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Calpurnia, wife of Julius CaesarNight of 14 to 15 March 44 BCE

Calpurnia's dream before the Ides of March

The night before Julius Caesar was murdered, his wife dreamed of disaster and begged him not to go to the Senate.

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The dream

Retold in our own words from the sources below, not quoted.

The ancient biographers say that on the night before the Ides of March, Calpurnia cried out in her sleep. Plutarch reports two versions: in one, she dreamed she was holding her murdered husband in her arms and weeping over him; in the other, which he attributes to Livy, she dreamed that an ornamental gable the Senate had voted for their house came crashing down.

In the morning she begged Caesar not to go out, or at least to find out through sacrifices whether the day was safe. He hesitated, but one of the conspirators, Decimus Brutus, persuaded him to go. He was stabbed to death in the Senate that day.

Where the story comes from

Our sources are Plutarch's Life of Caesar and Suetonius's life of Julius, both written about a century and a half after the murder, alongside other stories of omens said to have come before it. Suetonius gives the dream as the gable collapsing and her husband being stabbed in her arms.

Shakespeare's Julius Caesar (1599) made the dream famous, turning it into a statue spouting blood. That image is Shakespeare's, not the ancient sources'.

How it has been read

Classic texts

In Roman culture, dreams were one of several kinds of signs that serious people might heed, along with sacrifices and portents. Suetonius places Calpurnia's dream among a string of omens, and adds that Caesar himself dreamed that night that he was flying above the clouds and clasping the hand of Jupiter.

History

Stories of ignored warnings cluster around famous deaths, because they turn a political murder into tragedy. The dream may well have happened, since Rome was full of rumour and Calpurnia had reason to be afraid, but its place in the story also serves the storyteller.

Questions for your own dreams

  1. Have you ever woken with a worry about someone you love that you could not shake?
  2. When you warn someone and they go anyway, what do you do with the fear?
  3. What does a falling house or roof feel like when it appears in your dreams?

Symbols in this dream

Had a dream that stayed with you?

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Sources

Every reading on this page comes from these works. Page references have not all been checked yet; those still waiting are marked.

  1. Plutarch (1919). Lives, Volume VII: Demosthenes and Cicero, Alexander and Caesar (Loeb Classical Library 99), translated by Bernadotte Perrin. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press / William Heinemann.

    first published early 2nd century CE

    public domain

    • Cited at: Life of Caesar 63 (reference not yet checked)

  2. Suetonius (1914). The Lives of the Caesars, Volume I (Loeb Classical Library 31), translated by J. C. Rolfe. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press / William Heinemann.

    first published c. 121 CE

    public domain

    • Cited at: Divus Julius 81 (reference not yet checked)