The Latin wordRubico comes from the adjectiverubeus, meaning "red". The river was so named because its waters are colored red by iron deposits in the riverbed.
During theRoman Republic, the Rubicon marked the boundary between theRoman province ofCisalpine Gaul and the areas directly controlled by Rome and itssocii (allies), to the south. On the north-western side, the border was marked by the riverArno, a much wider and more important waterway, which flows westward from theApennine Mountains (the Arno and the Rubicon rise not far from each other) into theTyrrhenian Sea.
In 49 BC, perhaps on 10 January,Julius Caesar led a singlelegion,Legio XIII Gemina, south over the Rubicon from Cisalpine Gaul to Italy to make his way to Rome. In doing so, he deliberately broke the law limiting hisimperium, making armed conflict inevitable.Suetonius ("Divus Julius" 32) depicts Caesar as undecided as he approached the river, and attributes the crossing to a supernatural apparition (thus also inLucan, 1.185-203). It was reported that Caesar dined withSallust,Hirtius,Gaius Oppius,Lucius Cornelius Balbus, andServius Sulpicius Rufus on the night after his crossing.
According to Suetonius, Caesar uttered the famous phrasealea iacta est ('thedie is cast') upon crossing the Rubicon, signifying that his action was irreversible.[2] The phrase "crossing the Rubicon" is now used to refer to committing irrevocably to a grave course of action, similar to the modern phrase "passing thepoint of no return," but with the added connotation of risking danger. The presence of Caesar and his legion in Italy forcedPompey, theconsuls, and a large part of the senate to flee Rome. Caesar's victory in thesubsequent civil war ensured that he would never be punished for his actions.
After Caesar's crossing, the Rubicon was a geographical feature of note until about 42 BC, whenOctavian merged the Province ofCisalpine Gaul intoItalia and the river ceased to be the extreme northern border of Italy. The decision robbed the Rubicon of its importance, and the name gradually disappeared from the local toponymy.
After thefall of the Western Roman Empire, and during the first centuries of theMiddle Ages, the coastal plain betweenRavenna andRimini was flooded many times. The Rubicon, like other small rivers of the region, often changed its course during this period. For this reason, and to supply fields with water after the revival of agriculture in thelate Middle Ages, during the 14th and 15th centuries, hydraulic works were built to prevent other floods and to regulate streams. As a result of this work, these rivers started to flow in straight courses, as they do today.
With the revival during the fifteenth century of interest in the topography of ancient Roman Italy, the matter of identifying the Rubicon in the contemporary landscape became a topic of debate amongRenaissance humanists.[3] To support the claim of the river Pisciatello, a spurious inscription forbidding the passage of an army in the name of the Roman people and Senate, the so-calledSanctio, was placed by a bridge on that river. TheQuattrocento humanistFlavio Biondo was deceived by it;[4] the actual inscription is conserved in the Museo Archeologico, Cesena.[5] As the centuries went by, several rivers of the Adriatic coast between Ravenna and Rimini have at times been said to correspond to the ancient Rubicon.
TheVia Aemilia (modern SS 9) still follows its original Roman course as it runs between the hills and the plain; it would have been the obvious course to follow as it was the only major Roman road east of theApennine Mountains leading to and from thePo Valley. Attempts to deduce the original course of the Rubicon can be made only by studying written documents and other archaeological evidence such as Roman milestones, which indicate the distance between the ancient river and the nearest Roman towns.
Themile zero of aRoman road, from which distances were counted, was always the crossing between theCardo and theDecumanus, the two principal streets in every Roman town, running north–south and east–west respectively. In a section of theTabula Peutingeriana, a medieval copy of a Late Antique document showing the network of Roman roads, a river in northeastern Italy labeled "fl. Rubicum" is shown at a position 12Roman miles (18 km, 11 mi) north of Rimini along the coastline; this is the distance between Rimini and a place called "Ad Confluentes," drawn west of the Rubicon, on the Via Aemilia. However, the river-bed shape observed in Pisciatello and the Rubicon river in the present day, well below Roman-age soil layers, is likely to indicate that any possible course modification of rivers could have occurred only very close to the coastline, and therefore only slight.
Furthermore, the features of the present-day Rubicon river (north–south course, orthogonal to the Via Aemilia) and the Via Aemilia itself (a straight reach before and after the crossing, and a turn just passing bySan Giovanni in Compito [it], so marking a possible administrative boundary) are common to typical geographical oriented limits of Roman age, being what made this a clue of actual identification of the present-day Rubicon River with the Fiumicino.[6]
In 1933, after various efforts that spanned centuries, the Fiumicino, which crossed the town of Savignano di Romagna (nowSavignano sul Rubicone), was officially identified as the former Rubicon. Strong evidence supporting this theory came in 1991,[7] when three Italian scholars (Pignotti, Ravagli, and Donati), after a comparison between theTabula Peutingeriana and other ancient sources (includingCicero), showed that the distance from Rome to the Rubicon River was 200 Roman miles. Key elements of their work are:
The locality of San Giovanni in Compito (now a western quarter of Savignano) has to be identified with the oldAd Confluentes (compitum means "road junction", and is synonymous withconfluentes).
The distance betweenAd Confluentes and Rome, according to theTabula Peutingeriana, is 201 Roman miles.
The distance from today's San Giovanni in Compito and the Fiumicino river is one Roman mile (1.48 km, 0.92 mi).
Today there is no visible, material evidence of Caesar's historical passage.Savignano sul Rubicone is an industrial town and the river has become one of the most polluted in theEmilia-Romagna region. Exploitation of underground waters along the upper course of the Rubicon has reduced its flow—it was a minor river even during Roman times ("parvi Rubiconis ad undas" asLucan said, "to the waves of [the] tiny Rubicon")—and has since lost its natural route, except in its upper course, between low and woody hills.[clarification needed]
^Lives of the Caesars, "Divus Julius" sect. 32. Suetonius gives theLatin version,iacta alea est, although, according toPlutarch'sParallel Lives, Caesar quoted a line from the playwrightMenander:ἀνερρίφθω κύβος,anerríphthō kȳbos, 'let the die be cast'. Suetonius's subtly different translation is often also quoted asalea iacta est.
^A brief account of the controversies favoring rivers of Romagna, between the Pisciatello, called the Rigone in its lowest reaches, the Fiumicino near Savignano and the Uso is inDissertazione seconda dell'abate Pasquale Amati savignanese sopra alcune lettere del signor dottor Bianchi di Rimini e sopra il Rubicone degli antichi (Faenza, 1763:6–8), noted in Roberto Weiss,The Renaissance Discovery of Classical Antiquity, 1969:111f and note 9.
Pearce, M., R. Peretto, P. Tozzi, R. Talbert, T. Elliott, S. Gillies (15 November 2020)."Places: 393484 (Rubico fl.)". Pleiades. RetrievedMarch 8, 2012.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
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