Everyone knows that Caesar crossed the Rubicon because his political enemies at Rome had manoeuvred him into a position where he would soon be forced to leave his province, give up his imperium, and return to Rome as a private citizen, there to be put on trial, found guilty and have his political career ended. Yet over thirty years ago, Shackleton Bailey, in less than two pages of his introduction to Cicero's Letters to Atticus, destroyed the basis for this belief, and in the three decades since, no one has been able to rebuild it. Everyone also knows that Caesar, when he crossed the Rubicon, was grossly outnumbered and conquered Italy only through his own rapidity and his enemies' sluggishness and incompetence; yet this belief was irreparably shattered by H.-M. Ottmer in 1979, in a book which professional scholars have practically ignored. The justification for this article is that it may bring to others' attention the real state of researches on the circumstances of Caesar's invasion of Italy, and perhaps even inhibit further restatements of exploded beliefs.