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A soothsayer is a person who can see into the future. In 1.2, 2.4, and 3.1, Julius Caesar’s Soothsayer famously attempts to warn Caesar that he must “[b]eware the ides of March,” referring to March 15th. (The “ides” refers to the fifteenth day of March, May, July, and October and the thirteenth day of the other months in the ancient Roman calendar.) His (accurate) prediction is the first of many ill omens that will occur throughout the text. Omens and portents are an essential motif; as the story progresses, many characters witness or describe various omens including but not limited to lions in the capital, raining fire, Calpurnia’s dream, and sightings of Caesar’s ghost, generating a sinister and foreboding tone.
Caesar does not heed the Soothsayer’s warning, and is killed as a result. His rejection of the Soothsayer’s premonition is one of many such acts; most of the text’s key players ignore warnings that are obvious in hindsight, and meet their end as a result. However, Caesar’s rejection of the Soothsayer is the most significant, and the most symbolic, because it suggests his hubris has prevented him from seeing the reality of the situation in Rome and the fact that his assassination is surely coming. The Soothsayer’s prediction also generates dramatic irony, a literary device in which readers possess information that the characters do not; by ignoring the Soothsayer’s warnings, Caesar himself makes possible the tragic end the audience already knows is coming.
