Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic

by Tom Holland

For the Senate, that was the final straw. On 7 January a state of emergency was proclaimed. Pompey immediately moved troops into Rome, and the tribunes were warned that their safety could no longer be guaranteed. With a typically melodramatic flourish, Antony, Curio, and Caelius disguised themselves as slaves, and then, hiding in wagons, fled north toward Ravenna. There, Caesar was still waiting with his single legion. The news of Pompey’s emergency powers reached him on the tenth. Immediately, he ordered a detachment of troops to strike south, to seize the nearest town across the frontier, inside Italy. Caesar himself, however, while his men were setting out, passed the afternoon by having a bath, then attending a banquet, where he chatted with guests as though he had not a care in the world. Only at dusk did he rise from his couch. Hurrying in a carriage along dark and twisting byways, he finally caught up with his troops on the bank of the Rubicon. There was a moment’s dreadful hesitation, and then he was crossing its swollen waters into Italy, toward Rome. No one could know it at the time, but 460 years of the free Republic were being brought to an end.