On This Day in History: January 10

Caesar crossed the Rubicon

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“The die has been cast.” It’s a statement that means “Welp, no turning back now. We’re committed.” And it’s what Julius Caesar said—the die-casting stuff—when he crossed the Rubicon, because doing so was a violation of Roman law. And not the “white swimmer boy rapes an unconscious woman behind a dumpster” kind of lawbreaking, but a law that the government actually cared about.

--On This Day in History Shit Went Down: January 10, 49 BCE--

The fuck is a Rubicon? Since many suck at geography: it’s a river in Northern Italy. About a half century before Jesus, Caesar had been conquering the shit out of Gaul, a region that can be described as “big-ass chunk of Western Europe.” Philosopher Plutarch said Caesar’s forces killed a million people and enslaved a million more. There may have been some hyperbole.

That nice bit of invasion-rape-murder-enslavement complete, Rome said okay Jules it’s time to come home, but leave your army behind. They were pretty fucking explicit about it, because they didn’t want some super-popular returning hero doing that returning with a big-ass battle-hardened ultra-loyal military force at his back. Because he might decide to, you know, take over.

The Rubicon River is more of a shallow stream that marked the border of Italy. Caesar was supposed to leave all those bloodthirsty armored dudes with pointy implements of death on the north side of it. But on January 10, 49 BCE he said what the fuck boys why don’t you come with me? And they did. He disobeyed a direct order from the Roman Republic and therefore achieved a point of no return and now we have a saying about it.

He didn’t bring his entire army, just one legion. He brought it because he feared that without such protection, he would be arrested for the crime of being popular. And the Senate, in alliance with the Roman general Pompey, didn’t want him stealing their power. So, he brought his legion and stole it anyway.

When they saw Caesar coming with troops at his back, a bunch of Senators said “Oh, fuck!” and ran away. A civil war followed, which Julius won, making him the unchallenged military dictator of Rome. He was proclaimed “dictator for life,” which the Senate took literally and stabbed the life out of him five years later. Die. Cast.

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