Saturday Rave: writing history. The die is cast. Julius Caesar.

To be a historian is to be given an opportunity to manipulate the past. That's quite an advantage.

Gaius Julius Caesar wasn't actually a caesar (a word which has come to mean emperor). That's the first thing to know about him. He lived in a republic, so the position wasn't available. Caesar was merely his last name, but Julius Caesar was so successful in amassing power that later chief Romans, who were emperors, borrowed his name. (In more modern times, Kaisers and tsars did the same thing.)

So when was Julius Caesar's die cast?

In 49BC the general Julius Caesar invaded Gaul. He did this against the orders of his bosses in the senate, and his action started a civil war, so it was a brave-to-the-point-of-foolishness move.

The boundary between Roman lands and Gaul was a river called the Rubicon - so, yes, that's where the phrase crossing the Rubicon, meaning taking an irrevocable step, comes from.

Now, Julius Caesar, with his eye on history, wanted a memorable phrase to point out how brave and marvellous he was being, and obviously crossing the Rubicon wasn't yet available for this purpose, so he used another.

'Let the die be cast,' he said, (a die being the singular form of the word dice).

We still use the phrase the die is cast more than two millennia later, so I think we can say it was an effective line.

There are those, enjoying their classical languages or wishing to show off, who will give the phrase in Latin as alea iacta est (though the earliest Latin version of the phrase we have has the word order iacta alea est. It means more or less the same thing, except that it gives emphasis to the casting part).

I don't think that anyone says the phrase in Greek, where it is anerriphthō kýbos.

But, as a matter of fact, Julius Caesar did.

Word To Use Today: die. It's actually almost impossible to use this word as a singular of dice without looking a bit of an idiot, except in this phrase. Still, the word comes from the Old French de, and before that from Latin. The Latin word dare means to play.