She goes on to enumerate the warning portents, and at length Caesar assents to her prayers since she cannot repress her terrors. But here Decimus Brutus strikes in:
High-hearted Caesar, what word has slipped from thee?[45]
He bids him remember his glory:
O most shameful plight if the world is ruled by Caesar and Caesar by a woman.... What, Caesar, dost thou suppose the Fathers will think if thou bidst them, summoned at thy command, to depart now and to return when better dreams present themselves to Calpurnia. Go rather resolutely and assume a name the Parthians must dread: or if this please thee not, at least go forth, and thyself dismiss the Fathers; let them not think they are slighted and had in derision.[46]
Caesar is bent one way by pity for his wife, another by fear of these taunts; but, at last, leaving Calpurnia to her misgivings, he exclaims:
But yet, since even to fall, so it be but once, is better than to be laden with lasting fear; not if three hundred prophet-voices call me back, not if with his own voice the present Deity himself warn me of the peril and urge my staying here, shall I refrain.[47]
The chorus cites the predictions of Cassandra to show that it would sometimes be wise to follow the counsel of women.
In the fifth act Brutus and Cassius appear in triumph.
Brut. Breathe, citizens; Caesar is slain!... In the Senate which he erewhile overbore, he lies overborne.
Cass. Behold, Rome, the sword yet warm with blood, behold the hand that hath championed thine honour. That loathsome one who in impious frenzy and blind rage had troubled thee and thine, sore wounded by this same hand, by this same sword which thou beholdest, and gashed in every limb, hath spewed forth his life in a flood of gore.[48]