ing and
the onset did not so much require a large force at the present, but
were to be effected by the alarm which a bold stroke would create and
by quickly seizing his opportunity, for he concluded that he should
strike terror by his unexpected movement more easily than he could
overpower his enemies by attacking them with all his force, he ordered
his superior officers and centurions with their swords alone and
without any other weapons to take Ariminum, a large city of Gaul,
avoiding all bloodshed and confusion as much as possible; and he
intrusted the force to Hortensius.[518] Caesar himself passed the day
in public, standing by some gladiators who were exercising, and
looking on; and a little before evening after attending to his person
and going into the mess-room and staying awhile with those who were
invited to supper, just as it was growing dark he rose, and
courteously addressing the guests, told them to wait for his return,
but he had previously given notice to a few of his friends to follow
him, not all by the same route, but by different directions. Mounting
one of the hired vehicles, he drove at first along another road, and
then turning towards Ariminium, when he came to the stream which
divides Gaul within the Alps from the rest of Italy (it is called
Rubico[519] , and he began to calculate as he approached nearer to
the danger, and was agitated by the magnitude of the hazard, he
checked his speed; and halting he considered about many things with
himself in silence, his mind moving from one side to the other, and
his will then underwent many changes; and he also discussed at length
with his friends who were present, of whom Pollio Asinius[520] was
one, all the difficulties, and enumerated the evils which would ensue
to all mankind from his passage of the river, and how great a report
of it they would leave to posterity. At last, with a kind of passion,
as if he were throwing himself out of reflection into the future, and
uttering what is the usual expression with which men preface their
entry upon desperate enterprises and daring, "Let the die be cast," he
hurried to cross the river; and thence advancing at full speed, he
attacked Ariminum before daybreak and took it. It is said that on the
night before the passage of the river, he had an impure dream,[521]
for he dreamed that he was in unlawful commerce with his mother.

XXXIII. But when Ariminum was taken, as if the war had been let loose
through wide