The phrase "crossing the Rubicon" is an idiom that means "passing a point of no return". Its meaning comes from allusion to the crossing of the river Rubicon from the north by Julius Caesar in early January 49 BC. The exact date is unknown. Scholars usually place it on the night of 10 and 11 January because of the speeds at which messengers could travel at that time. It is often asserted that Caesar's crossing of the river precipitated Caesar's civil war, but Caesar's forces had already crossed into Italy and occupied Ariminum the previous day.
Caesar's civil war (49β45 BC) was a civil war during the late Roman Republic between two factions led by Gaius Julius Caesar and Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (Pompey). The main cause of the war was political tensions relating to Caesar's place in the republic on his expected return to Rome on the expiration of his governorship in Gaul.
Before the war, Caesar had led an invasion of Gaul for almost ten years. A build-up of tensions starting in late 50 BC, with both Caesar and Pompey refusing to back down, led to the outbreak of civil war. Pompey and his allies induced the Senate to demand Caesar give up his provinces and armies in the opening days of 49 BC. Caesar refused and instead marched on Rome.
The war was fought in Italy, Illyria, Greece, Egypt, Africa, and Hispania. The decisive events occurred in Greece in 48 BC: Pompey defeated Caesar at the Battle of Dyrrhachium, but the subsequent larger Battle of Pharsalus was won by Caesar and Pompey's army disintegrated. Many prominent supporters of Pompey (termed Pompeians) surrendered after the battle, such as Marcus Junius Brutus and Cicero. Others fought on, including Cato the Younger and Metellus Scipio. Pompey fled to Egypt, where he was assassinated upon arrival.
Caesar led a military expedition to Asia Minor before attacking North Africa, where he defeated Metellus Scipio in 46 BC at the Battle of Thapsus. Cato and Metellus Scipio killed themselves shortly thereafter. The following year, Caesar defeated the last of the Pompeians, at the Battle of Munda in Spain, who were led by his former lieutenant Labienus. Caesar was then made dictator perpetuo ("dictator in perpetuity" or "dictator for life") by the Roman senate in 44 BC. He was assassinated by a group of senators (including Brutus) shortly thereafter.
The civil war is one of the commonly recognised endpoints of Rome's republican government. Some scholars view the war as the proximate cause of the republic's fall, due to its polarising interruption of normal republican government.[4] Caesar's comprehensive victory followed by his immediate death left a power vacuum; over the following years his heir Octavian was eventually able to take complete control, forming the Roman Empire as Augustus.
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by sanstitre
wait wait wait wait wait 'the die is cast' is like he's rolling a dice in a game of chance? it's not a forging analogy?
Yes
I assumed it was a reference to die-casting as well. They had metallurgy and access to metals that would be cast in dies.
"i'm making a die for the coins with my face on it, Pompey you are fucked" felt so right for the occasion
but wikipedia apparently has a pretty strong case for it in fact meaning dice
Love are you serious? Cute if real, funny if joke
i 100% thought it was about metallugical casting because it involves fire and metal is strong/permanent.
i didn't consider dice because caesar doesn't seem like the kind of guy who would say it was up to chance, he'd be like 'my enemy's fate is now sealed in the permanence and immovability of cast metal'
I'd never considered it that way, but that is a perfectly reasonable interpretation. Probably partially cause I was an ancient greek/Rome nerd as a little kid and knew from playing board games in school that a singular dice is a die but knew Jack shit about metallurgy cause 8 years old.
The dice version does have a pretty sweet 'fuck it, let's go.' vibe.
'fuck it, let's go' is oddly a bit more humanizing, i wonder if i interpretted it as a grim proclamation to his enemies cause i thought he was a dick
He was also a dick. Your interpretation would also not be out of character. But he was also a military leader and I'm sure knew exactly how tough of a play this would be to make. Fatalism was also pretty huge in Roman culture, randomness wasn't really a concept to a point, being in the favor of whatever God is supplying your luck on that dice roll was considered an important modifier. So it could be taken as less uncertain than we might see it today. There's sort of a Fortune Favors the Bold element to that kind of statement in that culture.
yeah it's extremely in character for a dude from a culture with a deity of luck to put a big emphasis on it, it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking big famous figures exist out of time and not in a distinct cultural context that informed what they did and how they thought about it