MULTIZ321
TUG Member
- Joined
- Jun 6, 2005
- Messages
- 29,395
- Reaction score
- 8,297
- Points
- 1,048
- Location
- FT. LAUDERDALE, FL
- Resorts Owned
-
BLUEWATER BY SPINNAKER HHI
ROYAL HOLIDAY CLUB RHC (POINTS)
The Rubicon is a small, reddish river in north-central Italy that spills into the Adriatic. It would still be meandering in obscurity had Julius Caesar not decided to cross it with his army on this date in 49 BCE. What made his decision noteworthy was the fact that the Rubicon was the border between his province, Cisalpine Gaul, where he was allowed to have an army, and Italy, where he wasn't — so his crossing the river was in effect the declaration of a civil war within the Roman Republic (which he won). To cross the Rubicon now means to take a fateful, irreversible step. Other river-based idioms are to swim the Tiber, meaning to convert to Roman Catholicism, and its converse, to swim the Thames — to convert to Anglicanism.
Quote: "Ālea iacta est" (the die is cast) — Julius Caesar upon crossing the Rubicon
Richard