Did Julius Caesar Really Say “The Die Is Cast”?

One of the most famous anecdotes in all of ancient history holds that, when the Roman general and politician Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon stream, which marked the boundary of Italy, in January 49 BCE during his march on Rome, he declared “Iacta alea est!” (which means “The die is cast!” in Latin). A version of this story does occur in the ancient historical sources, but those sources indicate that, instead of the Latin phrase I have quoted here, Caesar actually used a Greek phrase with a subtly different meaning, which holds different implications for his understanding of the significance of his famous Rubicon crossing.

A quote from Menandros

Essential to understanding the meaning of the expression that ancient writers attribute to Caesar upon crossing the Rubicon is the recognition that he did not coin it himself; instead, it is a quote from an earlier source.

The Athenian comic playwright Menandros (lived c. 342 – c. 290 BCE) is not well known today, but he was one of the most prominent and influential literary figures of the early Hellenistic Era and his work became widely read and highly influential in the Roman world. During the Roman Republic and early Principate, he was seen as the preeminent Greek comic playwright and his work was even more widely read than that of the earlier Athenian dramatist Aristophanes, who is better known today.

In his comedy Arrephoros, which has mostly been lost and is known only through fragments, Menandros had a character say the following line (fr. 64), which is preserved through quotation by the much later antiquarian Athenaios of Naukratis (who flourished around the early third century CE) in his Deipnosophistai or Wise Men at Dinner 13.559e:

“δεδογμένον τὸ πρᾶγμ᾿· ἀνερρίφθω κύβος.”

This means:

“The matter is decided. Let the die be cast.”

In this line, Menandros uses the verb ἀνερρίφθω (anerríphthō), which is the third-person singular perfect mediopassive imperative form of the verb ἀναρρίπτω (anarríptō), which means “to throw up” or “to cast.” In Greek, it is a command, not an indicative statement.

It is not certain whether Menandros coined this phrase himself or was merely using an expression that others had used before. Whichever is the case, however, it was almost certainly through his well-known work that Romans of the first century BCE were familiar with the phrase “Let the die be cast.”

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a Roman marble bust on display in the Museo Chiaramonti in the Vatican Museums, intended to represent the ancient Athenian comic playwright Menandros, based on an earlier Greek bust dating to the fourth century BCE

Ploutarchos and Suetonius’s accounts of Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon

Julius Caesar was a highly educated, upper-class Roman man. As such, he certainly knew the Greek language and was familiar with the works of Greek literature that were deemed canonical at the time, including Menandros.

The Greek biographer and Middle Platonist philosopher Ploutarchos of Chaironeia (lived c. 46 – after c. 119 CE) wrote around a century and a half after Caesar’s death, but had access to written sources from Caesar’s lifetime that have since been lost. He states in his Life of Pompeius Magnus 60.2.9 that, when Caesar crossed the Rubicon, he quoted Menandros’s line “Let the die be cast” and specifies that he did so in the original Greek, rather than in Latin translation:

“Ἑλληνιστὶ πρὸς τοὺς παρόντας ἐκβοήσας, ‘ἀνερρίφθω κύβος,’ [anerríphthō kýbos] διεβίβαζε τὸν στρατόν.”

This means:

“In Greek, he exclaimed to those present ‘Let the die be cast!’ and led the army across.”

The Roman biographer Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus (lived c. 69 – after c. 122 CE), a contemporary of Ploutarchos who wrote in Latin, gives a similar account of Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon in his Life of Julius Caesar 32, but translates the Greek phrase “ἀνερρίφθω κύβος” into Latin as “iacta alea est,” which, in turn, is the source of the English translation “The die is cast.”

Unlike Ploutarchos, who specifically states that Caesar quoted the phrase in Greek, Suetonius does not specify which language he said it in. Ploutarchos’s statement that Caesar said the quote in Greek also makes the most sense, since Greek was the quote’s original language.

