claims should be termed "the Portugade," is also known as
the Epic of Commerce or the Epic of Patriotism.

After his banishment Camoens obtained permission to join the forces
directed against the Moors, and shortly after lost an eye in an
engagement in the Strait of Gibraltar. Although he distinguished
himself as a warrior, Camoens did not even then neglect the muse, for
he reports he wielded the pen with one hand and the sword with the
other.

After this campaign Camoens returned to court, but, incensed by the
treatment he received at the hands of jealous courtiers, he soon vowed
his ungrateful country should not even possess his bones, and sailed
for India, in 1553, in a fleet of four vessels, only one of which was
to arrive at its destination, Goa.

While in India Camoens sided with one of the native kings, whose wrath
he excited by imprudently revealing his political tendencies. He was,
therefore, exiled to Macao, where for five years he served as
"administrator of the effects of deceased persons," and managed to
amass a considerable fortune while continuing his epic. It was on his
way back to Goa that Camoens suffered shipwreck, and lost all he
possessed, except his poem, with which he swam ashore.

Sixteen years after his departure from Lisbon, Camoens returned to his
native city, bringing nothing save his completed epic, which, owing to
the pestilence then raging in Europe, could be published only in 1572.
Even then the Lusiad attracted little attention, and won for him only
a small royal pension, which, however, the next king rescinded. Thus,
poor Camoens, being sixty-two years old, died in an almshouse, having
been partly supported since his return by a Javanese servant, who
begged for his master in the streets of Lisbon.

Camoens' poem Os Lusiades, or the Lusitanians (i.e., Portuguese),
comprises ten books, containing 1102 stanzas in heroic iambics, and is
replete with mythological allusions. Its outline is as follows:

_Book I._ After invoking the muses and making a ceremonious address to
King Sebastian, the poet describes how Jupiter, having assembled the
gods on Mount Olympus, directs their glances upon Vasco da Gama's
ships plying the waves of an unknown sea, and announces to them that
the Portuguese, who have already made such notable maritime
discoveries, are about to achieve the conquest of India.

Bacchus, who has long been master of this land, thereupon wrathfully
vows Portugal shall not rob h