Several times during their conversation, Cassius and Brutus hear shouts and the sounds of trumpets. Such men are dangerous. As Caesar exits, Brutus and Cassius stop Casca and converse with him. He tells them that Mark Antony offered the crown to Caesar three times, but that Caesar rejected it each time and then fell down in an epileptic seizure. The three men agree to think further about the matter, and when Casca and Brutus have gone, Cassius in a brief soliloquy indicates his plans to secure Brutus firmly for the conspiracy that he is planning against Caesar.
Unrest is possible in Rome because the new leader is weak. The audience is given evidence of this at the opening of Scene 2. The fact that he calls upon another man, known for his athleticism, carousing, and womanizing, suggests that Caesar is impotent. A lack of virility is not Caesar's only problem.
He also is unable to recognize and take heed of good advice. A soothsayer enters the scene and "with a clear tongue shriller than all the music," warns Caesar of the ides of March. Caesar doesn't hear the man clearly, but others do, and it is Shakespeare's ironic hand that has Brutus, who will be Caesar's murderer, repeat the warning.
Caesar has every opportunity to heed these words. He hears them again from the soothsayer and even takes the opportunity to look into the speaker's face and examine it for honesty, but he misreads what he sees.
The soothsayer is termed a dreamer and is dismissed. Some critics of this play call Caesar a superstitious man and weak for that reason, but that is not the real root of the problem. All of the characters in this play believe in the supernatural.
It is one of the play's themes that they all misinterpret and attempt to turn signs and omens to their own advantage. What characterizes Caesar as weak is susceptibility to flattering interpretations of omens and his inability to distinguish between good advice and bad, good advisors and bad.
Those who surround Caesar are not all supporters. At Caesar's departure, Cassius and Brutus are left onstage. Cassius marvels to think that a man with such a feeble constitution should now stand at the head of the civilized world. Caesar stands like a Colossus over the world, Cassius continues, while Cassius and Brutus creep about under his legs. He tells Brutus that they owe their underling status not to fate but to their own failure to take action. He wonders in what sort of age they are living when one man can tower over the rest of the population.
Although unwilling to be further persuaded, he admits that he would rather not be a citizen of Rome in such strange times as the present. Meanwhile, Caesar and his train return. Caesar sees Cassius and comments to Antony that Cassius looks like a man who thinks too much; such men are dangerous, he adds. Antony tells Caesar not to worry, but Caesar replies that he prefers to avoid Cassius: Cassius reads too much and finds no enjoyment in plays or music—such men are never at ease while someone greater than themselves holds the reins of power.
Caesar urges Antony to come to his right side—he is deaf in his left ear—and tell him what he thinks of Cassius. Shortly, Caesar and his train depart. Brutus and Cassius take Casca aside to ask him what happened at the procession.
Casca relates that Antony offered a crown to Caesar three times, but Caesar refused it each time. While the crowd cheered for him, Caesar fell to the ground in a fit. Casca then departs, followed by Brutus. Just as Caesar himself proves fallible, his power proves imperfect. The implication that Caesar may be impotent or sterile is the first—and, for a potential monarch, the most damaging—of his physical shortcomings to be revealed in the play. This conversation between Brutus and Cassius reveals the respective characters of the two men, who will emerge as the foremost conspirators against Caesar.
Brutus appears to be a man at war with himself, torn between his love for Caesar and his honorable concern for Rome. Cassius remains merely a public man, without any suggestion of a private self. Cassius recognizes that if Brutus believes that the people distrust Caesar, then he will be convinced that Caesar must be thwarted. Ironically, his success leads directly to a continuous decline of his own influence within the republican camp. Clearly, Cassius has his negative aspects.
He envies Caesar; he becomes an assassin; and he will consent to bribery, sell commissions, and impose ruinous taxation to raise money. But he also has a certain nobility of mind that is generally recognized. Cassius is also highly emotional.
He displays extreme hatred in his verbal attack on Caesar during Lupercal; he almost loses control because of fear when Popilius reveals that the conspirators' plans have been leaked; he gives vent to anger in his argument with Brutus in the tent at Sardis; he expresses an understanding tolerance of the poet who pleads for him and Brutus to stop their quarrel; and he threatens suicide repeatedly and finally chooses self-inflicted death to humiliating capture by Antony and Octavius.
When he becomes a genuine friend of Brutus following the reconciliation in the tent, he remains faithful and refuses to blame Brutus for the dilemma that he encounters at Philippi, even though he has reason to do so. Of all the leading characters in Julius Caesar, Cassius develops most as the action progresses. At the end of Act I, Scene 2, he is a passionate and devious manipulator striving to use Brutus to gain his ends.
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