The Lusiad Part 40

[380] "O nome lhe ficou dos Bons-Signais."

[381] Raphael. See Tobit, ch. v. and xii.--_Ed._

[382] It was the custom of the Portuguese navigators to erect crosses on the sh.o.r.es of new-discovered countries. GAMA carried materials for pillars of stone with him, and erected six crosses during his expedition. They bore the name and arms of the king of Portugal, and were intended as proofs of the t.i.tle which accrues from first discovery.

[383] This poetical description of the scurvy is by no means exaggerated. It is what sometimes really happens in the course of a long voyage.

[384] King of Ithaca.

[385] aeneas.

[386] Homer.

[387] Virgil.

[388] The Muses.

[389] Homer's Odyssey, bk. x. 460.

[390] See the Odyssey, bk. ix.

[391] See aen. v. 833

[392] The Lotophagi, so named from the lotus, are thus described by Homer:--

"Not p.r.o.ne to ill, nor strange to foreign guest, They eat, they drink, and Nature gives the feast; The trees around them all their fruit produce; Lotos the name; divine, nectareous juice; (Thence call'd Lotophagi) which whoso tastes, Insatiate, riots in the sweet repasts, Nor other home, nor other care intends, But quits his home, his country, and his friends: The three we sent, from off th' enchanting ground We dragg'd reluctant, and by force we bound: The rest in haste forsook the pleasing sh.o.r.e, Or, the charm tasted, had return'd no more."

POPE, Odyss. ix. 103.

The Libyan lotus is a shrub like a bramble, the berries like the myrtle, purple when ripe, and about the size of an olive. Mixed with bread-corn, it was used as food for slaves. They also made an agreeable wine of it, but which would not keep above ten days. See Pope's note _in loco_.

[393] _In skins confin'd the bl.u.s.t'ring winds control._--The gift of aeolus to Ulysses.

"The adverse winds in leathern bags he brac'd, Compress'd their force, and lock'd each struggling blast: For him the mighty sire of G.o.ds a.s.sign'd, The tempest's lord, the tyrant of the wind; His word alone the list'ning storms obey, To smooth the deep, or swell the foamy sea.

These, in my hollow ship the monarch hung, Securely fetter'd by a silver thong; But Zephyrus exempt, with friendly gales } He charg'd to fill, and guide the swelling sails: } Rare gift! but oh, what gift to fools avails?" }

POPE, Odyss. x. 20.

The companions of Ulysses imagined that these bags contained some valuable treasure, and opened them while their leader slept. The tempests bursting out, drove the fleet from Ithaca, which was then in sight, and was the cause of a new train of miseries.

[394] See the third aeneid.

[395] See the sixth aeneid, and the eleventh Odyssey.

[396] Alexander the Great.--_Ed._

[397] Achilles, son of Peleus.--_Ed._

[398] Virgil, born at Mantua.--_Ed._

[399] Don Francisco de Gama, grandson of Vasco de Gama, the hero of the Lusiad.--_Ed._

[400] Cleopatra.

[401] Every display of eastern luxury and magnificence was lavished in the fishing parties on the Nile, with which Cleopatra amused Mark Antony, when at any time he showed symptoms of uneasiness, or seemed inclined to abandon the effeminate life which he led with his mistress.

At one of these parties, Mark Antony, having procured divers to put fishes upon his hooks while under the water, he very gallantly boasted to his mistress of his great dexterity in angling. Cleopatra perceived his art, and as gallantly outwitted him. Some other divers received her orders, and in a little while Mark Antony's line brought up a fried fish in place of a live one, to the vast entertainment of the queen, and all the convivial company. Octavius was at this time on his march to decide who should be master of the world.

[402] The friendship of the Portuguese and Melindians was of long continuance. Alvaro Cabral, the second admiral who made the voyage to India, in an engagement with the Moors off the coast of Sofala, took two ships richly freighted from the mines of that country. On finding that Xeques Fonteyma, the commander, was uncle to the King of Melinda, he restored the valuable prize, and treated him with the utmost courtesy.

Their good offices were reciprocal. By the information of the King of Melinda, Cabral escaped the treachery of the King of Calicut. The Kings of Mombaz and Quiloa, irritated at the alliance with Portugal, made several depredations on the subjects of Melinda, who in return were effectually revenged by their European allies.

[403] A giant.

