About Rubicon

Ingrid E. Cummings, M.A., APR, principal of Rubicon Communications LLC, is a communications strategist specializing in mid-sized life sciences firms.  "I'm in the English language business," she says.  "I put the life in life sciences." 

Rubicon Communications LLC was founded by Ingrid E. Cummings in 2000.

Lots of people ask what, or who, Rubicon is. Rubicon is the name of a river in Italy. In 49 B.C., Julius Caesar led his army to the banks of the Rubicon, the small river that marked the boundary between Italy and Gaul and which the Roman Senate had forbidden to cross. "The die is cast," (iacta alea est), said Caesar, wading in, knowing full well that this step would mean civil war. "To cross the Rubicon," is therefore to be committed irrevocably; to reach a point of no return; to go too far to turn back.

* In the way of many ancient icons, the Rubicon River has enriched our language and our symbolism. Possibly no other metaphor from the ancient world has achieved such standing in modern discourse. But the famous figure of speech "to cross the Rubicon" has survived even as its inspiration has receded into obscurity. The narrow Rubicon divided the Roman homeland from Caesar's province of Nearer Gaul. It remained an important boundary for hundreds of years, but eventually disappeared from maps, so that by the 18th century no one knew which of the three or more modest rivers in the area had been the storied Rubicon. The Pope, Mussolini, and the courts all became involved. Today, the Rubicone, unequivocally if not arbitrarily identified along its 15-mile length, reaches the Adriatic between a campground and a trailer park in the nondescript resort town of Gatteo a Mare.

Caesar Against Rome, by Ramon L. Jimenez, Praeger, 2000.