Alea iacta est


Alea iacta est is a variation of a Latin phrase attributed by Suetonius to Julius Caesar on January 10, 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 rather than in the original phrasing. The same event inspired another idiom with the same meaning, "Crossing the Rubicon".

Meaning and forms

Caesar was said to have borrowed the phrase from Menander, the famous Greek writer of comedy whom he appreciated more than the Latin Terence; the phrase appears in Ἀρρηφόρος , as quoted in Deipnosophistae, paragraph 8. Plutarch reports that these words were said in Greek:
reads jacta est alea.
Suetonius, a contemporary of Plutarch writing in Latin, reports a similar phrase.
Lewis and Short, citing Casaubon and Ruhnk, suggest that the text of Suetonius should read iacta alea esto, which they translate as "Let the die be cast!", or "Let the game be ventured!". This matches Plutarch's use of third-person singular perfect middle/passive imperative of the verb ἀναρρίπτω, i.e. ἀνερρίφθω κύβος.
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 were known as tali. In Greek a die was κύβος kybos.