him on this single condition, _That he should continue master of the country now in his power, and that the Romans should remain possessed of the rest of Spain_.

The proconsul, who expected nothing but death or slavery, thought these very favourable and moderate terms, and without hesitation concluded a peace, which was soon after ratified by the Roman senate and people.

Viriatus, by this treaty, completed the glorious design he had always in view, which was to erect a kingdom in the vast country he had conquered from the republic. And, had it not been for the treachery of the Romans, he would have become, as Florus calls him, the Romulus of Spain.

The senate, desirous to revenge their late defeat, soon after this peace, ordered Q. Servilius Caepio to exasperate Viriatus, and force him, by repeated affronts, to commit the first acts of hostility. But this mean artifice did not succeed: Viriatus would not be provoked to a breach of the peace. On this the Conscript Fathers, to the eternal disgrace of their republic, ordered Caepio to declare war, and to proclaim Viriatus, who had given no provocation, an enemy to Rome. To this baseness Caepio added one still greater; he corrupted the amba.s.sadors whom Viriatus had sent to negotiate with him, who, at the instigation of the Roman, treacherously murdered their protector and general while he slept.--UNIV. HISTORY.

[80] Sertorius, who was invited by the Lusitanians to defend them against the Romans. He had a tame white hind, which he had accustomed to follow him, and from which he pretended to receive the instructions of Diana. By this artifice he imposed upon the superst.i.tion of that people.

[81] _No more in Nysa._--An ancient city in India sacred to Bacchus.

[82] _Urania-Venus._--An Italian poet has given the following description of the celestial Venus--

_Questa e vaga di Dio Venere bella Vicina al Sole, e sopra ogni altra estella Questa e quella beata, a cui s'inchina, A cui si volge desiando amore, Chiamata cui del Ciel rara e divina Belta che vien tra noi per nostro honore, Per far le menti desiando al Cielo Obliare l'altrui col proprio velo._--MARTEL.

[83] See the note in the Second Book on the following pa.s.sage--

_As when in Ida's bower she stood of yore, etc._

[84] _The manly music of their tongue the same._--Camoens says:

_E na lingoa, na qual quando imagina, Com pouca corrupcao cre que he Latina._

Qualifications are never elegant in poetry. Fanshaw's translation and the original both prove this:

----_their tongue Which she thinks Latin, with small dross among._

[85] _i.e._ helmet.

[86]---- _and the light turn'd pale._--The thought in the original has something in it wildly great, though it is not expressed in the happiest manner of Camoens--

_O ceo tremeo, e Apollo detorvado Hum pauco a luz perdeo, como infiado._

[87] Mercury, the messenger of the G.o.ds.--_Ed._

[88] _And pastoral Madagascar._--Called by the ancient geographers, Menuthia and Cerna Ethiopica; by the natives, the Island of the Moon; and by the Portuguese, the Isle of St. Laurence, on whose festival they discovered it.

[89] _Praso._--Name of a promontory near the Red Sea.--_Ed._

[90] _Lav'd by the gentle waves._--The original says, the sea showed them new islands, which it encircled and laved. Thus rendered by Fanshaw--

_Neptune disclos'd new isles which he did play About, and with his billows danc't the hay._

[91] The historical foundation of the fable of Phaeton is this. Phaeton was a young enterprising prince of Libya. Crossing the Mediterranean in quest of adventures, he landed at Epirus, from whence he went to Italy to see his intimate friend Cygnus. Phaeton was skilled in astrology, from whence he arrogated to himself the t.i.tle of the son of Apollo. One day in the heat of summer, as he was riding along the banks of the Po, his horses took fright at a clap of thunder, and plunged into the river, where, together with their master, they perished. Cygnus, who was a poet, celebrated the death of his friend in verse, from whence the fable.--Vid. Plutarch, in Vit. Pyrr.

[92] _Acheron._--The river of Hades, or h.e.l.l.--_Ed._

[93] _From Abram's race our holy prophet sprung._--Mohammed, who was descended from Ishmael, the son of Abraham by Hagar.

[94] The Hydaspes was a tributary of the river Indus.--_Ed._

[95] _Calm twilight now._--Camoens, in this pa.s.sage, has imitated Homer in the manner of Virgil: by diversifying the scene he has made the description his own. The pa.s.sage alluded to is in the eighth Iliad--

O? d? ?t? ?? ???a?? ?st?a fae???? ?f? se????? Fa??et? a??p?ep?a, etc.

Thus elegantly translated by Pope:--

_As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night, O'er heaven's clear azure spreads her sacred light, When not a breath disturbs the deep serene, And not a cloud o'ercasts the solemn scene; Around her throne the vivid planets roll, And stars unnumber'd gild the glowing pole, O'er the dark trees a yellower verdure shed, And tip with silver every mountain's head; Then s.h.i.+ne the vales, the rocks in prospect rise, A flood of glory bursts from all the skies: The conscious swains, rejoicing in the sight, Eye the blue vault, and bless the useful light._