Fear Outweighs Loyalty
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Não falta com razões quem desconcerte Da opinião de todos, na vontade, Em quem o esforço antigo se converte Em desusada e má deslealdade; Podendo o temor mais, gelado, inerte, Que a própria e natural fidelidade: Negam o Rei e a pátria, e, se convém, Negarão ( como Pedro) o Deus que têm.
There is no shortage of men with reasons to unsettle the opinion and the will of everyone else — men in whom the old inherited valor turns into an unheard-of, evil disloyalty, since fear, frozen and inert, weighs more with them than their own natural fidelity. They deny their King and their country, and, if it suits them, they will deny (as Peter did) the very God they hold.
In the 1383 succession crisis, voices at the council argue against the common will and for submission to Castile. Camões names what is really speaking in them.
This is the counter-voice at the council. Portugal has no king, Castile is pressing its claim, and Camões pauses to describe the men arguing for submission. He does not call them traitors outright; he says something colder — that their inherited courage has curdled, and that what is actually doing the talking is fear, which he gives two adjectives no living thing should have: gelado, inerte. Frozen. Inert. The arguments are real arguments. That is the point of "razões."
The thing a first reader can miss is the Peter comparison in the last line. It is not an insult tossed off. Peter denied Christ out of fear, not malice, and was forgiven and made the rock of the Church. By reaching for him rather than Judas, Camões says these men are not monsters — they are ordinary people whose nerve failed at the hour it was tested. Which is worse for the argument he is building, because it means anyone could be them.
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