Was steeped in the blood of civil war.
Ranged against him in the field,
She could not see how much she erred
Against God, against maternal duty,
Beset by the temptations of her beauty.
32 O cruel Procne! O witch Medea!*
Who avenged on your own blameless sons
The crimes committed by their fathers,
Witness Teresa’s double guilt!
Sheer lust and naked greed
Are this crime’s commonest causes:
Scylla murdered her father for the one;
Teresa on both accounts attacked her son.
33 But the fair prince won the field
Over his stepfather and wicked mother;
And at a stroke the whole realm,
Which had fought against him, was his;
But anger overcame his judgement
When he made fast his mother in chains;
Honour your parents is the fifth commandment,
And God was storing up due punishment!
34 Proud Castile came to her aid
Against the outnumbered Portuguese
To avenge the affront to Teresa,
But Afonso was undaunted by any task.
In fierce battle, his stout heart,
So far retaining Heaven’s help,
Not only held his own in the fierce fight,
But put his rugged enemy to flight.
35 Soon afterwards, the strong prince
Was besieged by overwhelming numbers
In Guimarães, for so the angry
Castilian looked for redress;
But, at the risk of a terrible death,
Faithful Egas,* his tutor, rescued him,
When all else had otherwise despaired,
Given he found himself so ill-prepared.
36 For the loyal servitor, knowing
His prince unable to oppose,
Pledged his word to the Castilian
That Afonso would make his obeisance.
The enemy raised the fearful siege
Trusting the advice of Egas Moniz,
But the young prince, fired by ambition,
Was too proud to offer his submission.
37 When the appointed time approached,
And the king of Castile was waiting
For the prince to show obedience
And vow to accept his mandate,
Egas, finding himself perjured,
As Castile could never have foreseen,
Resolved with his person to remove the stain
Of the promise he had sworn to in vain,
38 And with his sons and wife he departed
To redeem his honour along with them,
Shoeless and in rags, in such fashion
As would move more to pity than anger.
—‘If you wish, great king, to avenge yourself
For my rash confidence,’ he vowed,
‘I stand here before you, ready to comply
With my life for the pledge that proved a lie.’
39 ‘You see before you the innocent lives
Of my blameless sons and my consort,
If great and generous hearts take
Pleasure in destroying the weak;
You see, too, my hands and delinquent tongue.
On them alone exact your revenge;
Take Sinis* as your merciless model,
Or Perillus with his horrid brazen bull.’
40 As before the axe the condemned man,
Supping already his cup of death,
Puts his throat on the appalling block
And anticipates the dread blow:
So Egas before his indignant master
Waited in resignation; but the king,
Rejoicing in such rare integrity,
Forgot his anger and inclined to pity.
41 O Portuguese honour, so scrupulous
In a matter of trust and duty!
What more did Zophyrus do, slashing
His face, slitting his nostrils?
—To win Babylon for his Darius,
Who sighed a thousand times to have
Zophyrus* home and whole would please him more
Than Babylons captured by the score.
42 But now Prince Afonso was marshalling
The prosperous Portuguese army
Against the Moors who possessed the lands
Beyond the clear, delightful Tagus;
Already the proud army, full of fight,
Was drawn up in the plain of Ourique,*
Confronting the Saracen enemy,
Though weaker far in men and weaponry.
43 In none other he placed his trust
Than almighty God who rules the Heavens,
For so few were the men of Christ
That for each the Moors had a hundred;
Judge whether by worldly standards
It was more foolhardy than brave,
With such a tiny army to take on
Such cruel odds as a century to one.
44 Five Moorish kings were the enemy
The foremost of whom was named Ismar;
All of them tried and tested in war
Where they won their fame and pre-eminence;
In their ranks were warrior women,
Like the handsome and powerful queen
Who rescued the Trojans, Penthesilea,*
And her legendary Amazons of Asia.
45 Dawn with its cold and serene light
Had driven the bright stars from the pole,
When the Cross of the Son of Mary
Was revealed to Afonso, inspiring him;
He fell on his knees before the vision
And fired by overwhelming faith,
‘To the infidels, the infidels’, he implored,
‘Not me who know your infinite power, O Lord!’
46 At this miracle the Portuguese
Were inflamed, raising on their shields
As their rightful king this excellent
Prince whom they loved from the heart;
And there before the great host
Of the enemy, they shook the heavens
So the clouds re-echoed: ‘Hail, hail, all
Hail Afonso, true king of Portugal!’
