Owing to its theme, this epic, which a great authority claims should be termed "the Portugade," is also known as the Epic of Commerce or the Epic of Patriotism.
After his banishment Camoens obtained permission to join the forces directed against the Moors, and shortly after lost an eye in an engagement in the Strait of Gibraltar.

Although he distinguished himself as a warrior, Camoens did not even then neglect the muse, for he reports he wielded the pen with one hand and the sword with the other.
After this campaign Camoens returned to court, but, incensed by the treatment he received at the hands of jealous courtiers, he soon vowed his ungrateful country should not even possess his bones, and sailed for India, in 1553, in a fleet of four vessels, only one of which was to arrive at its destination, Goa.
While in India Camoens sided with one of the native kings, whose wrath he excited by imprudently revealing his political tendencies.

He was, therefore, exiled to Macao, where for five years he served as "administrator of the effects of deceased persons," and managed to amass a considerable fortune while continuing his epic.

It was on his way back to Goa that Camoens suffered shipwreck, and lost all he possessed, except his poem, with which he swam ashore.
Sixteen years after his departure from Lisbon, Camoens returned to his native city, bringing nothing save his completed epic, which, owing to the pestilence then raging in Europe, could be published only in 1572.
Even then the Lusiad attracted little attention, and won for him only a small royal pension, which, however, the next king rescinded.

Thus, poor Camoens, being sixty-two years old, died in an almshouse, having been partly supported since his return by a Javanese servant, who begged for his master in the streets of Lisbon.
Camoens' poem Os Lusiades, or the Lusitanians (i.e., Portuguese), comprises ten books, containing 1102 stanzas in heroic iambics, and is replete with mythological allusions.