It is, of course, impossible to know with confidence whether Julius Caesar really said either of these expressions, since both Ploutarchos and Suetonius were writing long after Caesar’s death and it is entirely possible that the whole story is a later invention meant to add a dramatic flair to the otherwise fairly mundane event of Caesar crossing a small stream. Nonetheless, Caesar himself certainly had a flair for the dramatic at times and it is at least plausible that he really declared “ἀνερρίφθω κύβος” before crossing the stream as Plouarchos tells us.

ABOVE: Photo from Wikimedia Commons showing the Tusculum bust of Julius Caesar, which is the only surviving sculptural portrait of him that might have been made during his lifetime

Why the Greek form of this quote matters

The Greek form of the quote which Ploutarchos attributes to Caesar is significant for several reasons. First, the language itself matters. Caesar quoting a line from a Greek author in the original language shows off his elite education and familiarity with Greek literature. It also shows him positioning his own actions in terms of the Greek literary tradition, implying an association between himself and Greek literary figures.

Additionally, Suetonius’s Latin translation “iacta alea est” (and, by extension, its familiar English translation as “The die is cast”) is not an accurate translation of the original Greek phrase that Ploutarchos attributes to Caesar. The difference in meaning between “Let the die be cast” and “The die is cast” may seem minor and pedantic, but the subtle differences between these two statements are actually quite significant, since they convey different implications about Caesar’s (reported) understanding of the moment of his Rubicon crossing.

The expression “The die is cast” is merely a passive indicative statement, which leaves ambiguity about whose agency is responsible for casting the die. “Let the die be cast,” by contrast, is a command, which conveys a much clearer sense that Caesar himself, in crossing the Rubicon, is actively choosing for the die to be cast.

The other famous Greek quotation attributed to Caesar

“Let the die be cast” is not the only Greek phrase that some ancient people claimed Caesar said in a pivotal moment. Notably, as I discuss in this blog post I originally wrote seven years ago back in the very early days of this blog while I was still in high school, some also claimed that he said a phrase in Greek as he lay dying.

Ploutarchos’s account of Caesar’s assassination in his Life of Caesar 66 does not mention him as saying anything while he was being assassinated and only says that he covered his head with his toga and collapsed at the foot of a statue of his rival Pompeius. Suetonius, however, records in his own Life of Caesar 82 that when Tullius Cimber first grabbed Caesar’s toga, Caesar exclaimed “Ista quidem vis est!” (“Why, this is violence!”).

Suetonius also notes that some people claimed that, when Caesar saw that Brutus was among the conspirators, he uttered the Greek phrase “καὶ σὺ, τέκνον” (kaì sý, téknon), which means “Even you, child.” Suetonius himself, however, doubts that Caesar really said this. The later Greek historian Kassios Dion (lived c. 155 – c. 235 CE) reports the same story in his Roman History 44.19 with similar skepticism. Most modern scholars regard the tale as historically apocryphal.

From a literary perspective, however, scholars have interpreted the phrase “καὶ σὺ, τέκνον” in various ways as an expression of surprise, a prediction of Brutus’s own downfall, or an erudite denunciation of Brutus’s motives. However one interprets it, it is most likely a quotation from a lost Greek poem, since this is the most probable explanation for why someone would attribute the phrase to Caesar in Greek, rather than his native Latin.

The phrase “καὶ σὺ, τέκνον” most likely inspired the English playwright William Shakespeare (lived 1564 – 1616) in his tragedy Julius Caesar, Act III, Scene I, to portray Caesar as saying the Latin phrase “Et tu, Brute?” (“Even you, Brutus?”) as he lies dying. This phrase, however, is certainly Shakespeare’s own invention, since it does not occur in any of the ancient accounts or in any source at all prior to Shakespeare’s play.

Regardless of whether Caesar really said either of them, the phrases “ἀνερρίφθω κύβος” and “καὶ σὺ, τέκνον” both serve similar functions to connect Caesar and the major events of his life to the prestigious Greek literary tradition.

ABOVE: Roman silver denarius minted in either 43 or 42 BCE, bearing the portrait of Marcus Iunius Brutus on the obverse. According to Suetonius, some people believed that Julius Caesar said the Greek words “καὶ σὺ, τέκνον” to Brutus just before he died.