Lusus
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In the Lusiads (Os Lusíadas) of Luís de Camões (printed 1572), the literary work that was created to form a national epic for Portugal, Lusus was progenitor of his tribe (the "Lusiads") and founder of Lusitania, the Roman province that roughly corresponded to modern Portugal. Among its Iberian and Celtic tribal inhabitants, there were no historical "Lusii" to have a tribal eponym, "Lusus". Instead, the province took its Latin name from the warbands of the Lusitani who banded together, drawn from several tribes, to counter the Roman domination, until their leader Viriathus, was murdered in 139 BCE.
For the 16th century Portuguese, looking back in the wake of the Reconquista for a sense of national origins, it was important to establish a link, beyond Moorish domination or Visigoths tainted with Arianism to the high culture and secure Catholicism of Roman Lusitania.
The name itself derives from a mistranslation of the phrase "lusum enim Liberi patris" (in Pliny the Elder's Natural History, 3.3) which takes lusus to be a proper name, rather than a simple noun meaning games or play, as shown by the translation, "the name "Lusitania" is derived from the games (lusus) of Father Bacchus" [1].
