Camoëns, the poet of Portugal, born at Lisbon, studied at Coimbra; fell in passionate love with a lady of high rank in Lisbon, as she with him, but whom he was not allowed to marry; left Lisbon, joined the army, and fought against the Moors; volunteered service in India, arrived at Goa, and got into trouble with the Portuguese authorities; was banished to Macao, and consoled himself by writing his “Lusiad”; coming home he lost everything but his poem; died neglected and in poverty; the title of the poem is properly “The Lusiads,” or the Lusitanians, i.e. the Portuguese, and is their national epic, called, not inaptly, the “Epos of Commerce”; it has been translated into most European languages, and into English alone no fewer than six times (1524‒1580).
Definition taken from The Nuttall Encyclopædia, edited by the Reverend James Wood (1907)
Camisards * Camorra