47 As a fierce mastiff in the mountains,
Spurred on by the shouts of peasants,
Will attack a full-grown bull who trusts
In the power of his dreadful horns;
Now it snaps at his ear, now at his flank
Yelping, more agile than strong,
Until grappled by the throat and held fast,
The bull’s strength ebbs, collapsing at last:
48 So the new king, his courage blazing
With God’s and his people’s favours,
Fell on the barbarians, rampant
At the head of his inspired army.
The infidels rose up in alarm,
Clanging their armour, shouting to their men,
Grabbing their bows and lances, to the roar
Of sounding brass in the tumult of war.
49 As when a fire, kindled in the scorched
Plains (and fanned by whistling
Boreas), is spread by the wind
And sweeps through the undergrowth;
A group of shepherds taking sweet rest
After their morning’s labours are roused
By flames crackling in the dry foliage,
And round up their flock and fly to the village:
50 So the startled Moors snatched up
Their weapons hastily and at random;
They did not turn, but stood their ground
Launching their terrible cavalry.
Without flinching, the Portuguese met them,
Impaling them through their hearts;
Some fell half dead, while the survivors ran
Calling aloud for help from the Koran.
51 Dreadful encounters took place there
So that even the mountains shuddered,
While the battle horses careered
Madly, disfiguring the earth;
Ferocious blows were dealt out;
War engulfed the whole plain;
But the Portuguese hacked and chopped with flailing
swords, shattering harness, mesh and mail.
52 Heads went rolling on the battlefield,
Arms, legs, anonymous, without feeling,
And the entrails of others, palpitating,
Their faces bloodless, and numb.
By now, the enemy had lost the day;
The rivers ran with shed blood
While the earth changed colour, as the serried
Meadow of white and green turned bloody red.
53 So the Portuguese emerged victorious
Gathering a rich prize of trophies;
Three days the great king stayed in the field
Where the Spanish Moors were broken.
It was here on the proud white buckler,*
In cruciform as the stamp of victory,
That five shields in heavenly blue were embossed,
One for each of the five kings who had lost;
54 And on these five shields he painted
Thirty pieces of silver, God’s ransom,
Written testimony, in distinct colours,
To the One by Whom he was favoured;
On each of the five blue shields
Of the cross, five silver coins were painted,
And in order that the number should suffice
The five coins in the middle counted twice.
55 Enough time passed to fix this huge
Victory in time, when the noble king
Captured Leiria, which had been taken
Earlier by the now defeated Moors.
And jointly he subdued the forts
Of Arronches* and noble Santarém,*
Ancient Roman town, where the Tagus flows
Serenely through fertile water meadows.
56 And soon after, to these noble towns
He added Mafra* and, near the ancient
Promontory of the Moon, brought
Cool Sintra* under his mighty arm,
Sintra where every pool and stream
Has nymphs hidden in its waters,
Fleeing in vain from Cupid’s tender fires
While the cold depths burn with their desires.
57 Then you, most noble Lisbon,* princess
Without peer among the world’s cities,
Named for her founder, that coiner of words
Through whose cunning Troy was burned;
You, to whom vast oceans bow, bowed
Then to the might of the Portuguese,
With the help of two mighty armadas
Descending from the north as crusaders.
58 For there were passing from the Elbe
And the Rhine, and from snow-bound Britain,
Many knights with the holy ambition
To destroy the might of the Saracens;
Anchoring in the pleasant Tagus,
They joined forces with great Afonso,
Whose fame persuaded them to change their plan,
So the patient siege of Lisbon began.
59 Five times the moon had been reborn
And five times shown her full face,
When the breached city yielded
To the hard encircling armies.
It was a battle so bloody and ferocious
As to test the uttermost resolve
Of the victors, relentless and daring,
And of the vanquished, at the last despairing.
60 And so, at last, Lisbon was captured
Which had never in former times
Surrendered, not even to the armies
Of the Vandals* from the north,
Whose conquests spread such terror
From the Ebro to the Tagus
And to the Guadalquivir, that they came
To bequeath to Andalusia its name.
61 What city anywhere had the strength
To stand against those mighty forces
Whose fame was already widespread
If Lisbon could not resist them?
All Estremadura* was now theirs,
And Óbidos, with Torres Vedras,
And gentle Alenquer, soothed by the moans
Of fresh waters humming among the stones.
62 And you, too, lands of the Alentejo*
Famed for your hectares of Ceres’ corn,
You surrendered your castles and armies
To the power not to be resisted;
Moorish peasants, skilled husbandmen
Of the fertile soils, you soon discovered
Elvas, Moura, Serpa, and your forsaken
Alcácer do Sal had all been taken.
