List three animal metaphors used in Julius Caesar, act 1, scene 3.

In act I,
scene 3, Casca runs into Cicero on the streets of Rome and begins to tell him, in some
excitement, about the many portents that have lately been seen. These include the
following:

And yesterday the bird of night did
sit

Even at noon-day upon the marketplace,

Hooting
and shrieking

This "bird of night" is clearly
an owl: it is nocturnal and hoots. Casca insists it is an omen or sign of unnatural happenings
yet to come.

Cicero, the master of constructing an argument, listens and then
says drily, in what is the most important speech in the scene,

Indeed, it is a strange-dispos¨d time.

But
men may construe things after their fashion,

Clean from the purpose of
the things themselves.

Cicero
means that while the signs may be there, people may be interpreting them in self-serving ways
that have nothing to do with what they really mean. In other words, as he well knows, we can
twist circumstances to mean whatever we what them to mean. He is trying to advise Casca not to
get so excited about these signs.

With typical , however, none of this sinks
into Casca's consciousness. Cassius comes along, and Casca continues to speak of omensin
particular, a lion roaming in the capitol. He also compares the Roman people to sheep.

Therefore, three animal metaphors Shakespeare uses are the owl, whose strange daytime
appearance is likened to the supernatural; the lion, a symbol of power which is compared to
Caesar; and the Roman people, who are likened to the sheep, animals easily led and often
slaughtered. But, as Cicero has pointed out, this might not be what these animals are pointing
to at all: the comparisons (metaphors) might be all wrong.