War of Actium

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  The War of Actium ended the Roman Republic, and it began with a will. Octavian had illegally seized the document from the Temple of Vesta, and when he read its contents aloud to the Roman Senate, the room went silent. Mark Antony had left his possessions to his children by Cleopatra. He wanted to be buried with her in Alexandria, not in Rome. That last detail ignited the senators' rage more than anything else. A Roman general, asking to rest in foreign soil, beside a foreign queen. It was enough to tip a fragile truce into the last civil war the Republic would ever see. The questions that follow are not merely about a battle or a romance. They are about how one man turned personal scandal into political legitimacy, how the largest naval engagement in nearly two centuries unfolded on the 2nd of September, 31 BC, and how the smoke that rose from Actium cleared to reveal not a republic but an empire.

• 2. A Split World

  ›

  After the assassination of Julius Caesar, three men stepped into the gap he left: Octavian, Mark Antony, and Marcus Lepidus, who together formed the Second Triumvirate. At the Battle of Philippi in 42 BC, the triumvirate crushed Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus, the last organized resistance to Caesarean power. Lepidus was then expelled from the triumvirate in 36 BC, leaving Octavian and Antony to divide the Roman world between them. Octavian took the west: Hispania, Gaul, Italia, and Africa. Antony received the east: Graecia, Asia, Syria, and Aegyptus. For a time, this arrangement held. Octavian put down revolts in his territories while Antony reorganized his. The truce had a personal binding too: since 40 BC, Antony had been married to Octavia Minor, the sister of Octavian himself. But Antony had also been conducting an affair with Cleopatra, queen of Egypt. Octavian's minister Gaius Maecenas helped direct a propaganda campaign against Antony, ensuring Romans heard about every slight and every scandal. The two halves of the Roman world were drifting apart, and Octavian was quietly accelerating that drift.

• 3. The Donations of Alexandria

  ›

  Nearly all Romans felt astonished when they heard about the Donations of Alexandria. In those ceremonies, Antony ceded enormous stretches of Rome's eastern territory to Cleopatra and her children. Cleopatra and Caesarion were crowned co-rulers of Egypt and Cyprus. Alexander Helios was crowned ruler of Armenia, Media, and Parthia. Cleopatra Selene II received Cyrenaica and Libya. Ptolemy Philadelphus was given Phoenicia, Syria, and Cilicia. Cleopatra took the title of queen of kings; Caesarion took the title of king of kings. Octavian pressed the outrage further, increasing personal attacks on Antony. Still, the senate and Roman people were not fully convinced to act. What finally pushed them over the edge was Antony's decision to marry Cleopatra in 32 BC before he had even formally divorced Octavia. Reports also emerged that Antony was planning to establish a second senate in Alexandria. Octavian seized the moment, summoned the senate, and accused Antony of anti-Roman sentiments. The senate's formal declaration of war was directed at Cleopatra rather than Antony directly; Octavian and the senate both understood that Antony would answer any attack on her. He did. As soon as the declaration reached him, he threw his support to Egypt, and the senate stripped him of every official title and named him an outlaw and a traitor.

• 4. The Battle at Sea

  ›

  By mid-31 BC, Antony had moved his army into Greece, and Octavian followed with his chief military adviser and closest friend, Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, commanding the naval forces. Octavian's fleet consisted of smaller, more maneuverable Liburnian ships crewed by experienced sailors. Antony's fleet was made up of large vessels manned by inexperienced crews and commanders. Agrippa immediately began disrupting Antony's supply lines, while Gaius Sosius, commanding a squadron for Antony, managed one early success: he defeated a squadron led by Lucius Arruntius and drove it off. When Agrippa reinforced Arruntius, however, Sosius's ally Tarcondimotus I, king of Cilicia, was killed and Sosius himself was forced to flee. Agrippa also captured the Greek city and naval port of Methone, which had been loyal to Antony. On land, Antony's veteran cavalry won most of the skirmishes. As summer gave way to autumn, morale collapsed among Antony's ranks and prominent Romans began deserting his cause. Antony moved his fleet to Actium, bringing 290 warships and between 30 and 50 transports. Octavian arrived with 350 ships. On the 2nd of September, 31 BC, Antony drove his large quinqueremes through the strait and into open water. A devastating blow came when one of Antony's own former generals delivered his battle plan to Octavian. Antony had planned to use his biggest ships to push back Agrippa's northern wing, but Octavian's entire fleet held carefully out of range until mid-day forced Antony to extend his line beyond the shelter of the shore. Octavian's crews, fresher and better trained, closed in. They rammed enemy ships and cut down deck crews with arrows and catapult-launched stones. Cleopatra had stayed behind Antony's line on her royal barge. When she saw a gap open in Agrippa's blockade, she pushed her squadron through. Antony ordered a general breakthrough. His spearhead penetrated Octavian's centre, but Agrippa immediately turned his flanks inward and attacked the rest of Antony's ships from both sides. By the end of that day, nearly Antony's entire fleet lay on the sea floor. The couple escaped with 90 surviving ships and retreated to Alexandria. A week later, the commanders of Antony's land forces, stranded without sea supply, surrendered their legions without a fight.

