Introduction

As several biographical sketches of Diogo do Couto are readily available in English, it is only necessary to remind the reader of this Portuguese soldier-chronicler’s career in briefest outline. Couto was born at Lisbon in 1542 or 1543, and served as a page at court, where he received a good education in his youth. He embarked as a soldier for India in 1559, owing to the death of his father and of his patron, the Infante Dom Luís. After ten years’ military service on the west coast of India, and (apparently) in the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, Couto returned to Portugal in 1569–70, accompanied by his friend, Luís de Camões, on the second stage of the voyage from Moçambique to Lisbon. Unlike most of his comrades in arms, Couto evidently obtained speedy satisfaction for his claims for services rendered to the Crown, since he returned to India in the fleet of 1571. He spent the rest of his life at Goa, though he may have made short visits to some of the other Portuguese strongholds between Diu and Ceylon, in his success sive roles as a minor government official, a private citizen, and (from 1595 onwards) as chronicler and keeper of the archives in the Indo-Portuguese capital. He was a fecund writer who was active until within a few weeks of his death, which is foreshadowed in a petition of September 1616, stating that he is very ill and fears that ‘he will expire with this moon’. ¹ His death was reported by the viceroy in a despatch of the 30 December of the same year, though the exact date is not related and his tomb (which he had arranged for previously in the church of São Francisco) has never been found. The historical importance and the literary merits ² of 2his work in general and of his Décadas in particular are fully discussed elsewhere and need not detain us here.