The Battle of Actium 31 BC

War for the World

Lee Fratantuono

• Publisher: Pen and Sword Military
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781473847156
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia militar y marítima

A good argument could be made that the Battle of Actium was the most significant military engagement in Roman history. On a bright September day, the naval forces of Octavian clashed with those of Antony and Cleopatra off the coast of western Greece. The victory Octavian enjoyed that day set the state for forty-four years of what would come to be known as the Augustan Peace, and was in no small way the dawn of the Roman Empire.Yet, despite its significance, what exactly happened at Actium has been a mystery, despite significant labours and effort on the part of many classicists and military historians both amateur and professional. Professor Lee Fratantuono re-examines the ancient evidence and presents a compelling and solidly documented account of what took place in the waters off the promontory of Leucas in late August and early September of 31 B.C.

Part One

Greek Historical Sources

Chapter 1

The Evidence of Plutarch

Our methodology will be to examine closely the surviving literary attestations of the naval conflict at Actium, with a view to reconstruction and analysis of what might have happened.1 We shall begin with sources written in Greek, before moving to those in Latin. The reason for this is because the surviving Greek sources offer the two longest and most connected narratives of the battle; those of Plutarch and Dio Cassius. Most study of Actium has centred on the evidence of these two accounts, which in large part agree with each other, though they admit to significant difficulties of interpretation. Some shreds of information and reference to Actium can be gleaned too from other sources, but our main concern, other than the narratives in Plutarch and Dio, will be to examine the earliest body of evidence concerning Actium; the references to the battle in the poets of Augustan Rome, Horace, Virgil, and Propertius.2

A Narrative from the Life of Antony

Much of what we know about the conflict between Octavian, Antony and Cleopatra is due to the magnificent achievement that is Plutarch’s Life of Antony.3 The Life was almost certainly composed sometime early in the second century C.E., when Plutarch was in his 50s or 60s, well over a century after the engagement at Actium. It relies on sources that are now lost or at best fragmentary, and it presents a host of difficulties for reconstructing what exactly took place at the battle. But it provides a convenient starting point for inquiry, not least because it is unquestionably the single most influential source for contemporary impressions and understanding of Actium.4 We should remember that we are reading biography and not history of course, and that Plutarch is interested in what we might call the moral dimensions of his story of the rise and fall of Antony, a story in which Cleopatra will play a fatal role.

Actium is a battle where the outcome is not in dispute, but the rationale for the conflict, and the intentions of at least Antony and Cleopatra, are very much matters of controversy and doubt. Plutarch offers an abundance of detail, including passages that have been discussed and studied by numerous scholars of ancient history and classics. We shall move through both Plutarch and our other sources now, with annotated consideration of their accounts of the battle.

Plutarch’s Actium narrative begins in paragraph 60 of The Life. Octavian made his preparations (Plutarch does not detail them; a significant omission for us), and a vote was taken to make war on Cleopatra, and to remove Antony from the command that he had given over to a woman. Octavian claimed that Antony had been drugged, and that the war was actually against the eunuch Mardion, Pothinus, Iras the hairdresser of Cleopatra, and Charmion, figures not mentioned anywhere else in the evidence, though three of the four would have a persistent afterlife in the long and colourful reception of the lore of the queen and her doomed lover.

Omens

Portents preceded the battle, as typically in Roman historical narratives; significantly, the last of the omens recorded by Plutarch concerns Cleopatra’s flagship, the Antonius. Here swallows were said to have made a nest under its stern; the birds were attacked by other swallows, and the nestlings were destroyed. The image may well have been inspired by a simile of the poet Virgil at Aeneid 12.473-480, where the hero, Turnus is assisted by his divine sister Juturna in battle against Aeneas. Juturna takes the place of her brother’s charioteer Metiscus, and proceeds to drive Turnus around the battlefield, essentially keeping him out of the line of fire and the perils of war (she rightly fears for his life). Virgil compares her to a black swallow that flies through the massive halls of a rich lord, seeking food for her hungry nestlings. The goddess is determined to protect her brother, but in fact the image of the swallow in the wealthy dwelling evokes the idea of Juturna seeking out (safe) targets on the battlefield for her brother.

