Caesar Crosses the Rubicon
Caesar crossed a small river in northern Italy with one legion on the night of 10 January 49 BC and started a civil war. The Rubicon marked the boundary of his province. A promagistrate's military authority ended at that line, and bringing an army across it without the senate's order was treason — the rule existed precisely to stop a general using his troops in Roman politics. He had spent months trying to avoid the choice. He wanted to stand for a second consulship in absentia so that he could go straight from command to office without an interval in which he could be prosecuted for his conduct in Gaul, and he offered repeatedly to give up his provinces if Pompey gave up his. The senate, under Pompey's influence, passed its emergency decree and ordered him to disband, and the tribunes who vetoed it fled to his camp — which gave him a constitutional grievance to fight on. He had about 5,000 men at hand. Pompey had more in Italy on paper and abandoned Rome within weeks, taking the senate and the treasury nowhere near quickly enough, and crossed to Greece to raise the eastern provinces. Suetonius reports the phrase about the die being cast, which Caesar probably said in Greek and probably as a gambler's line rather than a portent. He controlled Italy in sixty days without a battle, and the war ran four years across Spain, Greece, Egypt and Africa. Pompey was murdered on an Egyptian beach in 48 BC.
- Category: Political
