Omens in Julius Caesar
...slave held up his left hand, which did flame and burn like twenty torches join’d: and yet his hand, not sensible of fire remain’d unscortch’d.” Also during that night women see men walking in the streets on fire. This hints at Caesar’s death because men are catching fire but aren’t being harmed. Casca sees the bird of night out during the day. “And yesterday the bird of night did sit, even at noonday, upon the market place, hooting and shrieking.” The bird of night is an owl, yet Casca saw one at noon. Owls usually sleep during the day and are only seen at night. After Caesar has been presented with all of the weird occurrences, he asks the priests to make an immediate sacrifice just in case the omens are hinting towards something. Caesar’s servant reports back to Caesar, “They would not have you to stir forth today. Plucking the entrailsof an offering forth, they could not find a heart within the beast.” Not finding a heart inside a sacrifice is a bad sign. The fortune tellers don’t encourage Caesar going to the capitol because of this. Calpurnia tells Caesar that the nightwatch saw horrible things. “A lioness gave birth in the street. Graves split open, revealing the corpes. Up in the clouds fierce and fiery warriors fought…” These are all things that wouldn’t usually happen and all of these abnormal events happening at once is a sign for Caesar. Calpurnia has dreams, which are omens that directly warn Caesar of his death. “Three times Calpurnia has cried out in her sleep, ‘Help, there! They are murdering Caesar!’” Calpurnia says that she...