While reading Cantos 4-6, I could not help but notice the striking similarities between The Lusiads and The Four Voyages. The narratives, themselves, employ similar Christian rhetoric to exalt the explorer and establish his importance. Like Columbus, de Camoes dismisses natives as “savages,” describing inhabited land as places “where none had set foot before” (126). Each narrative’s explorers view the ‘undiscovered’ world as containing “the earthly paradise” (116), heightening the stakes of their religious expeditions.

Despite these significant parallels, The Lusiads stands out from The Four Voyages as a mythical text. De Camoes’s use of mythology attributes mechanistic meaning to the storms and other obstacles that the  Portuguese explorers face. With concrete explanations for these obstacles, the Portuguese are not held responsible for the messiness of their voyage; for Columbus, however,  such obstacles throw him off course and seem to highlight his insufficiency as an explorer. De Camoes uses mythology in The Lusiads also to elevate the Portuguese as God’s intended recipients of the land. In Canto four, Manoel dreams that two rivers come to him, one of which who tells him that “so great a part of the earth is assigned” (115) to Portugal. De Camoes describes these rivers as men with “water [dripping] from the ends of their hair” (115). The Ganges “[addresses] Manoel in a loud voice” (115). Thus, de Camoes personifies bodies of water and describes their long and laborious journey to Manoel in his vision to dramatize the assignment of this land to the Portuguese. So far in the text, mythology, like Christianity, is a rhetorical tool highlighting the strength and glory of the Portuguese.