In William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Act II Scene ii, Calpurnia has a monologue in which she describes the things she fears. She recounts a list of "prodigies", strange and supernatural happenings that suggest bad omens for Caesar. She describes a lioness giving birth in the street, corpses appearing on top of their graves, and even more frightening an army fighting in the sky with blood dripping down on the capitol. She described the celestial battle in detail, including the sounds of ghosts and horses. Because the signs in the heavens were held to correlate with the state and head thereof, this battle suggests to her civil war, an event that was a common part of the factional strife in which Romans had been engaged for several years.