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The Rubicon river

by Eugenia Salza Prina Ricotti

Apart of the ghosts that we can define traditional, and that we have already known in the Greek world, we find other paranormal phenomena usually connected with the greatest history’s events. We want to talk about those spirits that materialised in the crucial moments of the world’s history: They could have been either ghosts or gods, but, in any event, they didn’t belong to our world. Famed among this kind of manifestation is the phantom who materialised in front of Ceasar when he was standing near the Rubicon and the moment had came to decide which would be the future of Rome. Ceasar pressed by his enemies’s assaults was trying to decide if he had to submit himself to the Senate’s orders and gave back his legions – which would have brought him to sure death – or rebel against them and march on Rome.
While he stood there perplexed trying to decide what to do - Suetonius tells us – in a place where nobody had been seen, suddenly a man appeared. He was very tall and handsome and, sitting on a rock, was playing a flute. Astonished the shepherds, that in those leas had brought their flocks, thronged around him. Also many soldiers came and among them all the military band with its instruments. Then all of sudden this man rose and snatching the trumpet from one of the trumpeters he rushed toward the river striking with all his lungs the battle call. Then Ceasar ordered to his soldiers: “Lets go where the prodigies of the gods and the enemies’s iniquity are calling us. The die is cast.” And, from this moment on, his phrase, repeated through all the centuries, filled all world’s history books.