Calpurnia's dreams, which are described in Plutarch's "Life of Caesar," were probably the only valid warnings Caesar ever received. The other supernatural phenomena and omens, including the findings of the augurers, were interpreted by superstition and probably had no meaning at all; dreams often give us warnings we fail to heed. What is most interesting about Calpurnia's dream, both as history in Plutarch and as drama in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, is the way in which it shows how the unconscious mind can receive and process information which eludes the conscious mind.
Psychologists have known for many years that there is such a thing as unconscious learning. Calpurnia undoubtedly sensed there was something suspicious about the ways in which many of Caesar's friends and followers were behaving. A number of these men concealed their knowledge of the fate they had in store for Caesar. Calpurnia could have intuitively picked up clues from men's glances, false smiles, body language, and tones of voice which were so subtle she was not even conscious of perceiving them but which her unconscious mind remembered and translated into explicit dreams to sound a warning. No doubt the ancients, including Plutarch, would have viewed these dreams as messages from the gods, but Sigmund Freud, in The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), argued that dreams originate in the depths of the human mind.
Caesar himself is strongly impressed by his wife's vivid dream. In Act II, Scene 2, he tells Decius,
Calpurnia here, my wife, stays me at home;
She dreamt tonight she saw my statue,
Which like a fountain with an hundred spouts,
Did run pure blood, and many lusty Romans
Came smiling and did bathe their hands in it.
It is uncanny how closely Calpurnia's dream is fulfilled in reality when Brutus urges the assassins to cover their hands with Caesar's blood.
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