Earthquake portents and the sweating of statues are not uncommon in Roman historiography; bird battles are more difficult to parallel. The only other source that mentions the swallow omen is the second-third century C.E. Roman historian, Dio Cassius (whom we shall consider in detail below), and he notes only the nesting of the birds on the ship, not the seemingly internecine avian war.5 Whether or not the bird was especially associated with the goddess Isis, the omen seemed to be a dark and ominous indicator of imminent disaster.

Forces Arrayed for War

Plutarch proceeds to the marshalling of forces: Antony had no fewer than 500 vessels. The exact specifications of the ships is not noted, except that many were ‘eights’ and ‘tens,’ presumably with reference to the number of men on the oars, but in fact we cannot give definitive explanation of the exact disposition of the sailors on the individual ship types, or the exact way in which the banks of oars were arranged. Antony had 100,000 infantry and 12,000 cavalry; he also had a number of foreign kings in his service: Bocchus of Libya, Tarcondimotus of Upper Cilicia, Archelaus of Cappadocia, Deiotarus Philadelphus of Paphlagonia, Mithridates of Commagene, Sadalas of Thrace, and Amyntas of Lycaonia and Galatia.6 The potentates Polemon of Pontus, Malchus of Arabia, Herod the Great, and Artavasdes of the Medes all sent aid. Antony had the firm support of the great (and lesser) monarchs of the East, at least on paper and in theory.

The principal problem in Plutarch’s rendition of Antony’s forces is that no clear distinction is made in the narrative as to the number of men and horse; we have no idea if the figures given include the foreign contingents. What is clear is that Antony outnumbered Octavian; the latter is credited with having 250 ships (half the force of Antony), 80,000 infantry, and an equal number of cavalry.

Plutarch is our source for the explanation that it was decided to fight on water and not land so as to please Cleopatra.7 In Plutarch’s view it is a proof of Antony’s slavery to Cleopatra that he decided to do this, even when he was both far superior to Octavian on land, and in dire need of men to staff his ships.8 It would seem that Antony was stronger (relative to his foe) on sea than land, given his possession of twice as many ships as Octavian; on land, if Plutarch can be trusted, the two men were equal in cavalry, and Antony had an extra 20,000 men. The question may indeed rest on just how well manned and staffed those many ships were, and also if the allied and subject kings contributed ground forces that are not included in Plutarch’s numbers.9 For the question of relative strength at sea hinged on the ability of the naval commander to man his vessels, the ability to have enough men ready to serve not only as rowers, but also as ‘marines’ for the inevitability raiding of enemy ships. All the ships in the world would be meaningless to Antony and his lover if they had no crews to fill them.

All that said, control of the sea was no mere romantic or adventurous gamble; there was good long-term strategic reason to assert naval supremacy. In Plutarch, Octavian sends an invitation to Antony to come and enjoy an unopposed landing; he promises to withdraw a distance of one day’s cavalry journey to permit Antony both a safe passage and time to set up a camp to prepare for a battle in southern Italy. Antony counteroffers with a demand for single combat, a heroic gesture of Homeric and Virgilian proportions, or at least that the battle be fought at Pharsalus in Greece, the site of the celebrated battle between Caesar and Pompey in August of 48 B.C. It is likely that some of the point of the offer of single combat was an attempt by the older, more experienced Antony to poke fun at his younger, sickly adversary. The desire to settle everything by single combat had been proposed in the Iliad in the case of Menelaus and Paris, and in Virgil’s Aeneid it constitutes the climactic scene of the poem, as the Trojan Aeneas confronts the Rutulian Turnus, but there would be no such drama at either Actium or Alexandria. An offer of single combat was not to be taken seriously, except when it was.

