Accordingly, he sent forward some centurions with a few of his bravest troops
						in peaceful garb to go inside the walls of Ariminum and take it by surprise.
						This was the first town in Italy after leaving Cisalpine Gaul. Toward
						evening Cæsar himself rose from a banquet on a plea of
						indisposition, leaving some friends who were still feasting. He mounted his
						chariot and drove toward Ariminum, his cavalry following at a short
						distance. When his course brought him to the river Rubicon, which forms the
						boundary line of Italy, he stopped and, while gazing at the stream, revolved
						in his mind the evils that might result from his crossing it with arms.
						Recovering himself he said to those who were present, "My friends, stopping
						here will be the beginning of sorrows for me; crossing over will be such for
						all mankind." Thereupon, he crossed with a rush like one inspired, uttering
						the common phrase, "Let the die be cast." "The Rubicon," says Duruy, "is probably the Fiumicino di
							Savignano, a reddish torrent twelve miles north of Ariminum, formed by
							the confluence of three brooks from the Apennines." Duruy doubts the
							whole story of Cæsar's hesitation at the Rubicon, but Plutarch
								( Life of Cæsar, 32) says that Asinius
							Pollio was present; and there is reason to believe that both Plutarch
							and Appian drew from Pollio's history. Then he resumed his hasty
						journey and took possession of Ariminum about daybreak, advanced beyond it,
						stationed guards at the commanding positions, and, either by force or by
						kindness, mastered all whom he fell in with. As is usual in cases of panic,
						there was flight and migration from all the country-side in disorder and
						tears, the people having no exact knowledge, but thinking that
						Cæsar had arrived with an army of boundless strength. When the consuls learned the facts they did not allow Pompey to act according
						to his own judgment, experienced as he was in military affairs, but urged
						him to traverse Italy and raise troops, as though the city were on the point
						of being captured. The Senate also was alarmed at Cæsar's
						unexpectedly swift advance, for which it was still unprepared, and in its
						panic repented that it had not accepted Cæsar's proposals, which
						it considered just at last, after fear had turned it from party rage to the
						counsels of prudence. Many portents and signs in the sky took place. It
						rained blood. Sweat issued from the statues of the gods. Lightning struck
						several temples. A mule gave birth to a colt. This was a favorite prodigy among the Romans. It was
							observed when Sulla was advancing, after his war against Mithridates (i.
							83 supra ). Cicero alludes to the subject in his
							treatise on Divination (ii. 22). There were many other prodigies
						which betokened an overturn and change in the form of government for all
						time. Prayers were offered up in public as was customary in times of danger,
						and the people who remembered the evil times of Marius and Sulla, clamored
						that both Cæsar and Pompey ought to lay down their commands as the
						only means of averting war. Cicero proposed to send messengers to
						Cæsar in order to come to an arrangement. Plutarch ( Life of Pompey, 59) says
							that Cicero, who had lately returned from Cilicia, labored to bring
							about a reconciliation, proposing that Cæsar should leave his
							province of Gaul and disband his army, reserving two legions only,
							together with the government of Illyricum, and be nominated for a second
							consulship. Cæsar's friends afterward reduced his claims to
							one legion, but even that was rejected. 
					 As the consuls opposed all accommodation Favonius, in ridicule of Pompey for
						something he had said a little before, advised him to stamp on the ground
						with his foot and raise armies in that way. "You can have them," replied
						Pompey, "if you will follow me and not consider it such a terrible thing to
						leave Rome, and Italy also if need be. Places and houses are not strength
						and freedom to men; but men, wherever they may be, have these qualities
						within themselves, and by defending themselves shall recover their homes."
