VIRGIL, CAMOES AND THE CLASSICAL EPIC TRADITION

Abstract

Of all works inspired by Virgil's Aeneid, the Lusiads (Os Lusfadas) of the Portuguese poet Luis Vaz de Cam5es (c. 1524/5-1580) must rank as the boldest and most imaginative. This masterly poem, constructed around the momentous voyage in which Vasco da Gama discovered the sea route from Europe to India via the Cape of Good Hope in 1497-1498, deserves to be more widely known outside Portugal than is presently the case,2 especially amongst teachers and students of classical epic poetry who live in South Africa. For this audience the Lusiads furnishes insights into a turning-point in the history of the African subcontinent, as well as evidence of how the classical epic literary tradition, received and transmitted by Virgil, shaped the form and content of a poem composed some sixteen centuries after Virgil's death.