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CAMILLUS, MARCUS FURIUS. 



CAMOENS, DOM LUIS DE. 



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Brunswick, and the United States; and they have missionaries in 

 New Zealand and the New Hebrides, and one in London, who labours 

 among the Jews. 



CAMILLUS, MARCUS FURIUS, a celebrated Roman, who lived 

 about the middle of the 4th century after the foundation of the city. 

 There is eo much of the fabulous in all that is told about him that 

 one might very reasonably suppose that Livy and Plutarch have 

 derived the traditions respecting this warrior from some old poem. 

 (Niebuhr, 'H. R.,' vol. ii. p. 472.) That there was such a person, and 

 that his actions entitled him to the gratitude of his countrymen, 

 cannot, we think, be doubted, and even Niebuhr has not attempted to 

 deny him the personality which he is unwilling to concede to Romulus 

 and Coriolanue. ('H. R.' ii. p. 501.) Camillas was created dictator 

 five times, aud triumphed four times, but never served the office of 

 consul. (Plutarch, ' Camill.' init.) This was principally owing to the 

 substitution of the military tribunate for the consulship in the early 

 part of hU life. His first dictatorship waa in the tenth year of the 

 siege of Veii, which was taken by him probably by means of a mine, 

 by which part of the wall was overthrown. (Niebuhr, 'H. R.' ii. p. 481, 

 who has sufficiently refuted the ordinary tradition.) He also conquered 

 the Faliscans, who, according to the legend, yielded unconditionally to 

 him in consequence of Ms generosity in restoring to them their 

 children whom a traitorous schoolmaster had delivered into his bauds. 

 (Plutarch, 'Camill.' x.) He was impeached, in A.U.C. 364, by the 

 tribune L. Apuleiug, on a charge of peculation in the distribution of 

 the plunder of Veii, and his guilt was so manifest that even his own 

 clients could not acquit him. (Liv. v. 32.) Camillus retired to Ardea, 

 and lived there as an 'inquilinus' till the battle of the Allia and the 

 capture of Rome : he then took, up arms for his country, and led the 

 Ardeates against the Gauls, over whom he obtained some advantages. 

 At length the people, sensible of the necessity of his recal, restored him 

 to his civic rights by an ordinance of the plebs passed at Veii, and after 

 two battles, the one fought in the city and the other on the road to 

 Oabii, he completely exterminated the invading army. It was probably 

 owing to bis influence that the Romans were induced to rebuild their 

 own city in preference to migrating to Veii, as many wished to do, 

 and for this and his other services he was called the second Romulu*. 

 In his fourth dictatorship he had some more disputes with the plebeians, 

 in consequence of which he abdicated his office. (Liv. vi. 38.) He 

 died of the plague in the year of Rome 390. (Liv. vii. 1 ; Plutarch, 

 ' Camill.' xliii. i His son and brother were also eminent men, but with 

 theso exceptions no one of his family, according to Tacitus (' Anna!,' 

 ii. 52), obtained military renown till the age of Tiberius, when Furius 

 Camillus, proconsul of Africa, triumphed over the Numkliaua. The 

 von of this. Camillus raised a rebellion in Dalmatia in the reign of 

 Claudius, and proclaimed himself emperor, but in a few days his soldiers 

 returned to their allegiance, and-Carnillus committed suicide. 



CAMOENS (Dom Luis de-Camoes), called the Homer and Virgil of 

 Portugal, for his celebrated poem of the ' Lusiad,' was born at Lisbon ; 

 though Coimbrn and Santarcm have disputed this honour with Lisbon. 

 There is no less controversy about the precise year of his birth, which, 

 according to some, was 1517 while most biographers suppose it to 

 b 1524. 



Hit family was of considerable note, and originally Spanish. In 

 his infancy, his father, Simon Vas de C'amoens, commander of a vessel, 

 was shipwreck-id at Goa, and lost, with IIH life, the greater part of 

 his fortune. His mother, however, Auuede Macedo, of Santarem, was 

 enabled to give her son such an education as qualified him for the 

 military service and for public life. Camoeiis was sent to the university 

 of Coimbra, where, notwithstanding Voltaire's rash assertion that his 

 youth waa spent in idleness and ignorance, it appears from bis works 

 that he must have acquired the substance as well aa caught the spirit 

 of classical learning. 



On quitting the university Camoenn returned to Lisbon. His 

 prepossessing appearance and great accomplishments, added to his love 

 of poetry and gallantry, which now engrossed all his thoughts, soon 

 made him an object of public notoriety, especially as the charms of 

 Catharina d'Atayada, a lady of honour (dama do pao) at the court, 

 had captivated his heart. This amour with a lady above his rank waa 

 the origin of the long series of Camoens' calamities. He experienced 

 the fate of Ovid, with whom he compares himself in his third elegy, 

 written at Santarem, the place of his exile and retirement, where he 

 also began his 'Lusiad.' Camoens soon became tired of an inactive 

 and obscure life. To be at once a hero and a poet waa his ambition. 

 He joined, as a volunteer, an expedition which John III. waa then 

 fitting out against the Moors of Ceuta, and greatly distinguished him- 

 self in several encounters. In a naval engagement with the Moors in 

 the Straits of Gibraltar he was among the foremost to board, and lost 

 his right eye in the conflict. This he relates himself in his C.ujrfio x., 

 (tan. 9. 



Hoping to deserve a* a soldier that reward which he had failed to 

 obtain as a poet, he returned to Lisbon ; but he failed to gain even an 

 honourable competence. Baffled iu all his expectations, he determined 

 to leave hit native country ; and accordingly he embarked in 1553 for 

 India, in search of better prospects, or, at least, an honourable grave 

 for his misfortunes. As the ship left the Tagus he expressed his 

 resolution never to return, in the words of the sepulchral monument 

 of Scipio Afrioanus, " Ingrato patria, nun poasidebia oaaa rnea." 