						After saying this and after threatening those who should remain behind and
						desert their country's cause in order to save their fields and their goods,
						he left the Senate and the city immediately to take command of the army at
						Capua, and the consuls followed him. The other senators remained undecided a
						long time and passed the night together in the senate-house. At daybreak,
						however, most of them departed and hastened after Pompey. CHAPTER VI Cæsar captures Corfinium and L. Domitius--The Consuls cross
							over to Dyrrachium -- Pompey escapes from Cæsar at Brundusium
							-- Cæsar takes the Money from the Public
							Treasury--Cæsar marches to Spain--Captures the Pompeian Forces
							there At Corfinium Cæsar came up with and besieged Lucius Domitius, who
						had been sent to be his successor in the command of Gaul but who did not
						have all of his 4000 men with him. The inhabitants of Corfinium captured him
						at the gates, as he was trying to escape, and brought him to
							Cæsar. "If we may
							believe Lucan," says Combes-Dounous, "the soldiers of Domitius
							themselves delivered him to Cæsar:" Ecce nefas belli, reseratis agmina portis Captivum traxere
									ducem. ( Pharsalia, ii. 506.) There is better authority for this statement than Lucan.
							Cæsar affirms it in his detailed account of the military
							operations around Corfinium. ( Civil War, i. 23.) 
						The latter received the soldiers of Domitius, who offered themselves to him,
						with kindness, in order to encourage others to join him, and he allowed
						Domitius to go unharmed wherever he liked, and to take his money with
							him. Cæsar says
							that he allowed Domitius to take this money although he knew that it had
							been given to him by Pompey for the pay of his troops.
								( Ibid. ) He hoped perhaps that Domitius would
						stay with him on account of this beneficence, but he did not prevent him
						from joining Pompey. While these transactions were taking place so swiftly,
						Pompey hastened from Capua to Luceria and thence to Brundusium in order to
						cross the Adriatic to Epirus and complete his preparations for war there. He
						wrote letters to all the provinces and the commanders thereof, to princes,
						kings, and cities to send aid for carrying on the war with the greatest
						possible speed, and this they did zealously. Pompey's own army was in Spain
						ready to move wherever it might be needed. Pompey gave some of the legions
						he already had in Italy to the consuls to be moved from Brundusium to
						Epirus. The consuls crossed safely to Dyrrachium, The modern Durazzo. which some persons, by reason of
						the following error, consider the same as Epidamnus. A barbarian king of the
						region, Epidamnus by name, built a city on the sea-coast and named it after
						himself. Dyrrachus, the son of his daughter and of Neptune (as is supposed),
						added a dockyard to it which he named Dyrrachium. When the brothers of this
						Dyrrachus made war against him, Hercules, who was returning from Erythea,
						formed an alliance with him for a part of his territory; wherefore the
						Dyrrachians claim Hercules as their founder because he had a share of their
						land, not that they repudiate Dyrrachus, but because they pride themselves
						on Hercules even more as a god. In the battle which took place it is said
						that Hercules killed Ionius, the son of Dyrrachus, by mistake, and that
						after performing the funeral rites he threw the body into the sea in order
						that it might bear his name. The
							Ionian sea of the Greeks was the southern part of the Adriatic lying
							between Greece and Italy. Strabo (v. I, 8) says that the Adriatic took
							its name from the town of Atria in Venetia. In another place (vii. 5,
							10), he says: "The Ionian and the Adriatic have a common mouth, but
							there is this difference, that the first part of this sea was called the
							Ionian, and the interior portion, as far as the northern extremity, the
							Adriatic, but now the whole is called by the latter name. Theopompus
							says that the former of these names was derived from a man who ruled
							this region and was a native of Issa, and that the latter was derived
							from the river Adria." This river is the modern Tartaro. At a
						later period the Briges, returning from Phrygia, took possession of the city
						and the surrounding country. They were supplanted by the Taulantii, an
						Illyrian tribe, who were displaced in their turn by the Liburnians, another
						Illyrian tribe, who were in the habit of making piratical expeditions
						against their neighbors, with very swift ships. Hence the Romans call swift
						ships liburnicœ, because these were the first
						ones they came in conflict with. The people who had been expelled from
						Dyrrachium by the Liburnians procured the aid of the Corcyreans, who then
						ruled the sea, and drove out the Liburnians. The Corcyreans mingled their
						own colonists with them and thus it came to be considered a Greek port; but
						the Corcyreans changed its name, because they considered it unpropitious,
						and called it Epidamnus from the town just above it, and Thucydides gives it
						that name also. Nevertheless, the former name prevailed finally and it is
						now called Dyrrachium.