Rubicon
 |
Presumed course of the Rubicon |
The
Rubicon (
Rubico,
Italian:
Rubicone) is an ancient
Latin name for a small
river in northern
Italy. In Roman times it flowed into the
Adriatic Sea between Ariminum (
Rimini) and Caesena (
Cesena). The actual modern identity of the
river is uncertain; it is usually identified as the
Pisciatello in its upper reaches and then the
Fiumicino to the sea.
The river is notable as
Roman law forbade any general from crossing it with a standing army. The river was considered to mark the boundary between the Roman province of
Cisalpine Gaul to the north and Italy proper to the south; the law thus protected the republic from internal military threat. When
Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon in
49 BC, supposedly on
January 10 of the
Roman calendar to make his way to Rome he broke that law and made armed conflict inevitable. According to
Suetonius he uttered the famous phrase
alea iacta est ("the
die is cast").
[ Lives of the Caesars 'Divus Julius' sect. 32. Suetonius gives the Latin version, iacta alea est, although according to Plutarch's Parallel Lives, Caesar quoted a line from the playwright Menander: anerriphthô kubos, or 'let the die be cast'. Suetonius' subtly different translation is often also quoted as alea iacta est. Alea was a game played with a die or dice rather than the actual dice themselves, so another translation might be "The game is afoot." ]Suetonius also described how Caesar was apparently still undecided as he approached the river, and the author gave credit for the actual moment of crossing to a supernatural apparition. The phrase "
crossing the Rubicon" has survived to refer to any person committing himself irrevocably to a risky course of action, another way of saying passing the
point of no return. It is also in limited usage as to its original meaning of using military power in the homeland.
After Caesar's crossing, the Rubicon was a geographical feature of note, but only for a few years, until imperator
Augustus abolished the Province of Gallia Cisalpina (today's northern Italy) in 42 B.C, and the river ceased to be the extreme border line of Italy. Augustus' decision caused the Rubicon to lose a great deal of importance, and as memories faded, the name "Rubicon" gradually disappeared from local toponymy.
After the
Roman Empire fell, and during first centuries of the
Middle Ages, the coastal plain between Ravenna and Rimini was flooded many times. The Rubicon, together with other small rivers of the region, often changed its course during this period. For this reason, and in order to supply fields with water after revival of agriculture after Middle Ages, during 14th and 15th centuries, hydraulic works were built to prevent other floods and to regulate streams. As a result of this, these rivers eventually turned into straight lines, which is how they appear today. As the centuries went by, several rivers of Italian Adriatic coast between Ravenna and Rimini have at times been said to correspond to the ancient Rubicon. We can also observe that the
Via Aemilia (today's National Road N°9), which runs between hills and plain, is still that of the Roman age for the most of its length. Presently, attempts to deduce the original flow of the Rubicon can be done 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.
It is important to underline that the starting point of a
Roman road (some kind of "mile zero"), from which distances were counted, was always the crossing between
Cardo and
Decumanum, the two basic streets in every Roman town, running respectively N-S and W-E. The most important document showing us the location of cities during Roman age, the web of roads connecting them and their distances, is the so-called
Tabula Peutingeriana, a picted map of 4th century C.E., come to us in a medieval copy now in
Vienna. In the section referencing north-eastern Italy, a river called "fl. Rubico" is marked at a position 12 miles north from Rimini following the coastline, and 12 miles is the distance between Rimini and the place called "Ad confluentes", drawn west of the Rubicon, on the Via Aemilia.
After various efforts spanning centuries, in 1933 the river called Fiumicino, crossing the town of Savignano di Romagna (now Savignano sul Rubicone), was officially identified as the former Rubicon. The final proof came only in 1991, when three Italian scholars (Pignotti, Ravagli and Donati), after a comparison between Tabula Peutingeriana and other ancient sources (including Cicero), showed that the distance running from Rome to Rubicon river was 200 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 old Ad Confluentes ("compito" means confluence of roads and it's synonymous with "confluentes");
*The distance between Ad Confluentes and Rome, according the Tabula Peutingeriana, is 201 miles;
*The distance from today's San Giovanni in Compito and Fiumicino river is 1 mile (km 1,47), according to ancient sources.
