Person
Julius Caesar
Roman general and dictator. In January 49 BCE he crossed the Rubicon and began the civil war. Suetonius reports the words "Iacta alea est."
Life
Gaius Julius Caesar was born in 100 BCE into a patrician family that was not, at the time, the richest or the strongest in Rome. He held the usual republican offices, then spent years in Gaul with an army that made him the most powerful man outside the city. The Senate’s allies, grouped around Pompey, ordered him to dismiss that army. In January 49 BCE he crossed the Rubicon, the edge of his province, and the civil war began.
He defeated Pompey, held the dictatorship, and was killed in the Senate on 15 March 44 BCE. Suetonius and Plutarch both tell the crossing. Suetonius’s Latin for the famous sentence is Iacta alea est, which Rolfe translates “The die is cast.” The picture on this page is a miniature by Jean Fouquet from the second half of the fifteenth century. It shows the army in the river. It is not a face from 49 BCE.
Jean Fouquet, Caesar Crossing the Rubicon, second half of the 15th century. A manuscript miniature, not a Roman portrait. Public-domain reproduction via Wikimedia Commons. Image file. Public domain. See the Commons file for the reproduction status outside the United States.
