Caesar, awoken by his wife Calpurnia’s nightmares, sends a servant to bid the priests to offer a sacrifice and tell him the results, which reveals an impossibly ominous future. Calpurnia enters and insists that Caesar remains home, but he rebuffs her, refusing to appear as a coward. But having witnesses the omens of the previous night (dead men walked, ghosts wandered the city, a lioness gave birth in the street, and lightning shattered the skies), she begs him to remain. Yet Caesar claims nothing can change the plans of the gods and deems the signs to apply to the world in general and refuses to believe that they bode ill for him personally.

Caesar is an illeist (refers to himself in third person) as if his very name deserves recognition in his own speech. He constantly suggests he is greater than man and even “danger knows full well that Caesar is more dangerous than he” as if overshadowing death. He claims he is “without a heart”, unbound by the limitations of life or the fear of death. He self claims a God title where danger is but a child to him. The scene reveals Caesar’s unending pride and overconfidence, as he remains ignorant to the evident extent of menace.