The die is cast
As several editions of the novel have noted, this phrase was uttered by
Julius Caesar when he crossed the Rubicon: it is quoted in the Life of
Julius Caesar, the first of the Lives of the Twelve Caesars of
Caius Suetonius Tranquillus. Mary
Shelley read Suetonius in May 1817 while she was writing
Frankenstein, so it is certain that she would not allude to this
famous phrase without a sense of its actual context. Caesar goes forward to
total victory, whereas it would seem in contrast that Walton returns in
defeat. But perhaps the context is as ironic as that provided Victor's speech to the sailors by Dante's Inferno 26. In such a case we
might want to read Walton's superficial defeat as cloaking a moral
victory.
