Unrest is possible in Rome because the new leader is weak. The audience is given evidence of this at the opening of Scene 2. Antony is about to run a race (an important and religious element of the Lupercalian festivities) and Caesar calls on him to touch Calphurnia, Caesar's wife, as he passes "for our elders say, / The barren, touched in this holy chase, / Shake off their sterile curse." Calphurnia has not borne Caesar any children, and while in the Elizabethan mind the problem would have resided with the woman, here, Caesar's virility is also in question. 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.
