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Rubicon
*** Shopping-Tip: Rubicon
:''This article is about a river. For other meanings see:
Rubicon_(disambiguation) Rubicon (disambiguation)''
Image:LocationRubicon.PNG right|250px|thumb|Presumed course of the Rubicon
The '''Rubicon''' (''Rubico'', in
Italian language 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 and
Caesena. The actual modern identity of the
river is uncertain; it is usually identified as the
Pisciatello in its upper reaches and then the
Fiumicino (river) 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
Lives of the Twelve Caesars Suetonius he uttered the famous phrase
Alea iacta est alea iacta est ("the
dice die is cast").{{fn|1}} 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.
Notes
{{fnb|1}}''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 dice 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".
Category:Ancient Roman geography
Category:Rivers of Italy
The troubled identification
After Caesar’s crossing, the Rubicon went on to be a river of wide importance only for 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 part of its importance, and this led to a diminishing memory about its real identification, and a gradual lack of evidence of the name “Rubicon� in local toponymy.
After the Roman Empire fell, and during first centuries of Middle Ages, the coastal plane between Ravenna and Rimini was flooded for many times. The Rubicon, together with other small rivers of the region, often changed its course. For this reason, and in order to supply fields of 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. This resulted to design the course of these rivers in a straight line shape, as for artificial channels, and that’s what we can see today. Because of this uncertainty, during centuries some rivers of italian adriatic coast between Ravenna and Rimini have claimed to be identified with ancient Rubicon; all of these have maintained the same course since Caesar’s times only upstream one, running in hilly part of region. We can also observe that Emilia road (today’s National Road N°9), making a border between hills and plane, is still that of Roman age for the majority of its length. Consequently, attempts to rebuild the original layout of the Rubicon can be done, at present, only studying written documents and other archaeological evidences (as Roman milestones) showing us the distance between the ancient river and nearest Roman towns.
It is important to underline that the starting point of Roman roads (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 W-E and N-S.
The most important document showing us the position of cities during Roman age, the net of roads connecting them and their distances, is the so-called Tabula Peutingeriana, a picted map of 4th century A.C., come to us in a medieval copy now in Wien. In its part referring to north-eastern Italy, a river called “fl. Rubico� is marked at 12 miles north from Rimini following the coastline, and 12 miles is the distance between Rimini and the place called “Ad confluentes�, drawn W of Rubicon, on Emilia road.
After centuries of struggles, in 1933 the river called Fiumicino, acrossing 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. The focal points of the work are followings:
1) 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 a synonymous of “confluentes�);
2) the distance between Ad Confluentes and Rome, according the Tabula Peutingeriana, is 201 miles;
3) the distance from today’s San Giovanni in Compito and Fiumicino river is 1 mile (km 1,47), according to ancient sources.
ca:Rubicó
cs:Rubikon
da:Rubicon
de:Rubikon
el:Ρουβικώνας
es:RÃo Rubicón
eo:Rubikono
fr:Rubicon
id:Rubicon
it:Rubicone
he:רוביקון
hu:Rubicon
nl:Rubicon (Italiaanse rivier)
ja:ルビコン�
no:Rubicon
nn:Rubicon
pl:Rubikon
pt:Rio Rubicão
ru:Рубикон
fi:Rubikon
sv:Rubicon
*** Shopping-Tip: Rubicon
