051 - Actium

Hello, and welcome to the History of Rome, episode 51, Actium. After the partnership between Antony and Octavian broke down following the disillusion of the Second Triumvirate in 32 BC, there was no longer room in the Empire for both men. Everyone had long suspected that war would break out between the two triumvirates eventually. But by now, that war had arrived. Once again, Romans were first to choose sides in a civil war. I honestly feel sorry for the exhausted generations of this final century of the Republic. These men and women, who were born just before Sulla's first march on Rome in 88 BC, who grew up in the vicious proscription regimes of the two feuding generals, Sulla and Marius, came of age at the time of the Catiline Conspiracy, and then grew into full adulthood with Julius Caesar's civil wars raging all around them. As they moved into their fifties and sixties, ready to take on the role of elder statesmen or presiding matrons, they were caught up in the Triumvirate's wars against Brutus and Cassius, and then Sextus Pompey. And now, Octavian and Antony were drawing yet another bloody line in the sand.

Every step of the way, these poor souls had been forced to choose sides. Choosing the right side usually meant little more than the opportunity to sacrifice something valuable to the victor, be it land or treasure, while choosing the wrong side usually meant exile and death. While it was true that many were staunch partisans of one side or another, most were just average men and women trying to live their lives, for whom these conflicts were never black and white. On this side was their son, on that side their brother. Their father had been killed by this man, but their daughter's life was now inextricably linked to his success. It was never easy. Every choice, every year, came with more heartache and suffering.

The history of their nation was riddled with tales of patriotic solidarity in the face of a barbarian invasion or a long war against the Samnites or Carthaginians. But to this generation, it all must have seemed like some sort of cruel fantasy. Romans did not come together to help one another out in times of trouble. No, that was when they turned on each other and tried to squeeze partisan advantage out of the situation. Edward Gibbon famously said that being a citizen of Rome in the second century A.D. was perhaps the greatest time and place to live in all of human history. No such luck for these poor sods stuck in the last century B.C. For them, it was all war, upheaval, and trying to figure out the least bad path through a dangerous and unpredictable time.

But the hardship endured by the millions of citizens who were just trying to get along counted for little in the personal struggle between Octavian and Antony, who saw only each other. In late 32 B.C., Antony and his recently announced co-general, Cleopatra, had sailed with their fleet for the Ambracian Gulf, intent on forcing Octavian out of the picture once and for all. But Octavian, who had provoked Antony into action, had no intention of going down easily. Antony and Cleopatra were an abomination, little more than eastern monarchs who were no more Roman than Pyrrhus or Antiochus or Mithridates. Also they stood in the way of the one ambition he had pursued with single-minded purpose for the last decade, sole mastery of the Roman Empire.

Beyond the small port town of Actium, the two rivals were about to meet for what would prove in retrospect to be their final showdown.

When the spring of 31 B.C. rolled around, Antony recognized that he was boxed in at the Ambracian Gulf. Before I go any further, I would like to tell everyone that in A History of Rome First, I've actually got maps to go along with this episode. So if you go to thehistoryofrome.typepad.com, you can download them and follow along visually. If you are driving while listening to this, however, you are not allowed to look at the maps. Safety first. My intention is to try to slowly go back and add maps to the back episodes and then keep them coming when necessary for future episodes. So enjoy them. I spent a lot of time drawing little tiny triangles and I hope you find the maps helpful.

That said, where was I? Ah yes. Antony had stowed his fleet in the Ambracian Gulf and had inadvertently allowed Octavian to park a ground force north of his position while Agrippa simultaneously blockaded the narrow strait leading out of the Gulf. See it there on the map? Sweet. At first, Octavian sought a quick battle. He deployed his fleet and dared Antony to come out and fight. But short on the manpower he needed to both man the oars of his ships and fight at the same time, Antony declined the invitation. So Octavian settled into siege mode.

The Caesarian forces had access to supplies and fresh water while Antony was cut off from his supply bases in Egypt after Agrippa had captured Mithone the month before. Spring gave way to summer and with the summer came heat, exhaustion, and disease. Byzantarian malaria swept through the Antonian camp, killing scores of men daily. Now it was Antony who decided to offer battle before he lost all his men to plagues. He hopped over the narrow strait and set up a forward camp just south of Octavian and from there tried to pick a ground fight. He sent his infantry the long way around the Ambracian Gulf to make a play at capturing Octavian's water source, but the attempt was repulsed.

In the midst of the battle, one of the eastern client kings providing needed auxiliaries to Antony deserted. It was a sign of things to come. Over the course of the next few months, Antony's Roman allies would begin taking any opportunity they could to slip over to Octavian's camp while foreign allies simply took opportunities to head home. By August, things in the Antonian camp had gone from bad to worse. Antony was no longer losing peripheral senators to defection. Now he was losing key members of his senior staff, many of whom cited the presence of Cleopatra in the camp issuing orders as an inexcusable affront. Mostly though, they just saw the handwriting on the wall and wanted to get out while the getting was good.

