Quote by Luís de Camões: “I have sailed strange seas and known new worlds.”

Discovery is not only geographical — it is intellectual and personal. Camões, writing from the perspective of the explorer, captures the intoxication of going beyond the known boundary. To know new worlds is to expand what it is possible to be.

The Lusiads was published in 1572 at the height of Portugal's maritime empire, when Lisbon was one of the richest cities in the world and Portuguese sailors had reached every continent. Camões had himself sailed to India and the Far East, bringing hard personal experience to his epic celebration of exploration.

Portuguese poet considered the greatest in the Portuguese language, whose epic The Lusiads, published in 1572, celebrated Vasco da Gama's voyage to India and Portugal's age of exploration. He fought as a soldier, lost an eye in battle, and spent years in Asia before completing his masterwork.