Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never…

The scene is Act II, scene 2 of Julius Caesar, on the morning of the Ides of March. Calpurnia has cried out three times in her sleep, “They murder Cæsar!”, and she begs her husband not to leave the house. The watch has seen terrible signs: a lioness whelping in the streets, graves yielding up their dead, warriors fighting in the clouds and drizzling blood on the Capitol.

Caesar answers with this line, adding that death, “a necessary end, Will come when it will come.” The augurs find no heart in their sacrificial beast, and Calpurnia persuades him to stay at home, until Decius Brutus, one of the conspirators, flatters him into going to the Senate, where he is murdered.

Shakespeare wrote the play around 1599, following Plutarch, who reports that the real Caesar refused a bodyguard, saying it was better to die once than to live always in fear of death. The line is admired as a motto of courage; in the play, it also shows Caesar’s pride.

Julius Caesar, Act II, scene 2 (Caesar), 1599

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