Ancient History in "Os Lusiadas"

Abstract

if original adaptation of classical poetic practice, and traces of the poet's humanism, in his use of the Aeneid and of ancient mythology, can be seen throughout the ten cantos and the 1,100 or so stanzas of Os Lusiadas.2 What would however appear to deserve some separate consideration is the use Cam5es makes of something both historical and classical, namely, what he chose to take from the record of history and legend of ancient Greece and Rome, since, to the knowledge of the present writer, this has not been done in any detail. Some material from Homer and Virgil must also come under this heading since this was for long also regarded as in some way historical. Cam6es uses this kind of reference as an illustrative anecdote, to underline a moral or philosophical point, to contrast and compare with Portuguese figures and events, and always, it would seem, to give credentials to his own narrative and, in some cases, to present Portugal and her people as a new Rome and new Romans (cf. e.g. 1,33 or VI,7 or IX,38), although it should also be noted that Cambes consistently sees their achievements as greater than those with which -they are compared or which may serve as standards by which to judge them. It will also be seen that he tends to concentrate his references to ancient heroes and happenings in those parts of his epic where he is developing historical surveys, as, for example, in Cantos, III, IV or VIII, that is, at those points where Vasco da Gama is relating his nation's past to the king of Malindi or where the navigator's brother is showing pictures of Portuguese heroes to the Catual of Calicu . Our poet does all this as part of a complex poetic statement that includes the constant use of other classical allusions