63 And even that noble city, once seat
Of the rebel hero Sertorius,
Where today the glistening waters flow,
Sustaining the land and the people,
On the aqueduct with its thousand
Towering arches, even Évora yielded*
To the strategy and daring of peerless
Gerald, who of fear itself was Fearless.
64 Then Afonso, who never knew repose,
Packing his short life with achievement,
Rode on to Beja* to take bloody
Vengeance for the sacking of Trancoso;*
The city could not long resist him
And, no sooner had it surrendered,
Our angry troops were as good as their word
Putting every living creature to the sword.
65 Captured in the same campaign were
Sesimbra* with its fishing grounds,
And Palmela where, by good fortune,
He massacred a powerful army
(The town bated its breath, the hillside
Witnessed) hurrying to its relief
By the flank of the mountain, unaware
Of the catastrophe lurking for them there.
66 It was the towering King of Badajoz,
With four thousand fierce horsemen,
And innumerable foot, garnished
With gold, and the accoutrements of war.
But as in the month of May, a bull
Rampant, jealous for his cows,
Catching a passer-by’s scent, will stampede
And trample him in his blind, brute need:
67 So Afonso fell on them as they passed
Heedlessly, dropping from nowhere
To wound and kill and devastate;
The Moorish king fled panic-stricken;
His army, matching his sudden terror,
Sought only to follow his tracks,
Those who achieved such splendid devilry
Being no more than just sixty cavalry.
68 Seizing the occasion of this victory,
The great and tireless king gathered
From throughout the entire kingdom
Those most experienced in conquest.
He laid siege to Badajoz,* quickly
Gaining his ambition, fighting
With such skill and such ferocity and zest,
It soon yielded along with all the rest.
69 But almighty God who so long withheld
The punishment due to him, perhaps
Allowing an interval for repentance,
Or for reasons beyond men’s knowledge,
Although He had guarded the king
Through all vicissitudes, His will
No longer protected Afonso’s gains
From his mother’s curse whom he kept in chains.
70 For there in the town he had besieged,
He was himself trapped by the Leónese,
Because the conquest he had made
Belonged to León and not Portugal.
His stubbornness cost him dearly,
As so often happens, for riding out
He broke his leg on the city’s
iron gates
And ended Leon’s prisoner and Fate’s.
71 O great Pompey, grieve no longer*
To see your famous deeds in ruins,
Nor that just Fate should grant
Victory to Caesar, your father-in-law;
Though none could tell, from the Black Sea
To Aswan with its vertical sun,
Or from Arcturus to the hot equator
Where the fear of Pompey’s name was greater;
72 Although rich Arabia and the ferocious
Heniochi and Colchis, of the golden
Fleece and the Cappadocians
And Judaeans, God’s chosen people,
Together with the gentle Sophenians
And the cruel Cilicians, and Armenia
Where the Tigris and Euphrates both rise
On Mount Ararat, there in paradise;
73 Although at last your conquests extended
From Asia to the Atlas Mountains,
Do not be astonished that the field
Of Thessaly witnessed your defeat;
Behold proud, triumphant Afonso,
Surrender all and be taken,
Humbled by those engines of God’s ire,*
His daughter’s husband and his wife’s sire!
74 Ransomed at last from his Divine
Chastisement, the sublime king
Was besieged at Santarém* by the Saracens,
But presumptuously and in vain;
Afterwards, from the sacred Cape
Which has long been named by its saint,
He brought to Lisbon’s most holy altar
The relics of St Vincent, blessed martyr;
75 And to continue his life’s mission,
The old man sent his powerful son
Well furnished with men and arms
To fight for the lands beyond the Tagus.
Sancho,* a strong and spirited lad,
Marched at once and made the waters
Of the Guadalquivir, which washes Seville,
Run red with the blood of the infidel.
76 And spurred on by this victory,
The youth did not rest while he foresaw
A further triumph just as damaging,
Over the enemy besieging Beja,
Nor did the happy prince take long
To accomplish all he had hoped.
Faced with such losses, the Moors were dismayed,
Contemplating how they might be repaid.
77 They came together* from the Atlas Mountains*
Which Medusa petrified long ago;
And from Cape Spartel and Mauretania,
Once home of the giant Antaeus;*
The King of Ceuta made one with them
While yet others assembled with their arms,
To the sound of trumpet and raw tuba,
From all the ancient kingdom of Juba.
78 In command of this vast company,
Emir Al-muminin invaded Portugal;
He led thirteen Moorish kings of note,
All subject to his sceptre;
And doing whatever harm he could
The Lusiads (Oxford World's Classics) Page 9