If we can trust the historicity of the offers, it would seem that on the surface, Octavian wanted to fight in Italy, and Antony in Greece; indeed, at the very place where Caesar had defeated Pompey.10 Plutarch locates Antony’s force at Actium, near the so-called City of Victory (Nicopolis) that would be founded by the victor after the campaign. Actium was the promontory that guarded the Ambracius Sinus or ‘Ambracian Gulf’; it was a natural enough locale in western Greece for a naval base, with an entrance that does not even measure a half-a-mile in length (and was thus easy to defend ably with towers and other fatal threats to those who would try to launch a frontal assault).11 There was a celebrated temple of Apollo at Actium, a feature of the locale that is noted by Thucydides in his great history of the Peloponnesian War.12

Octavian meanwhile, is credited with making the crossing of the Ionian Sea ahead of Antony (if the latter actually intended one at this point), and landing at Torune in Epirus.13 The exact location of Torune is disputed; Plutarch records that Cleopatra made an obscene joke about how it was of no concern that Octavian was now sitting on a ladle.14

The identification of Torune was likely complicated by the presence of Torone to the north (a location likely too far north to be the landing and settlement place of Octavian’s force). Cleopatra’s jests aside, Antony and his officers were disturbed by the news; certainly they had lost the strategic initiative and were now (at least for the moment) on the defensive. In Plutarch’s version, Octavian essentially answers Antony’s challenge for settling matters in Greece; he preemptively crosses the Ionian Sea. Antony was clearly surprised by the speed of the naval operation and amphibious landing; soon enough he manages something of a ‘show piece’ display of naval strength to conceal his serious deficiencies in crews, a ruse that succeeds in forcing Octavian to withdraw his naval force after its first sortie.15

Defections …

At this point in his narrative, Plutarch notes the defections of Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus and of kings Amyntas and Deiotarus Philadelphus, certainly signs of increasing worry and displeasure with the course of affairs.16 Perhaps curiously, Plutarch observes that Antony’s navy was always unlucky, and indeed perpetually late in rendering aid.17 As we shall see soon enough, this may well constitute a reference to other episodes in the larger Actian campaign. There may be an allusion too, to the hope for additional allied support. Plutarch relates that Antony was compelled to pay attention to his land army in the face of naval disappointments; the point in context would seem to be that failure to achieve a quick victory at sea forced a revision of strategy and the prospect of a more or less protracted land campaign. Publius Canidius Crassus, Antony’s commander for land forces, urged that Cleopatra be sent away, and that the army depart for Macedonia and Thrace. This recommendation is presented as a change of mind on Canidius’ part; certainly it reflects growing irritation in Antony’s ranks with the Egyptian queen.18 Specifically, Plutarch cites Canidius’ advice that Antony withdraw to await help from Dicomes of the Getes, Thracian tribesman from what is today part of Bulgaria and Romania. The mention of the Getes may reflect any aforementioned disappointment in the matter of naval reinforcement, and it comes with Canidius’ explicit admonition to abandon the sea and prepare for a stand on land.19 Plutarch’s narrative is replete with evidence for the disagreement and disputes in Antony’s camp, news of which would have been a significant part of the reports of the defectors to Octavian. The provenance of the intelligence however, is no good reason to doubt its truth; if anything, a telling detail in the preliminaries to Actium is the evidence we have that Octavian and Agrippa may have originally disagreed on the battle strategy. Agrippa won, or more pointedly, it seems that Octavian was willing to yield to Agrippa, whereas it is not entirely clear that Antony was always (or even often) able to do the same with respect to his lover. The history of the victors would of course admit of no serious dissension in Octavian’s camp, but the evidence does provide good reason to believe that one side enjoyed far more cooperation and collegial planning sessions than the other.

In Antony’s camp, Cleopatra won the day to be sure, and the decision was taken to fight at sea; for Plutarch, the queen was already planning an escape.20 The key detail here may be that Cleopatra disposed of her forces where they would most easily be able to flee; perhaps if she had departed in accord with Canidius’ recommendation, her force would have been expected to stay behind to aid Antony (especially in time of deficiencies in manning ships).21 Certainly it is plausible that the same queen who wanted a fight on the water would also want a ready escape plan in the face of disaster. Those who condemn her for fleeing should be reminded that she could not very well return to the Ambracian Gulf; her situation there would arguably have been even more hazardous than Antony’s.

… and Ambush.

Plutarch also records a story that Antony was nearly ambushed and captured alive by Octavian’s forces during a private walk he took between walls extending from his naval base to his camp; a slave apparently advised Octavian that such an ambush would be possible. In the end, the a...