What did Caesar mean by the die cast?

Answer 1

Well, for one , Caesar never said "the die is cast". That is a misquote. What the expression means is that someone's taken an action and will have to face the consequence, for better or for worse. Incidentally, the word "die" is the singular of dice. Caesar was supposed to have said "Let the dice fly high" before he crossed the Rubicon, thereby using the gambling term to state that he was taking his chances.

The meaning of the expression is no turning back, reaching the point of no return. Once you have thrown the dice, you cannot change the outcome, whichever that may be/whatever chance decides.

That Julius Caesar said the dice fly high is just a recent theory, not the truth set in stone. I think that Erasmus' interpretation sound much more correct: let the dice be thrown/cast.

Plutarch, a Greek, said that Caesar quoted Menader, a Greek playwright and rendered it as 'Anerriphtho kubos. Appian, also Greek, rendered it Ho anerriphtho kubos.

Erasmus pointed out that Suetunonius' translation into Latin as Alae iacta est (the die is cast/has been cast,) was inaccurate because the Greek sentence was phrased in the subjective mood and should have been rendered Alea iacta esto (let the dice be cast/thrown).

Erasmus was one of the greatest scholars of the renaissance and a man who re-translated both the Latin and the Greek versions of the New Testament.

Let the dice fly high is a dubious translation or, at the very least, overstretched. It relies on the fact that to in Greek, the verb throw in Greek can be rendered as to propel something in the air, but this had the meaning to throw just as in other languages.

Ho anerriphtho expresses the subjunctive which changes the verb from thrown to let it be thrown. Note that it gives is a more and dramatic poetic hue.

There are three problems with the 'let the dice fly high': 1) the word high in not present in the Greek original, 2) the sentence becomes more vague and looses its sense of no turning back, 2) the loss of the subjunctive mood in the phrasing makes it loose the dramatic effect that Caesar most likely would have wanted as he was taking a dramatic step.