“The Die is Cast” is the title of an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. A listener and his wife disagree about what kind of “die” is meant here. It’s not a reference to metallurgy– it’s a quotation attributed to Julius Caesar. When he crossed the Rubicon to lead a campaign against his enemies, he supposedly declared, “Alea jacta est.” The word alea, which refers to one piece of a set of dice, is an ancestor of the modern English word aleatory, which means “by chance.” This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “The Die is Cast”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi.
Hi, who’s this?
This is Brian Rosler. I’m calling from Indianapolis.
Hi, Brian. Welcome to the program.
Hello. Thank you.
What can we help you with today?
Well, my wife and I had a question here. We were watching an episode of Star Trek Deep Space Nine the other day, and the title of the episode was The Die is Cast. And our disagreement focuses on the origin of this phrase. And our question is whether dye in the phrase refers to gambling dice, a metal cast, or dye as in gambling dice.
Interesting. What’s your position?
Well, I thought it was dye that you put into water, but my wife was more along the lines of the gambling dye.
You mean dye like D-Y-E or metallurgy?
Well, we had those three. We had the DYE, the metallurgy, and the gambling dice.
So explain your thinking with the color, the DYE die. What were you thinking there? How did that work?
From my understanding, the origin of the phrase comes from Julius Caesar when he crossed over the Rubicon, and he said the die is cast. And my thinking was you put the die in the water, you can’t take it out. Once you’ve done that action, there’s no way to take that back. And that’s what my thinking was.
Wow.
It’s not a bad post-analysis, right?
That’s really good.
That’s pretty good. And so your wife’s position, though, is that it has something to do with the multi-sided device that we use to gamble with, right?
Correct.
Correct.
The bones. Here, let me put her on the phone and let her explain it.
Oh, yeah, sure.
I don’t think he’s right at all.
You don’t.
Who’s this?
This is Ashley, Brian’s wife. I think that the phrase refers to gambling dice or metal die that you use in metal casting.
Interesting. And so they didn’t have the title of the show, the episode, on the screen? You only heard it?
Actually, I think it was printed and it was D-I-E.
Oh, yeah. You’ll be happy to hear, Ashley, that you are right. And Brian is brilliant that his explanation was Brian’s not right.
Yes.
He has a future as a poet, I think.
Yeah.
A fabulist of some kind, a fiction teller.
He’s a romantic at heart? Nice.
I think so. But he’s got the story right. Caesar’s standing on the edge of the Rubicon, which basically was a nothing river. Crossing that river meant that he was about to challenge a foreign army. And as the legend has it, true or not true, one of his soldiers or one of the people on his side of the river went ahead, went ahead of everyone else, raised his sword high and charged across and, you know, and that was it. And supposedly Caesar said the die is cast.
Yeah, yeah. There’s some stories that he was not so sure he wanted to do it or not, and he got to the Rubicon, and it’s like, should I, should I not? And then the die was cast.
There’s two things that come into play here that kind of make this expression opaque. And one of them is that die, meaning a singular unit, that is one of multiple kinds of dice, dice being the plural, is disappearing in English. And so that little bit of confusion is sowed there.
The second thing that makes it confusing is that we don’t often use cast in that way anymore. We say throw or toss or something like that. We don’t say, I cast you out, demons. But it’s the same cast that’s in broadcast or podcast or words like that. It just means to throw or to push outward or something like that, to spread, right? And so die is cast has kind of become an opaque expression.
Yeah, that’s true.
Ashley, did you guys—
No wonder we were confused.
What does Brian think about this?
Well, I guess Ashley was right. But I still like my version of it.
I like your version of it, too.
Except for the fact that it was written. How did they spell it?
Well, it was spelled D-I-E, but I didn’t know what the translation from the original Latin would have been if it got translated and spelled wrong.
I see that. That was my position. The only way I could be right was that there was something wrong with the translation.
You always have to go back to the original Latin.
Yeah.
Alia, jakta, est.
Yes. And in fact, Brian, if you want a fantastic vocabulary word from that, the word alia, which means die as in to throw dice, alia gives us the word aleatory, A-L-E-A-T-O-R-Y, which means by chance. So you can talk about the aleatory nature of life or the aleatory nature of what’s that casino near where you are?
Thanks for calling, Brian. Give our best to Ashley.
I will. Thank you, Martha and Grant.
All right. Take care. Have a wonderful day.
You too.
Bye-bye.
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