In mid-August, Antony tried to break out. He sent what warships he could staff out of the strait on a particularly foggy day and tried to surprise Octavian's blockade into scattering long enough to make escape possible for the rest of the fleet. But the attempt failed when Agrippa coincidentally arrived with reinforcements just as the attack was about to get underway. Antony's ships were pushed back.

Finally, at the end of August, Antony withdrew back to his original camp and made plans for a head-on collision with Octavian. A ground escape was deemed too risky. Not only would he have to fight his way through Octavian's infantry, but even if he succeeded, he would be faced with a months-long march around the Mediterranean back to Egypt. If on the other hand, he loaded as much as he could onto as many ships as he could find oarsmen for, there was a real chance that he, Cleopatra, and most importantly their floating war chest, could make it back to Alexandria and the 14 legions still mobilized there. It was a terribly risky plan, especially after it became apparent that he would be sending just 230 ships against the more than 400 under the command of Agrippa, but there was no choice. He set fire to the ships he could not man so they didn't fall into Octavian's hands. The clouds of smoke were the signal to everyone that a battle was about to begin.

On the morning of September 2, 31 B.C., Antony slowly led his flotilla out of the Gulf, through the narrow strait, and out into open waters. Agrippa and Octavian were waiting for him, with Agrippa, brutally ceded overall command of the battle, manning the left flank and Octavian on the right. Antony hoped to draw his enemies into the confined quarters just beyond the entrance to the Gulf so their numerical superiority would be muted, but Agrippa had already decided this was a likely tactic and declined to move in. The morning passed with the two fleets bobbing in the water, waiting for someone to make a move.

Finally, Antony was forced to acknowledge that Agrippa wasn't taking the bait. He ordered his ships forward and the Battle of Actium began. On the Caesarian left, Agrippa worked the ships under his command around so that they swung over and came at Antony from the north. To counter, Antony shifted his own line so that what had begun as a north-south line was now an east-west line. This all had the effect of leaving the center of the Caesarian line open. With Octavian fully engaged in the southern theater and unable to close the gap left open by Agrippa's enveloping move, Cleopatra saw her opportunity. She had been held back from the main line with sixty ships and had thus far taken no part in the actual battle. This was by design, as her flagship was the key to the whole escape, because on it was the Antonian treasury. Even if every ship but hers was captured, there was still hope.

With the afternoon winds blowing out to sea and the middle of the battle open, Cleopatra hoisted her sails and fled the scene. Seeing the queen lighting out, Antony quickly transferred himself off of his lumbering flagship onto a quicker vessel and followed her. He could only hope that the rest of his fleet would disengage and follow. If they couldn't, at least they had bought their general and his fortune time to get away.

For the most part, they couldn't get away. Boat numbered and hemmed in, the ships that weren't sunk were forced to retreat back into the gulf. After an evening spent out at sea making sure no one slipped away, Octavian surveyed the scene when dawn finally arrived the next morning. Cleopatra had obviously gotten away, but he had no idea what had become of Antony. Forty or so of the Antonian ships had been sunk, and the hundred and thirty left were now cowering in the gulf. All in all, it was a clear victory. Defeated by the escape of Cleopatra, obviously, but Octavian had succeeded in dealing Antony, wherever he was, a fairly crippling blow.

The next week was spent mopping up after the battle. The hundred and thirty trapped ships surrendered without much convincing, but there was still a sizable Antonian infantry in the area that needed to be defanged. Unable to fit everyone onto the two hundred and thirty ships, Antony had left some fifty thousand men under the command of the intensely loyal Publius Canadius Crassus on shore. Crassus had orders to march them back to Macedonia in the event that Antony was able to make good his escape, and from there attempt the overland march to Egypt. But the soldiers had other ideas. At first, they waited for Antony to reappear, not understanding that the whole point had been for him to get out of Dodge, not fight a battle to decide the war right then and there.

Although it was unclear that Antony was dead or had fled, the attitudes of the troops changed dramatically. Over the head, or I guess maybe under the head, of Crassus, the soldiers offered to surrender to Octavian if they were treated as if they had been on the winning side the whole time. Octavian jumped at the chance to nullify the sizable threat they posed and maybe demonstrate some of the famous clemency that had won his uncle so much acclaim. He was fast coming to the realization that maybe power was finally in his grasp. He needed to start thinking like a statesman if he was going to be the master of all Romans. He accepted the terms and agreed to demobilize the legions with all the honors and spoils that were due his own men. Disgusted, Crassus and a few senior officers packed their bags and slipped away back to Alexandria where they hoped to find plans to reverse the setback at Actium well in the works.

