1. Direcção Regional de Educação do Centro / Código – 403921
Comenius Project 2011-2013
Promoting Magic Places in Europe – Past, Present and Future
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Os Lusiadas
In the meeting in Portugal, we will do an activity at Oceanário, in Lisbon
which involves “The Lusiads”. So, it’s advisable for you to have a previous idea
of what "Os Lusiadas" are and how this book is an important mark in the
Portuguese culture, nowadays.
So, we are sending you a text that is divided in three parts: the first one is
an introduction to the book; the second one is a translation of a little bit of
Camões book, made by William Julius Mickle [1776, edition of 1877]; and the
third one is a reference to "The Lusiads" in "In Search of the Castaways: The
Children of Captain Grant", by Jules Gabriel Verne.
We hope you will enjoy it!

2. Direcção Regional de Educação do Centro / Código – 403921
1st
part
Os Lusíadas (Portuguese pronunciation: [uʒ luˈzi.ɐðɐʃ]), usually translated as
The Lusiads, is a Portuguese epic poem by Luís Vaz de Camões (sometimes
anglicized as Camoens).
The book "Os Lusiadas" contains a profound spirit of nationalism, which projects
into universal culture.
Conquering the world with flavors of sea, always in love with the Lusitanian soul,
the Portuguese, spread their culture and immortalized the name of Portugal across the
globe, through unknown seas.
Written in Homeric fashion, the poem focuses mainly on a fantastical
interpretation of the Portuguese voyages of discovery during the 15th and 16th
centuries. Os Lusíadas is often regarded as Portugal's national epic, much in the way
as Virgil's Aeneid was for the Ancient Romans, as well as Homer's Iliad and Odyssey
for the Ancient Greeks. It was first printed in 1572, three years after the author returned
from the Indies.
Internal structure
The poem consists of ten cantos, with a variable number of stanzas (1102 in
total), written in the decasyllabic ottava rima, which has the rhyme scheme
ABABABCC.
The poem is made up of four sections:
 An introduction (proposition - presentation of the theme and heroes of
the poem)
 Invocation – a prayer to the Tágides, the nymphs of the river Tejo;
 A dedication - (to D. Sebastião), followed by narration (the epic itself)
 An epilogue, (beginning at Canto X, stanza 145).

3. Direcção Regional de Educação do Centro / Código – 403921
The middle section contains the narration and a variety of scenes. The most
important part of Os Lusíadas, the arrival in India, was placed at the point in the poem
that divides the work according to the golden section at the beginning of Canto VII.
The heroes
The heroes of the epic are the Lusiads (Lusíadas), the sons of Lusus or in other
words, the Portuguese. The initial strophes of Jupiter's speech in the Concílio dos
Deuses Olímpicos (Olympian Gods Council) which open the narrative part, highlight
the laudatory orientation of the author.
In these strophes, Camões speaks of Viriathus and Sertorius, the people of
Lusus, a people predestined by the Fates to accomplish great deeds. Jupiter says that
their history proves it because, having emerged victorious against the Moors and
Castilians, this tiny nation has gone on to discover new worlds and impose its law in
the concert of the nations. At the end of the poem, in Love Island, a fictional finale of
the glorious Portuguese walk throughout history, Camões writes that the fear once
expressed by Bacchus has been confirmed: that the Portuguese would become gods.
The extraordinary Portuguese discoveries and the "new kingdom that they
exalted so much" ("novo reino que tanto sublimaram") in the East, and certainly the
recent and extraordinary deeds of "strong Castro" ("Castro forte", the viceroy D.João
de Castro), who had died some years before the poet's arrival to Indian lands, were the
decisive factors for Camões completing the Portuguese epic. Camões dedicated his
masterpiece to King Sebastian of Portugal.
The narrators and their speeches
The vast majority of the narration in Os Lusíadas consists of grandiloquent
speeches by the various orators. For example the main narrator makes a number of
speeches on various occasions: Vasco da Gama, recognized as "eloquent captain"
("facundo capitão"); Paulo da Gama; Thetis... The Siren (canto X), that foretells with
the sound of music; when the poet asks the Tágides (nymphs of the river Tagus) "a tall
and sublimated sound,/ a grandiloquent and current style" ("um som alto e sublimado, /
Um estilo grandíloquo e corrente"). In contrast to the style of lyric poetry, or "humble

