when he crossed the Rubicon: it is quoted in the Life of Julius Caesar, the first
of the Lives of the Twelve Caesars of Caius Suetonius Tranquillus. Mary Shelley read
Suetonius in May 1817 while she was writing Frankenstein, so it is certain that she
would not allude to this famous phrase without a sense of its actual context. Caesar
goes forward to total victory, whereas it would seem in contrast that Walton returns
in defeat. But perhaps the context is as ironic as that provided Victor's speech to
the sailors by Dante's Inferno 26. In such a case we might want to read Walton's superficial
defeat as cloaking a moral victory.