Octavian himself was in no great hurry to chase after Antony, who, it was now known, had made his way out of the battle and followed Cleopatra back to Egypt. He settled in for the winter on the island of Samos in the eastern Aegean and made preparations for the invasion of Egypt he would undertake when spring arrived. Meanwhile, he sent home thousands of Italian veterans who had completed their service time. Unfortunately though, the spoils and land they had dreamed would be theirs when they got home were nowhere to be found. Once again, the bank had been broken. The veterans began to agitate violently against this injustice and Agrippa was sent back to pacify them. But even the great general who had the respect and admiration of all the mutinous ex-soldiers could do nothing to settle them down. Octavian was forced to return to Italy himself to deal with the situation.

When he arrived in Brundisium, it seemed like the entire population of Rome was there to greet him. In a sign of the times, rather than greeting the returning Octavian at the gates of Rome, as would have been the custom, the entire senate traveled down to the southern port to greet him as a ship dock. It was clear who Rome thought would be their eventual master. Octavian issued IOUs to his angry troops. It was all he could do and promised to settle everything when Antony was disposed of for good. They accepted his word. There was really nothing else they could do.

But not everyone in Rome was so quick to embrace Octavian. The young Marcus Lepidus, son of the former Triumvir, decided to hatch this decade's liberator plot. He began the process of acquiring support, just as Brutus and Cassius had done, and started making plans to assassinate Octavian as soon as he came back to Rome. But Macinus left once again in control of the city, caught wind of the plot, and swiftly extracted the names of everyone involved. There would be no repeat of the Ides of March on his watch. Lepidus and anyone foolish enough to join him were executed without delay.

Confident that things in Italy were well in hand, the spring of 30 BC arrived with Octavian focused on Egypt. Envoys of all kinds, some from Antony, some from Cleopatra, some from independent factions within Alexandria, had been seeking him out all winter to try to avert the invasion. But Octavian had made up his mind. He didn't want to just destroy Antony and Cleopatra, he wanted to seize Egypt and hold it for himself. No negotiations, no bribes, no settlements. Straight up annexation and under his personal control. The only way to make sure that happened was to take the country by force.

Over the winter, things between Antony and Cleopatra had deteriorated. They still had money and troops, but they were trapped in Egypt without any hope of escape or further aid from any of the client kingdoms of the East, all of whom were now under Octavian's influence. Antony refused to bow to the inevitable and continued making plans for the defense of Alexandria, but it was clear that Cleopatra began to pull away from him, perhaps thinking about life past Antony. If she was thinking she could perhaps latch on to Octavian the way she had latched on first to Julius Caesar and then Mark Antony, she was deluding herself. But their survival instinct is strong, and cornered like rats, both Antony and Cleopatra entertained pleasant fantasies where they somehow made it out of this alive and in power.

But as we know, they did not make it out alive or in power.

When the spring came, the first piece of bad news arrived. Four legions stationed west of Alexandria had defected and were now marching towards the city on Octavian's orders. Octavian meanwhile was leading his own forces through Syria and would soon be coming at Egypt from the east. If there was one thing Octavian truly loved, it was a pincer move, and the invasion of Egypt was just another fine example of it. Antony made his way out to the defected legions and tried to win them back to his side, but they forced him to retreat empty handed. Octavian encountered little resistance from the Egyptian troops who were supposed to be guarding the frontier, and was soon knocking at Alexandria's door.

Realizing that everything was falling apart around him, and that this was likely the end, Antony planned one last great battle that, win or lose, he did not plan to return from. But even his attempt to die gloriously was a disaster. On August the 1st, he sent out the Egyptian navy to meet Octavian's fleet, which had been pacing their commander's advance. Antony himself stood at the head of a combined army of infantry and cavalry on land. When the navy engaged Octavian's fleet, Antony was going to launch a ground assault. But as soon as the ships were within earshot of one another, Antony's maritime forces announced their total surrender. Seeing the ships raise the white flag, Antony's cavalry deserted, followed quickly by scores of infantry. Soon his entire army was running for their lives, leaving Antony, who had spent all this time planning a fine soldier's death, alone on the battlefield and humiliated.

He marched back to the palace in a rage, and demanded to see Cleopatra, who he suspected of engineering the surrenders and desertions. Cleopatra, afraid of what the furious and probably suicidal Antony was going to do to her, sent an attendant to tell him that she was already dead. For Antony, this was the final breaking point. He returned to his room, stabbed himself in the stomach, and died. But not quite yet. The self-inflicted wound, though incredibly painful, was not immediately fatal.

As he lay in agony dying, Cleopatra heard what he had done and decided to send for him. I'm not really sure this was the nicest thing in the world to do, seeing as how his suicide had been precipitated by the belief that she was already dead, but regardless, attendants dragged the dying Antony to Cleopatra's hiding place, a half-built mausoleum she had been constructing for herself over the years. When she saw Antony, she began to wail. Antony tried unsuccessfully to comfort her, and then, according to legend, called for one last cup of wine to drink before dying. The final goblet of Dionysian elixir quaffed. Antony died.