• 5. The Fall of Alexandria

  ›

  Even after Actium, Octavian did not rush to finish the war. Many of his veterans wanted to return to private life, and he allowed as many as ten legions, by some accounts, to retire. A number of those legionaries could trace their service to Julius Caesar some twenty years earlier. When winter ended, Octavian resumed the campaign. Rather than attacking Alexandria directly across the sea, he marched his army by land through Asia, cutting off any possibility that Antony could reassemble authority over Rome's eastern client kingdoms along the way. Antony had tried to secure a second front: he sought an army in Cyrenaica from Lucius Pinarius, but Pinarius had already switched his loyalty to Octavian. Octavian ordered Pinarius to move his four legions east toward Alexandria while he himself advanced from the west. Trapped inside the city with roughly 30,000 soldiers, Antony attacked Pinarius's force without knowing he was outnumbered two to one. Pinarius destroyed what remained. When Octavian then arrived with his legions, Antony's cavalry and fleet surrendered, and most of his infantry followed. Antony fell on his sword on the 1st of August, 30 BC, in what the source describes as honourable Roman tradition. The attempt was not entirely successful; with a wound in his abdomen, he was carried to Cleopatra, who had taken refuge in her mausoleum. He died there, according to ancient accounts, in her arms.

• 6. Cleopatra's Last Negotiations

  ›

  Cleopatra did not immediately follow Antony in death. She opened negotiations with Octavian, asking him to spare Caesarion's life in exchange for Caesarion's willing imprisonment. Octavian refused, and according to the accounts, said that two Caesars were one too many. Caesarion was killed. Octavian then informed Cleopatra that she was to appear in his triumph in Rome, and the role was, as the sources record it, carefully explained to her. The historian Strabo, who was alive at the time, recorded that Cleopatra died from a self-induced bite from a venomous snake, or possibly from applying a poisonous ointment to herself. When Octavian learned of her death, his response was mixed. He admired her bravery. He held a public military funeral in Rome for both Antony and Cleopatra, a grand ceremony at which some of Antony's own legions marched alongside the tomb. Rome observed a full day of mourning. The gesture served two purposes: Octavian's genuine respect for Antony, and a demonstration to the Roman people of how generous their new leader could be. As Roman forces departed Alexandria, Egypt was annexed by Rome and became Octavian's personal possession.

• 7. The Republic Becomes an Empire

  ›

  Within a month of Alexandria's fall, Octavian was named pharaoh of Egypt. By executing Antony's supporters in the months that followed, he brought to a close a century of Roman civil war. In 27 BC, the senate bestowed on him the honorific of Augustus and granted him powers without precedent in Roman history. The republic's institutions were preserved in outward form: the senate retained nominal authority over certain provinces. But the critical border provinces, among them Syria, Egypt, and Gaul, those requiring the largest concentrations of legions, passed under direct imperial control. The Roman state would henceforth be governed by a princeps, a first citizen. Augustus passed a series of laws over the ensuing years that secured his position as the paramount authority while maintaining the appearance of republican governance. The peace that followed, the Pax Romana, endured for centuries after his death. Three of the emperors of the 1st century, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero, were direct descendants of Mark Antony. The empire Augustus founded survived in Western Europe until the fall of Rome in the 5th century AD. Its eastern continuation, the Byzantine Empire, held on until the fall of Constantinople in AD 1453.