Alea iacta est

("The die is cast") is a variation of a Latin phrase attributed by Suetonius to Julius Caesar on 10January 49 BC, as he led his army across the Rubicon river in Northern Italy. With this step, he entered Italy at the head of his army in defiance of the Senate and began his long civil war against Pompey and the Optimates. The phrase, either in the original Latin or in translation, is used in many languages to indicate that events have passed a point of no return. It is now most commonly cited with the word order changed ("Alea iacta est") rather than in the original phrasing. The same event inspired another idiom with the same meaning, "crossing the Rubicon". Meaning and forms Caesar was said to have borrowed the phrase from Menander, the famous Greek writer of comedy, whom he appreciated more than the Roman playwright Terence. The phrase appears in (transliterated as , or possibly, The Flute-Girl), as quoted in Deipnosophistae, paragraph 8. Plutarch reports that these words were said in Greek: Suetonius, a contemporary of Plutarch writing in Latin, reports a similar phrase.