What It Is
The signs of heaven, earth, and dreams that the play scatters around the assassination: the storm of fire, the lion loose in the street, the night bird in broad daylight, the sacrificed animal without a heart, the dreams of Calpurnia and of the poet Cinna, the eagles swapped for crows. No one reads the same sign in the same way.
Where It Appears
In Act I, Scene 3, in the night of the storm, Casca tells Cicero what he saw: a slave whose hand burned without being consumed, a lion that passed without harming him, women who swore they saw men in flames, the night bird in the market at noon. Cicero answers that men interpret events in their own way, and Cassius, under the same lightning, reads in them a warning from heaven against a man who has grown too great.
In Act II, Scene 1, Brutus reads the anonymous letter by the light of the meteors that cut through the air.
In Act II, Scene 2, Calpurnia reports what her guard saw: a lioness that gave birth in the street, tombs opened, warriors of fire that fight in the clouds and drip blood over the Capitol, and she recounts the dream in which Caesar's statue gushed blood. The augurs found no heart in the sacrificed animal. Caesar answers that what the gods have decided cannot be avoided, and calls fear cowardice; Decius reinterprets the dream as a sign that Rome will drink from Caesar the blood that revives.
Cowards die many times before their deaths; / The valiant never taste of death but once(II.2)
In Act III, Scene 3, the poet Cinna leaves home after a bad dream, in which he dined with Caesar, without wanting to and not knowing why, and the mob drags him off by his name, shouting that they should tear him apart.
In Act V, Scene 1, Cassius, who followed Epicurus, confesses that he has come to give some credit to what the future announces: the two eagles that had accompanied the army to Philippi have vanished, and crows, ravens, and kites fly over the troops as over a sick prey. Messala asks him not to believe, and Cassius says he believes only in part.
What It Means
Each sign serves whoever reads it. Cassius uses it as a warning from heaven against Caesar, but had already said that the fault is not in the stars; Decius reverses Calpurnia's dream in favor of Caesar's going out; Cicero reminds us that men read things beyond the purpose of those things. The only one who changes his mind is Cassius himself, in Act V, when the Epicurean comes to believe.
The play's signs decide nothing, but everyone who reads them acts according to the reading: Caesar leaves because Decius switches the sign, Cassius recruits Casca because the storm suits him, and it is only when the end comes that the skeptic treats the sky as proof.
Relationships
- Standard themes: Fate and Free Will, Language and Narration.
- Characters: Calpurnia, Casca, Cassius, Julius Caesar.
- Neighboring symbols: the Ides of March, the warning that the soothsayer gives in a human voice; Caesar's ghost, the last of the signs.