Caesar on the Brink:
Writing about the Rubicon in the Early Empire

Jeffrey Beneker(University of Wisconsin)

Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon in 49 BC is well known as an important milestone in the demise of the Roman Republic.  It is also the case that we lack contemporary or even near-contemporary accounts.  Caesar himself, in his Bellum Civile, makes no mention of the river.  The history of his lieutenant, Asinius Pollio, has been lost, as has Livy’s 109^th book (the periocha for 109 does not mention the Rubicon).  Velleius Paterculus, then, when he writes that Caesar crossed the Rubicon after being frustrated by the Senate, is the earliest extant author to refer to the crossing, even if he does not comment on the event’s significance.  The first thorough treatment of the Rubicon in the surviving literature does not appear until more than a century after the fact, in Lucan’s Pharsalia, a work of epic poetry rather than historiography.  This version is followed by the detailed accounts in the biographies of Caesar by Plutarch and Suetonius.  Appian’s history also includes the story of the crossing, but Dio shows that a historian could still write about Caesar’s civil war without mentioning the Rubicon.

My aim in this paper is to examine the four extant narratives of Caesar at the Rubicon (Lucan 1.183-232; Plutarch, Caesar 31-32; Suetonius, Caesar 30-32; and Appian 2.35.5).  Though they are all relatively late, they are certainly based on earlier historical accounts that have been lost.  I aim to show, however, that they also reflect what might be considered an imperial perspective.  The authors have each depicted Caesar on the brink of civil ear in a way that betrays a knowledge of—and an opinion about—what happened in Rome during the century or more following his invasion.  Their perspectives are not uniform, however, and each author appears to have a different notion of the significance of the Rubicon.

Their accounts are similar in that each of them describes Caesar pausing at the river’s edge, contemplating the consequences of his crossing.  By narrating this scene in different ways, however, the authors focus the reader’s attention on particular problems.  For Lucan, the legality of the crossing is at issue as he makes Caesar consider and then disregard the charge that he is acting unjustly.  Suetonius flirts with this question then pushes it to the background.  He instead arranges his narrative so that Caesar’s doubts are wiped away by a divine apparition, making the invasion, and thus the fall of the Republic, an act of fate.  This is also the theme of Plutarch’s version, though he prefers a Caesar who is less certain about what fate intends and so does not grant him an unequivocal sign.  It may be that Plutarch wants to leave his readers less certain as well. 

Set in contrast to these highly charged versions, Appian’s brief narrative appears derivative and bland, almost a paraphrase of the biographers and truly anemic in comparison with Lucan.  I will argue that for him, as for Dio when he leaves out the Rubicon entirely, questions of fate and legitimacy were irrelevant.

Topic Code: LH