Julius Caesar and the English Lexicon
Studying Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar in high school had a big influence on me. Not only did it tell a remarkable historical story, it introduced me to a number of literary devices — be it the tribunes indulging themselves with puns, Antony rousing the crowds with his hyperbole or a couple of characters introspecting aloud via soliloquies.
While a lot of Shakespeare’s stilted Elizabethan vocabulary might have passed into oblivion, Julius Caesar, the man himself, seems to have left his mark on the English language.
Julius Caesar’s Contributions
Many years before his bloody end, Caesar, the general, marched into Rome with his side of the Army signaling an act of war against the Roman state, and the beginning of the end for the first triumvirate. To enter Rome, Caesar crossed the river Rubicon.
And thus, “Crossing the Rubicon” became an expression for an action that leads to irreversible consequences.
That’s not all though. If legend is to be believed, he uttered the words “alea iacta est” or the “die is cast” as he crossed the Rubicon. Hence, the phrase.
Caesar was having quite the day.
While Caesar wasn’t technically a Roman Emperor, such was his aura that many emperors, in Rome and elsewhere, christened themselves ‘Caesar’. In Russia, this translated to the better know “Czar/Tsar”, and in Germany it became “Kaiser”. When the British came to India, the British Monarchs anointed themselves Kaiser-i-hind or Emperor of India.
But every Caesar mention isn’t about Julius
A widely common myth is that the Cesarean section to deliver babies is so called as Julius Caesar was famously born by this method. Even the Oxford dictionary makes this mistake.
The truth is very different.
An ancestor of Julius, also called Julius, was delivered via a Cesarean. He didn’t lend his name to the procedure either. It is the reverse. The Latin root Caes- (to cut) led to the adoption of this title by this lesser-known Julius, and his progeny carried this name forward.
Neither does Caesar Salad have anything to do with the Roman emperor.
A certain Caesar Cardini tossed some veggies together and lent the salad his very famous name.
Lastly, the Caesars Palace in Las Vegas does take its name from Julius Caesar, but with a twist.
The founders of the Hotel wanted everybody staying at the hotel to feel like a Caesar or Emperor. Hence, to indicate the plurality of the feeling, they dropped the apostrophe, called it the Caesars Palace and not Caesar’s Palace.
Anyway, Julius Caesar — what a guy. No wonder Cleopatra was charmed.
