Based on the dream and the other alarming signs, Calpurnia at first convinces Caesar to stay home from the Capitol but when Decius arrives-dispatched by the other conspirators to ensure the newly superstitious Caesar’s attendance at the Senate-he puts a different spin on things: “This dream is all amiss interpreted. Calpurnia dreams that Caesar’s statue spurts blood, in which Romans happily bathe themselves. This point is further illustrated when Caesar wrestles with the meaning of Calpurnia’s prophetic dream. This suggests that, as Cicero has argued, people will see what they choose to see. The conspiracy to kill Caesar predates the “strange eruptions,” and Cassius reads the omens as a positive sign of imminent success, rather than as a warning, in order to win Casca to his cause. There are so many omens, he tells Cicero, that he’s convinced “they are portentous things / Unto the climate that the point upon.” Cicero agrees that it’s all quite strange, but that “men may construe things after their fashion, / Clean from the purpose of the things themselves.” Arguably, Cicero’s words end up being more prophetic than the mysterious signs themselves-when Casca talks with Cassius thereafter, Cassius uses the omens to persuade Casca that Caesar has grown “prodigious and fearful, as these strange eruptions are” and must therefore be killed. The night before the assassination, Casca observes that the sky is filled with meteors, fiery figures roam the streets, and an owl shrieked in the marketplace at noon. In fact, by showing how characters often read supernatural signs to confirm their intended courses of action, Shakespeare argues that while supernatural phenomena may be real, human beings are chiefly responsible for their own destinies. Caesar, who’d curtly dismissed him the first time, sees the soothsayer and says rather challengingly, “The ideas of March are come.” The soothsayer replies, “Aye, Caesar, but not gone.” This ambiguous scene sets the tone for the role of fate throughout the play: does human action prevail in spite of fate, or does fate defy human action? Shakespeare never neatly resolves this question. During Caesar’s triumphal march into Rome, a soothsayer cries out from the crowd, “Beware the ides of March!” Later, on the day of the assassination, the soothsayer positions himself among the crowd once again.
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