Scene Three
[A Street]
Thunder and lightning. Enter [from opposite sides] Casca [with his sword drawn] and Cicero.
Cic. Good even, Casca: brought you Cæsar home?
Why are you breathless? and why stare you so?
Casca. Are not you mov'd, when all the sway of earth
Shakes like a thing unfirm? O Cicero!4
I have seen tempests, when the scolding winds
Have riv'd the knotty oaks; and I have seen
The ambitious ocean swell and rage and foam,
To be exalted with the threat'ning clouds:8
But never till to-night, never till now,
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,12
Incenses them to send destruction.
Cic. Why, saw you anything more wonderful?
Casca. A common slave—you know him well by sight—
Held up his left hand, which did flame and burn16
Like twenty torches join'd; and yet his hand,
Not sensible of fire, remain'd unscorch'd.
Besides,—I have not since put up my sword,—
Against the Capitol I met a lion,20
Who glar'd upon me, and went surly by,
Without annoying me; and there were drawn
Upon a heap a hundred ghastly women,
Transformed with their fear, who swore they saw24
1 brought: escorted
3 sway: settled order
14 more: else (or, extraordinarily)
18 sensible of: vulnerable by, sensitive to
22, 23 drawn . . . heap: crowded together in a body