Camoens arrived safely at Goa, in one of the four ships which sailed 

 to India, after seeing the other three perish in a storm. Not being 

 able to find employment at Goa, he immediately joined as a volunteer 

 a Portuguese expedition, which was ready to sail in aid of the King of 

 Cochin against the King of Pimenta. Although a great portion of his 

 countrymen were carried off by the insalubrity of the climate, Camoens 

 returned safe after he had displayed his usual bravery in the conquest 

 of the Alagada Islands. In the following year he accompanied Manuel 

 de Vasconcello in another expedition to the Red Sea, against the 

 Arabian Corsairs. At the island of Orinuz, in the Persian Gulf, where 

 he passed the winter, his imagination gave a poetic colouriug to the 

 scenery of that spot, and to the Portuguese achievements iu India. 

 He visited also mount Felix, and the adjacent part of Africa, which he 

 so strongly pictures iu the ' Lusiad,' and in one of the little pieces in 

 which he laments the absence of his mistress. Unfortunately for him 

 he indulged also in satire, and exposed in his ' Disparates na India,' 

 (Follies iu India) some of the government proceedings at Goa. The 

 viceroy immediately banished him to the island of Macao. Soon after 

 he obtained leave to visit the Moluccas, where he collected fresh 

 materials for pictorial poetry ; but he could no longer, as the liues 

 beneath his portrait express, " bear in one hand the sword, iu the other 

 the pen." and he was glad to accept the very unpoetic post at 

 Macao of ' provedor-mor dos defuntos' (administrator of the effects of 

 deceased persons), by which employment he was rescued from desti- 

 tution, and even enabled to make some savings. Having received 

 permission from a new viceroy to return to Goa, he was shipwrecked 

 in the passage on the coast of Cambodia. He saved, on a plank, aud 

 with great difficulty, only his life and his poems. 



Camoens had not long enjoyed repose when a new viceroy, lending 

 a ready ear to his enemies, who accused him of malversation in his 

 office at Macao, threw him into prison. Although he cleared himself 

 of the charges, and loaded his enemies with ignominy, he was still 

 detained for debts which he was unable to satisfy ; but a poem, at 

 once witty and nffecting, which he addressed to the viceroy at length 

 procured his liberation. Resuming the profession of arms, he accom- 

 panied Dom Pedro Barreto to the distant and barbarous settlement of 

 Sofala, A ship bound homeward having touched at this place, his 

 former resolution was shaken, and he determined to return to Europe. 

 Finally, after an absence of nearly sixteen years, Camoeiis arrived in 

 1569 at Lisbon, in the most abject poverty, his poems being the only 

 treasure and last hope which he had brought from the rich shores of 

 India. More ill-fated still at the end of his career, he found his native 

 city ravaged by the plague, and during such a calamity poetry could 

 avail him less than ever. King Dom Sebastian was then concerting 

 the plan of his unfortunate expedition to Marocco, aud this induced 

 Camoens to dedicate his poem to the youthful monarch. Although 

 the dedication was graciously received, it was only rewarded with a 

 wretched pension, just sufficient to mark but not to relieve the misery 

 of its author. 



It appears that Cardinal Henry, who succeeded Sebastian, withdrew 

 that small pension. He patronised only what was called learning by 

 the monks and friars, whoso pious forgeries and miracles he highly 

 valued. Cardinal Henry was the persecutor of George Buchanan, and 

 the patron of the inquititiou, of which he extended the horrors even 

 to Goa. Under his weak and bigottcd hands the kingdom fell into 

 utter ruin. 



The fate of Camoens throws great light on the history of his 

 country, and appears strictly connected with it. The same ignorance 

 and the same degenerate spirit which would have suffered Camoens to 

 starve, but for the sympathy of an aged Indian servant who begged 

 for him in the streets of Lisbon and which left him at last to .in- 

 most wretchedly in an hospital, sank Portugal into the most abject 

 vassalage ever experienced by a conquered nation. While tho 

 grandees of Portugal were blind to the ruin which impended over 

 them, Camoens beheld it with a pungency of grief which appears to 

 have hastened his end, In 1579, the year after the fatal issue of the 

 African expedition under King Sebastian, at the battle of A Ic.irar. 



Camc';ns attempted every style of poetic composition of which he 

 bad formed a definite idea, but the ' Lusiad ' rises so far above his 

 other works, that all his numerous but lesser compositions must be 

 considered as inferior scions sprung from the same root. The 

 'Lusiad' is an heroic poem which differs from all others of the epic 

 class. Camoens struck out a new path in the region of epic poetry. 



His object waa to recount in epic strains the achievements of the 

 great men of Portugal in general, not of any individual in particular, 

 aud, consequently, not of Vasco de Gama alone, who is commonly 

 considered the hero of the ' Lusiad.' The very title he gave it, ' Oa 

 Lusiadas ' (the Lusitanians), denotes at once the true nature of its 

 subject. An epic grouping of all the great and most interesting events 

 in the Portuguese annals forms the whole plan, and the discovery of 

 the passage to India is the groundwork of the epic unity of the poem, 

 but Vasco de Gama is merely the spindle round which the thread of 

 the narrative in wound. The ' Lusiad ' has no real episode except the 

 short story of the giant Adamastor. Unless the idea of the plan of 

 the ' Lusiad ' be rightly seized, the composition will appear in a falso 

 light on whichever side it is viewed. Designated as a whole, it may 

 therefore be termed an epic national picture of Portuguese glory, 

 greater however than a mere gallery of poetic stories, but leas than a 



