restless and excited,
or if he fell into a momentary slumber, his thoughts, instead of finding
repose, were only plunged into greater agitations, produced by strange,
and, as he thought, supernatural dreams. He imagined that he ascended
into the skies, and was received there by Jupiter, the supreme divinity,
as an associate and equal. While shaking hands with the great father of
gods and men, the sleeper was startled by a frightful sound. He awoke,
and found his wife Calpurnia groaning and struggling in her sleep. He
saw her by the moonlight which was shining into the room. He spoke to
her, and aroused her. After staring wildly for a moment till she had
recovered her thoughts, she said that she had had a dreadful dream. She
had dreamed that the roof of the house had fallen in, and that, at the
same instant, the doors had been burst open, and some robber or assassin
had stabbed her husband as he was lying in her arms. The philosophy of
those days found in these dreams mysterious and preternatural warnings
of impending danger; that of ours, however, sees nothing either in the
absurd sacrilegiousness of Caesar's thoughts, or his wife's incoherent
and inconsistent images of terror--nothing more than the natural and
proper effects, on the one hand, of the insatiable ambition of man, and,
on the other, of the conjugal affection and solicitude of woman. The
ancient sculptors carved out images of men, by the forms and lineaments
of which we see that the physical characteristics of humanity have not
changed. History seems to do the same with the affections and passions
of the soul. The dreams of Caesar and his wife on the night before the
Ides of March, as thus recorded, form a sort of spiritual statue, which
remains from generation to generation, to show us how precisely all the
inward workings of human nature are from age to age the same.

[Sidenote: Caesar hesitates.]

When the morning came Caesar and Calpurnia arose, both restless and ill
at ease. Caesar ordered the auspices to be consulted with reference to
the intended proceedings of the day. The soothsayers came in in due
time, and reported that the result was unfavorable. Calpurnia, too,
earnestly entreated her husband not to go to the senate-house that day.
She had a very strong presentiment that, if he did go, some great
calamity would ensue. Caesar himself hesitated. He was half inclined to
yield, and postpone his coronation to another occasion.

[Sidenote: Decimus