Rubicon

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Rubicon
Italian: Rubicone
The modern rubicone

The modern rubicone

Data
location Emilia-Romagna , Italy
River system Rubicon
River basin district Appennino Settentrionale
source about 25 kilometers west of Rimini
muzzle At San Mauro a Mare in the Adriatic Coordinates: 44 ° 10 '5 "  N , 12 ° 26' 36"  E, 44 ° 10 '5 "  N , 12 ° 26' 36"  E
Mouth height 0  m slm

length 40 km
The Rubicone near the mouth at Gatteo a Mare

The Rubicone near the mouth at Gatteo a Mare

The Rubicon ( Latin Rubicon or Rubico , Italian Rubicone ) is a small river that flows south of Ravenna into the Adriatic Sea and, due to its history, serves as a metaphor.

Historical meaning

Historically, the Rubicon was a border river between the Roman province of Gallia cisalpina and Italy proper .

The Rubicon became known through the Roman civil war , the Gaius Iulius Caesar from 49 BC. Against Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus . The Roman Senate decided on January 7, 49 BC That Gaius Iulius Caesar sacked his army and his empire , d. H. his authority over Gaul and Illyria , had to resign before he could run again for the consulate . As a result, on January 10, 49 BC, Caesar exceeded BC with his troops the Rubicon. The armed crossing of the river to the south - and thus in the direction of Rome  - was tantamount to a declaration of war on the Roman Senate. Caesar was aware that from this point on there was no turning back, which he expressed in the famous Greek quote "ἀνερρίφθω κύβος" (literally: "The dice was thrown up", Latin meaning: alea iacta est ).

geography

The location of the ancient Rubicon has not yet been conclusively clarified. The modern Rubicone owes its name to a definition by Benito Mussolini by decree of August 4, 1933 Mussolini had a beach villa near the town of Savignano , and the local mayor convinced him that the local river Fiumicino was the one that Caesar crossed at the time . The indications on a Roman milestone suggest this conclusion. References to the representation on the Tabula Peutingeriana are not clear and are doubted by local historians in other places in the area. The inhabitants of Santarcangelos claim to be the “real” Rubicon for their Uso river. Others move it to the small town of Calisese, 15 kilometers away, whose place name is said to be composed of the Latin callis ("path") and Caesar , ie "Caesar's path".

The river, formerly called Fiumicino, has its source west below Sogliano al Rubicone in the middle altitudes of the Apennines . It then flows through the southern part of Emilia-Romagna past Savignano sul Rubicone and flows into the Adriatic between the districts of Gatteo a Mare by Gatteo and Savignano Mare by Savignano sul Rubicone . The length from the source to the mouth is about 40 km.

Rubicon as a metaphor

Even today, the expression “crossing the Rubicon” stands for irrevocably getting involved in a risky act. He was the inspiration for a psychological model of action , the Rubicon model of the phases of action in Heinz Heckhausen's motivation theory . A well-known use of this metaphor occurred in the address, known as the Rubicon speech, given by the then South African President Pieter Willem Botha in August 1985.

literature

Web links

Commons : Rubicone  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. ↑ Topographic map 1: 25000
  2. ^ Ulrich Gotter: From the Rubicon to Actium. Sites of the civil wars. In: Elke Stein-Hölkeskamp , Karl-Joachim Hölkeskamp (ed.): Places of remembrance of antiquity. The Roman world. Beck, Munich 2006, ISBN 978-3-406-60496-6 , p. 243.
  3. ↑ CIL 1, 637
  4. ↑ Gerhard Radke : Rubicon, Rubicon. In: The Little Pauly (KlP). Volume 4, Stuttgart 1972, column 1462.
  5. ↑ Stephan Brünjes: Italy: Where is the Rubicon actually? Stuttgarter Nachrichten, November 26, 2015