[404] _Two G.o.ds contending._--According to the fable, Neptune and Minerva disputed the honour of giving a name to the city of Athens. They agreed to determine the contest by a display of their wisdom and power, in conferring the most beneficial gift on mankind. Neptune struck the earth with his trident and produced the horse, whose bounding motions are emblematical of the agitation of the sea. Pallas commanded the olive-tree, the symbol of peace, and of riches, to spring forth. The victory was adjudged to the G.o.ddess, from whom the city was named Athens. The taste of the ancient Grecians clothed almost every occurrence in mythological allegory. The founders of Athens, it is most probable, disputed whether their new city should be named from the fertility of the soil or from the marine situation of Attica. The former opinion prevailed, and the town received its name in honour of the G.o.ddess of the olive-tree--_Athene_.

[405] _While Pallas here appears to wave her hand._--As Neptune struck the earth with his trident, Minerva, says the fable, struck the earth with her lance. That she waved her hand while the olive boughs spread, is a fine poetical att.i.tude, and varies the picture from that of Neptune, which follows.

[406] _Though wide, and various, o'er the sculptur'd stone._--The description of palaces is a favourite topic several times touched upon by the two great masters of epic poetry, in which they have been happily imitated by their three greatest disciples among the moderns, Camoens, Ta.s.so, and Milton. The description of the palace of Neptune has great merit. Nothing can be more in place than the picture of chaos and the four elements. The war of the G.o.ds, and the contest of Neptune and Minerva are touched with the true boldness of poetical colouring. To show to the English reader that the Portuguese poet is, in his manner, truly cla.s.sical, is the intention of many of these notes.

[407] Bacchus.

[408] The description of Triton, who, as Fanshaw says--

"Was a great nasty clown,"

is in the style of the cla.s.sics. His parentage is differently related.

Hesiod makes him the son of Neptune and Amphitrite. By Triton, in the physical sense of the fable, is meant the noise, and by Salace, the mother by some ascribed to him, the salt of the ocean. The origin of the fable of Triton, it is probable, was founded on the appearance of a sea animal, which, according to some ancient naturalists, in the upward parts resembles the human figure. Pausanias relates a wonderful story of a monstrously large one, which often came ash.o.r.e on the meadows of Botia. Over his head was a kind of finny cartilage, which, at a distance, appeared like hair; the body covered with brown scales; the nose and ears like the human; the mouth of a dreadful width, jagged with the teeth of a panther; the eyes of a greenish hue; the hands divided into fingers, the nails of which were crooked, and of a sh.e.l.ly substance. This monster, whose extremities ended in a tail like a dolphin's, devoured both men and beasts as they chanced in his way. The citizens of Tanagra, at last, contrived his destruction. They set a large vessel full of wine on the sea sh.o.r.e. Triton got drunk with it, and fell into a profound sleep, in which condition the Tanagrians beheaded him, and afterwards, with great propriety, hung up his body in the temple of Bacchus; where, says Pausanias, it continued a long time.

[409] _A sh.e.l.l of purple on his head he bore._--In the Portuguese--

_Na cabeca por gorra tinha posta Huma mui grande casco de lagosta._

Thus rendered by Fanshaw--

"He had (for a montera[413]) on his crown The sh.e.l.l of a red lobster overgrown."

[410] Neptune.

[411] _And changeful Proteus, whose prophetic mind._--The fullest and best account of the fable of Proteus is in the fourth Odyssey.

[412] Thetis.

[413] Montera, the Spanish word for a huntsman's cap.

[414] _She who the rage of Athamas to shun._--Ino, the daughter of Cadmus and Hermione, and second spouse of Athamas, king of Thebes. The fables of her fate are various. That which Camoens follows is the most common. Athamas, seized with madness, imagined that his spouse was a lioness, and her two sons young lions. In this frenzy he slew Learchus, and drove the mother and her other son, Melicertus, into the sea. The corpse of the mother was thrown ash.o.r.e on Megara and that of the son at Corinth. They were afterwards deified, the one as a sea G.o.ddess, the other as the G.o.d of harbours.

[415] _And Glaucus lost to joy._--A fisherman, says the fable, who, on eating a certain herb, was turned into a sea G.o.d. Circe was enamoured of him, and in revenge of her slighted love, poisoned the fountain where his mistress usually bathed. By the force of the enchantment the favoured Scylla was changed into a hideous monster, whose loins were surrounded with the ever-barking heads of dogs and wolves. Scylla, on this, threw herself into the sea, and was metamorphosed into the rock which bears her name. The rock Scylla at a distance appears like the statue of a woman. The furious dashing of the waves in the cavities, which are level with the water, resembles the barking of wolves and dogs.