Joe Arpaio. Joseph Michael Joe Arpaio (/ÉËrËpaÉª.oÊ/; born June 14, 1932) is a former American law enforcement officer and was the elected Sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona for 24 years from 1993 through 2016. Arpaio styled himself as America's Toughest Sheriff.
This phrase alludes to Julius Caesar's crossing the Rubicon River (between Italy and Gaul) in 49 b.c., thereby starting a war against Pompey and the Roman Senate. Recounted in Plutarch's Lives: Julius Caesar (c. a.d. 110), the crossing gave rise to the figurative English usage by the early 1600s. See also: cross, the.
Film critic Roger Ebert used the quote as the title of his review of the movie Cloud Atlas. The phrase was even used by Indian gastroenterologist B.S. Ramakrishna to describe the disease tropical sprue. In popular culture, the phrase has come to be used as the set-up to many jokes, sometimes with the order of the words riddle, mystery and enigma changed. Typically, the third element of the phrase is changed to create a punch line, as on the TV show Seinfeld, when Jerry and Elaine described Newman as a mystery wrapped in a riddle... wrapped in a Twinkie.