 On 10 January 49 BC, Caesar crossed the Rubicon river (the frontier boundary of Italy) with only a single legion, the Legio XIII Gemina, and ignited civil war.Upon crossing the Rubicon, Caesar, according to Plutarch and Suetonius, is supposed to have quoted the Athenian playwright Menander, in Greek, "the die is cast".Erasmus, however, notes that the more accurate Latin translation of the Greek imperative mood would be ""alea iacta esto"", "let" the die be cast.