Though posterity tends to record Actium as the final climax in the drama of The Second Triumvirate, it was not really until Octavian captured Egypt that the deal was really sealed. Rome and the Western Empire were already under his command, but now his only real rival for power was dead, and he controlled the richest kingdom in the East. Now his star was not just ascendant, it had ascended. He stood atop the Roman Empire, alone and unchallenged. He relished his victory, and touring the magnificent city of Alexandria, began to plan for the future. Power won is only meaningful if it is put to productive use. Unlike the Dionysian Antony, the Apollonian Octavian was not aiming for power so he could live a life of decadent leisure. He was aiming for power so he could remake the Roman world. And remake it, he would.

There were still loose ends to clear up, of course. Cleopatra was still holed up in her mausoleum hiding place, which would now become a de facto prison. Antony used familiar go-betweens to coax the queen out of her hole, and when she finally presented herself, the toll of the last year was evident. No longer the splendid, bejeweled Eastern queen who had seduced the most powerful men in Rome, she was now unadorned, haggard, and pathetic. When she met Octavian, she at first tried to deny that she had played any meaningful role in Antony's career, and that it had been him, all him. I am just a woman, she argued, what influence could a woman have over a strong Roman man?

Octavian practically choked when he heard her revise history on the fly. But when it was clear that Octavian wasn't buying the whole I am an innocent bystander routine, Cleopatra switched and simply began begging for her life. This, Octavian thought, is more like it. According to the official records, Octavian did indeed decide to spare the queen's life, but mostly so that he could parade her through Rome in the triumph he planned to celebrate as soon as he got home. But to Cleopatra, this stay of execution turned out to be even more intolerable than death itself. She had hoped to somehow finagle Octavian into letting her live in Egypt and remain a client monarch, loyal once again to the house of Caesar. It was fast becoming apparent, though, that her future held nothing but embarrassment, humiliation, and probably obscure imprisonment in some far corner of the empire. To an Egyptian pharaohess accustomed to being at the center of politics, religion, and war, the fate Octavian had cooked up for her was literally a fate worse than death.

According to the familiar legend, she had an attendant smuggle an asp into her room by concealing the snake in a basket of figs. Cleopatra then poked at the snake until it lashed out, sank its poisonous fangs into her, and killed her. No one really knows how true the story actually is, but it has gained widespread acceptance anyway. However it happened, Cleopatra died, and it was likely, though not proven conclusively, to be a suicide.

Octavian took his time enjoying the sights in Alexandria. Of particular interest was the city's most famous relic, and he ordered the priests to open the sargophagus and display the mummified remains of Alexander the Great. The Macedonian general had long been the benchmark by which all future politicians and generals judged themselves. He had attained the throne at just nineteen, and then conquered his way to India before his thirtieth birthday. The career of Alexander, as meteoric an arc as can be imagined, is typically a universal humbler of great men. Even a thirty-nine-year-old Julius Caesar had famously despaired at a shrine to the great general, lamenting the fact that he had done nothing with his life.

But I have to think that thirty-three-year-old Octavian, viewing the mummified remains of thirty-three-year-old Alexander, had to believe that he stacked up pretty well in comparison, probably one of the few times in all of history that that can actually be said. Meditating on the career of Alexander is supposed to force you to realize that you'll never be the greatest man in the history of the world, no matter how hard you try. Because no matter what, Alexander will always have done more than you, faster than you, better than you. But Octavian, I don't think that was Octavian's takeaway at all. He was now the sole ruler of the Mediterranean, heading an empire that was richer and more stable than anything Alexander had put together. And he was, like I said, still only thirty-three years old. Rather than walking away from the shrine to Alexander humbled, I think Octavian probably walked away feeling pretty good about himself. The transformation from mere Octavian to the divine Augustus was no doubt well underway.

Next week, Octavian will return to Rome to formally undergo that transformation into Augustus. It was time for the ruthless, power-hungry young Caesar to become the absolute ruler of the Roman Empire. It would not be a quick transition, or a simple one. Everything continued to be couched in the language of the Republic, and it was only over the course of years and then decades that the semantic façade began to wear off, and it was revealed who was really in control, and who had really been in control the whole time. There is no clear line to draw to say that this is where the Republic ends and this is where the Imperium begins, especially because no one in the Julio-Claudian dynasty, who would rule Rome for the next hundred years, was ever willing to come out and admit publicly what had happened. But make no mistake, the Republic was now dead. And along with all his improvements and reforms and great works on behalf of the Empire, Augustus Caesar pursued policy to make sure that it stayed dead.