The Lusiads

Portugal’s national epic follows Vasco da Gama’s pioneering sea voyage around Africa to India, and turns that real feat of navigation into a grand poem of empire, courage and divine intrigue. As the sailors push into unknown waters, the gods of classical mythology take sides above them, Venus favoring the Portuguese while Bacchus schemes to wreck their mission. Camoes, who had sailed and fought in the East himself, folds Portuguese history, heroic legend and hard-won firsthand knowledge of the sea into ten cantos of ringing verse. First printed in 1572, it stands beside Virgil and Homer in the European epic tradition. This free PDF and EPUB edition presents Richard F. Burton’s translation.