On Jan. 9 in the year 49 BCE, Julius Caesar&mdaash;the one and only—crossed the Rubicon, a shallow river in northern Italy that separated Rome from the province of Gaul, an act that began a civil war (and from which there was no turning back). Fought across hundreds and hundreds of miles over the span of five years from the Balkans to the Iberian Peninsula, the war began the moment he took his army through the water, reportedly saying “the die is cast.” The outcome was, of course, advantageous for him, as the civil war ended with Caesar being named Rome’s dictator for life. But, for that reason, it is seen as the beginning of the end for the Roman Republic, and so “crossing the Rubicon” has come to mean a fateful and final decision that offers no hope for reversal—irrevocable, for better or worse (usually worse). David Cameron was known to invoke the expression, most notably when characterizing the pursuit of press regulations as a matter of law in the U.K., and Bob Dylan’s 2020 song about accepting one’s point of no return includes the line, “I turned the key / I broke it off / and I crossed the Rubicon.” As it happens, there is also a Rubicon River in Wisconsin (that was unknown to Caesar), and Jeep began making a Wrangler model called the Rubicon in 2003 (also unknown to Caesar, but arguably something he’d drive). Photo of a bridge crossing the Rubicon by Carole Raddato Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.
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