The Lusiad, or The Discovery of India

About this book

In ten cantos, the Portuguese poet Luís de Camões tells the voyage of Vasco da Gama, who in 1497 and 1498 sailed around the Cape of Good Hope and across the Indian Ocean to Calicut in India, opening the sea route from Europe to Asia. Into the story he weaves the whole history of Portugal, the gods of Olympus quarrelling over the voyage, the terrifying giant Adamastor who embodies the stormy Cape, and the Isle of Love where Venus rewards the sailors on their way home.

Context and significance

Camões (about 1524–1580) lost an eye fighting in North Africa and spent years as a soldier in India and the Far East; he is said to have saved the manuscript by swimming ashore from a shipwreck at the mouth of the Mekong. Published in 1572, the epic is Portugal's national poem. This is William Julius Mickle's eighteenth-century verse translation. Compare Virgil's Aeneid.

About the author