Good evening, Casca. Did you accompany Caesar home? Why are you
breathless, and why are you staring like that?
CASCA
Are not you moved when all the sway of earth
Shakes like a thing unfirm? O Cicero,
5
I have seen tempests when the scolding winds
Have rived the knotty oaks, and I have seen
Th' ambitious ocean swell and rage and foam
To be exalted with the threatening clouds,
But never till tonight, never till now,
10
Did I go through a tempest dropping fire.
Either there is a civil strife in heaven,
Or else the world, too saucy with the gods,
Incenses them to send destruction.
CASCA
Aren't you disturbed when the earth itself is shaking and
swaying as if it were a flimsy thing? Cicero, I've seen
storms in which the angry winds split old oak trees, and
I've seen the ocean swell, rage, and foam, as if it wanted
to reach the storm clouds, but never before tonight, never until
now, have I experienced a storm that drops fire. Either there are
wars in heaven, or else the world, too insolent toward the gods,
provokes them to send destruction.
CICERO
Why, saw you anything more wonderful?
CICERO
What—have you seen something so strange that it is
clearly an omen from the gods?
CASCA
15
A common slave—you know him well by sight—
Held up his left hand, which did flame and burn
Like twenty torches joined, and yet his hand,
Not sensible of fire, remained unscorched.
Besides—I ha' not since put up my
sword—
20
Against the Capitol I met a lion,
Who glared upon me and went surly by,
Without annoying me. And there were drawn
Upon a heap a hundred ghastly women,
Transformèd with their fear, who swore they saw
25
Men all in fire walk up and down the streets.
CASCA
A common slave—you'd know him if you saw
him—held up his left hand, which flamed and burned like
twenty torches together. And yet his hand was immune to the fire and
didn't get burned. Also—I've kept my
sword unsheathed since I saw this—in front of the
Capitol I met a lion who looked at me and strutted by without
bothering to attack me. And there were a hundred spooked women
huddled together in fear who swore they saw men on fire walk up and
down the streets.
