Os Lusíadas
Portuguese epic poem by Luís de Camões
Os Lusíadas (Portuguese pronunciation: [uʒ luˈzi.ɐðɐʃ]), usually translated as The Lusiads, is a Portuguese epic poem written by Luís Vaz de Camões (c. 1524/5 – 1580) and first published in 1572. It is widely regarded as the most important work of Portuguese-language literature and is frequently compared to Virgil's Aeneid (1st c. BC). The work celebrates the discovery of a sea route to India by the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama (1469–1524). The ten cantos of the poem are in ottava rima and total 1,102 stanzas.
Written in Homeric fashion, the poem focuses mainly on a fantastic interpretation of the Portuguese voyages of discovery during the 15th and 16th centuries. Os Lusíadas is often regarded as Portugal's national epic, much as Virgil's Aeneid was for the Ancient Romans, or Homer's Iliad and Odyssey for the Ancient Greeks. It was written when Camões was an exile in Macau and was first printed in 1572, three years after the author returned from the Indies.
Internal structure
The poem consists of ten cantos, each with a different number of stanzas (1102 in total). It is written in the decasyllabic ottava rima, which has the rhyme scheme ABABABCC, and contains a total of 8816 lines of verse.
“Os Lusíadas” enters the record as portuguese epic poem by Luís de Camões. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Lusíadas, Portuguese and epic can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q781898. VIAF identifies the subject as 186297237. The Library of Congress control number is n85088803. 2 of 10 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1524, 1580, 1572 and 1469.
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This entry incorporates text from “Os Lusíadas” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.