Just as interesting is the image of blood that Brutus' wife, Portia, brings to the stage. As the conspirators leave their home, Portia sees "some six or seven, who did hide their faces / Even from the darkness." She knows something is very wrong. Brutus hasn't been sleeping well and is drawn from bed "to dare the vile contagion of the night." Her husband attempts to put off her questions but she, among all the characters of the play, seems most able to cut through the darkness and see the truth. "No, my Brutus, / You have some sick offense within your mind." Portia represents strong Roman womanhood, yet can still only be defined in terms of the men around her. She points out that she is the daughter of Cato, a man famed for his integrity, and the wife of Brutus, and for these reasons Brutus should confide in her. Portia's credibility is described in the images of blood. She is Brutus' "true and honorable wife / As dear to [him] as are the ruddy drops / That visit [his] sad heart."
The meaning of this bloodletting is two-fold. First, the audience is meant to remember the Greek myth of the birth of Athena, the goddess associated with both war and wisdom, and who is sometimes described as having been born of the thigh of Zeus. Second, one sees that it is a woman who bears the marks of true Roman nobility. The self-wounding in her thigh is a sort of suicide, an act valued by the Romans as the ultimate sacrifice in the face of dishonor. Portia's honorable bloodletting, then, suggests that the male characters in the play, even though they call on their ancestry and on the ideas of strength and honour, do so in a dishonorable cause. Still, she is a woman, and even though she is "so father'd and so husbanded," she is unable to stem the flow of blood that the conspirators have begun.
