The Rubicon Society

About Our Name

The name Rubicon is taken from the historic event that occurred in Northern Italy in 49 B.C. when Julius Caesar made his fateful decision to cross the small stream that marked the limits of his northern Roman province. Pompey, the Governor of Rome, had notified Caesar that crossing this small river, The Rubicon, with a standing army would be considered an act of war. Caesar hesitated at the rivers edge, to consider the importance of his decision. Then as he made his fateful crossing, that plunged the Roman Republic into a bloody civil war, it is reported that he then said, "The die has been cast." "Crossing the Rubicon" has henceforth implied a limit that when passed or exceeded allows no return and results in irrevocable commitment

Julius Caesar Crosses the Rubicon

"Coming up with his troops on the banks of the Rubicon, which was the frontier of his province, he halted for a while, and revolving in his mind the importance of the step he meditated, he turned to those about him, saying: 'Still we can retreat! But once let us pass this little bridge, - and nothing is left but to fight it out with arms!'

Even as he hesitated this incident occurred. A man of strikingly noble mien and graceful aspect appeared close at hand, and played upon a pipe. To hear him not merely some shepherds, but soldiers too came flocking from their posts, and amongst them some trumpeters. He snatched a trumpet from one of them and ran to the river with it; then sounding the "Advance!" with a piercing blast he crossed to the other side. At this Caesar cried out, 'Let us go where the omens of the Gods and the crimes of our enemies summon us! THE DIE IS NOW CAST!'

Accordingly he marched his army over the river; [then] he showed them the tribunes of the Plebs, who on being driven from Rome had come to meet him, and in the presence of that assembly, called on the troops to pledge him their fidelity; tears springing to his eyes [as he spoke] and his garments rent from his bosom."

From an account of Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon by Suetonious, Roman historian, biographer, and secretary to Emperor Hadrian.

"Julius Caesar Crosses the Rubicon, 49 BC," EyeWitness to History, www.eyewitnesstohistory.com (2002).

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