Ulisses em Lisboa

Abstract

The legend of the foundation of Lisbon by Ulysses has been accepted by the late latin historians on the assumption that the ethnology of Olisipo was connected with Ulysses/Odysseus. Historicaly they were also tempted by the hypothesis formulated by some Hellenistic historians, followed by Strabo, that Ulysses’ travels had gone beyond Gibraltar to the southern hispanic coast up to the atlantic shore of Lusitania. Strabo describes the foundation of Odysseia in Turdetania, not far from Granada, where the Greek hero erected a temple in honour to Pallas. The etimology and Odysseia were wrongly put together mainly during the 16th century by the Portuguese Humanists, such as André de Resende, as a good way of nobilitating the foundation of Lisbon, despite the fact that the town refered by Strabo was in the southern part of Spain. Ulysses in Lisbon, described already in some texts of the Middle Ages, became then a popular theme of the Portuguese pride and was a pretext to enhance the noble origin of the town and of the Lusitanian people throughout sixty years of Spanish domination. Two heroic poems sung Ulysses and Olisipo on the 17th century, but after the ricovery of Portuguese independence the theme fell in oblivion until it was magnificently recalled by Fernando Pessoa in the first quarter of the 20th century.