Alea iacta est ("The die is cast") is a variation of a Latin phrase (iacta alea est[ˈjaktaˈaːlɛ.aˈɛs̺t]) attributed by SuetoniustoJulius Caesar on 10January 49 BCE, as he led his army across the Rubicon river in Northern Italy. With this step, he entered Italy at the head of his army in defiance of the Senate and began his long civil war against Pompey and the Optimates. The phrase, either in the original Latin or in translation, is used in many languages to indicate that events have passed a point of no return. It is now most commonly cited with the word order changed ("Alea iacta est") rather than in the original phrasing. The same event inspired another idiom with the same meaning, "crossing the Rubicon".
Caesar was said to have borrowed the phrase from Menander, the famous Greek writer of comedy, whom he appreciated more than the Roman playwright Terence.[1][2] The phrase appears in Ἀρρηφόρος (transliterated as Arrephoros, or possibly, The Flute-Girl), as quoted in Deipnosophistae, paragraph 8.[3]Plutarch reports that these words were said in Greek:
The motto of the Hall family from Shackerstone reads jacta est alea.
Lewis and Short,[7] citing Casaubon and Ruhnk, suggest that the text of Suetonius should read iacta alea esto (reading the third-personsingular future imperativeesto instead of the present one est), which they translate as "Let the die be cast!", or "Let the game be ventured!". This matches Plutarch's use of third-person singular perfectmiddle/passive imperative of the verb ἀναρρίπτω,[8] i.e. ἀνερρίφθω κύβος (anerríphthō kýbos, pronounced[anerːípʰtʰɔːkýbos]).
In Latin alea refers to a game with dice and, more generally, a game of hazard or chance. Dice were common in Roman times and were usually cast three at a time. There were two kinds. The six-sided dice were known in Latin as tesserae and the four-sided ones (rounded at each end) were known as tali.[9] In Greek a die was κύβοςkybos.[10]
^Grillo, Luca; Krebs, Christopher B., eds. (2018). The Cambridge Companion to the Writings of Julius Caesar. Cambridge University Press. pp. 208–209.
^Magnelli, Enrico, Opinioni antiche sullo stile di Menandro, in Casanova Angelo (ed.), Menandro e l’evoluzione della commedia greca: atti del convegno internazionale di studi in memoria di Adelmo Barigazzi, Firenze 2014, pp. 147-148.
