Cicero concedes that 'it is indeed a strange disposed time?' and inserts the statement that 'men may construe things after their fashion, clean from the purpose of the things themselves.' But this is too disturbed a sky for him to walk in, so exit Cicero, and enter one of another kind of mettle, who thinks 'the night a very pleasant one to honest men;' who boasts that he has been walking about the streets 'unbraced, baring his bosom to the thunder stone,' and playing with 'the cross blue lightning;' and when Casca reproves him for this temerity, he replies,
'You are dull, Casca, and those sparks of life
That should be in a Roman, you do want,
Or else you use not.'
For as to these extraordinary phenomena in nature, he says, 'If you would consider the true cause
Why all these things change, from their ordinance,
Their natures and fore-formed faculties,
To monstrous quality; why, you shall find,
That heaven hath infused them with these spirits,
To make them instruments of fear, and warning,
Unto some MONSTROUS STATE.
Now could I, Casca,
Name to thee a man most like this dreadful night;
That thunders, lightens, opens graves, and roars
As doth the lion in the Capitol:
A man no mightier than thyself, or me,
In personal action; yet prodigious grown,
And fearful, as these strange eruptions are.
Casca. 'Tis Caesar that you mean: Is it not, Cassius?
Cassius. LET IT BE WHO IT is: for Romans now
Have thewes and limbs like to their ancestors;
But, woe the while! our fathers' minds are dead,
And we are govern'd with our mothers' spirits;
Our yoke and sufferance shows us womanish.
Casca. Indeed, they say, the senators to-morrow
Mean to establish Caesar as a king.
And he shall wear his crown by sea, and land,
In every place, save here in Italy.
Cassius. I know where I will wear this dagger then;
Cassius from bondage will deliver Cassius:
Therein, ye gods, you make the weak most strong;
Therein, ye gods, you tyrants do defeat:
Nor STONY TOWER, nor walls of beaten brass,
Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron,
Can be retentive to the strength of spirit.
If I know this, know all the world besides,
That part of tyranny, that I do bear,
I can shake off at pleasure.
Casca. So can I;
So every bondman in his own hand bears
The power to cancel his captivity.
Cassius. And why should Caesar be a tyrant then?
Poor man! I know, he would not be a wolf,
But that he sees the Romans are but sheep
He were no lion, were not Romans hinds.
Those that with haste will make a mighty fire,
Begin it with weak straws: What trash is Rome,
What rubbish, and what offal, when it serves
for the base matter to illuminate
So vile a thing as Caesar? But, O grief!
Where hast thou led me? I perhaps, speak this
BEFORE A WILLING BONDMAN: But I am arm'd
And dangers are to me indifferent.