4. Direcção Regional de Educação do Centro / Código – 403921
verse" ("verso humilde"), he is thinking about this exciting tone of oratory. There are in
the poem some brief but notable speeches (Jupiter's, Velho do Restelo's...)
There are also descriptive passages, like the description of the palaces of
Neptune and the Samorim of Calicute, the locus amoenus of Love Island (Canto IX),
the dinner in the palace of Thetis (Canto X), Gama's cloth (end of Canto II). Sometimes
these descriptions are like a slide show: the things that are described are there and
there is someone who shows them; (geographic start of Gama's speech to the king of
Melinde, certain sculptures of the palaces of Neptune and the Samorim, the speech of
Paulo da Gama to the Catual and the Machine of the World (Máquina do Mundo)...)
Examples of dynamic descriptions include the "battle" of the Island of
Mozambique, the battles of Ourique and Aljubarrota, the storm. Camões is a master in
these descriptions, marked by the verbs of movement, the abundance of visual and
acoustic sensations, and expressive alliterations. There are also many lyrical moments.
Those texts are normally narrative-descriptive. This is the case with the initial part of
the episode of the Sad Inês, of the final part of the episode of the Adamastor and of the
encounter on Love Island (Canto IX). All these cases resemble eclogues.
On several occasions the poet assumes a tone of lament, as at the end of Canto
I, part of the speech of the Velho do Restelo, the end of Canto V, the beginning and
end of Canto VII, and the final strophes of the poem. Many times, in difficult moments,
Gama bursts into oration: in Mombasa (Canto II), in the apparition of Adamastor, and in
the middle of the terror of the storm. The poet's invocations to the Tágides, to Calliope
(beginning of Canto III), to the Nymphs of Tagus and Mondego (Canto VII), and again
to Calliope (Canto X), in typological terms, are also orations. Each one of these types
of speech shows stylistically peculiarities.

5. Direcção Regional de Educação do Centro / Código – 403921
2nd
part
trans. by William Julius Mickle
[1776, edition of 1877]
Canto I
54
From Abram’s race our holy prophet sprung,
An angel taught, and heaven inspir’d his tongue;
His sacred rites and mandates we obey,
And distant empires own his holy sway.
From isle to isle our trading vessels roam,
Mozambique’s harbour our commodious home.
Canto V
9
Here, our bold fleet their pond’rous anchors threw,
The sickly cherish, and our stores renew.
From him, the warlike guardian pow’r of Spain,
Whose spear’s dread lightning o’er th’ embattled plain
Has oft o’erwhelm’d the Moors in dire dismay,
And fix’d the fortune of the doubtful day;
From him we name our station of repair,
And Jago’s name that isle shall ever bear.
The northern winds now curl’d the black’ning main,
Our sails unfurl’d, we plough the tide again

6. Direcção Regional de Educação do Centro / Código – 403921
65
Now, round black Afric’s coast our navy veer’d,
And, to the world’s mid circle, northward steer’d:
The southern pole low to the wave declin’d,
We leave the isle of Holy Cross behind:
That isle where erst a Lusian, when he pass’d
The tempest-beaten cape, his anchors cast,
And own’d his proud ambition to explore
The kingdoms of the morn could dare no more
Canto VI
10
Adorn’d with pillars, and with roofs of gold,
The golden gates their massy leaves unfold:
Inwrought with pearl the lordly pillars shine,
The sculptur’d walls confess a hand divine.
Here, various colours in confusion lost,
Old Chaos’ face and troubled image boast.
Here, rising from the mass, distinct and clear,
Apart, the four fair elements appear.
Canto X
137
Lav’d by the Red Sea gulf, Socotra’s bowers
There boast the tardy aloe’s beauteous flowers.
On Afric’s strand, foredoom’d to Lusian sway,
Behold these isles, and rocks of dusky gray;
From cells unknown here bounteous ocean pours
The fragrant amber on the sandy shores.
And lo, the Island of the Moon displays
Her vernal lawns, and num’rous peaceful bays:
The halcyons hov’ring o’er the bays are seen,
And lowing herds adorn the vales of green.

7. Direcção Regional de Educação do Centro / Código – 403921
3rd
part
In Search of the Castaways: The Children of Captain Grant
By Jules Gabriel Verne