The War That Made the Roman Empire

Antony, Cleopatra, and Octavian at Actium

Barry Strauss

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781982116699
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia antigua romana

A "splendid" ( The Wall Street Journal ) account of one of history's most important and yet little-known wars, the campaign culminating in the Battle of Actium in 31 BC, whose outcome determined the future of the Roman Empire. Following Caesar's assassination and Mark Antony's defeat of the conspirators who killed Caesar, two powerful men remained in Rome—Antony and Caesar's chosen heir, young Octavian, the future Augustus. When Antony fell in love with the most powerful woman in the world, Egypt's ruler Cleopatra, and thwarted Octavian's ambition to rule the empire, another civil war broke out. In 31 BC one of the largest naval battles in the ancient world took place—more than 600 ships, almost 200, 000 men, and one woman—the Battle of Actium. Octavian prevailed over Antony and Cleopatra, who subsequently killed themselves.The Battle of Actium had great consequences for the empire. Had Antony and Cleopatra won, the empire's capital might have moved from Rome to Alexandria, Cleopatra's capital, and Latin might have become the empire's second language after Greek, which was spoken throughout the eastern Mediterranean, including Egypt.In this "superbly recounted" ( The National Review ) history, Barry Strauss, ancient history authority, describes this consequential battle with the drama and expertise that it deserves. The War That Made the Roman Empire is essential history that features three of the greatest figures of the ancient world.

Part 1 THE SEEDS OF WAR

44 to 32 BC

Chapter 1 The Road to Philippi

Rome-Philippi, 44 to 42 BC

THE BATTLE OF ACTIUM IN 31 BC is rooted in events going back decades. But it grew in particular out of a war that started in 49 BC when Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon River into Italy. By taking his legionaries and fording that small river, which marked the boundary between the military zone of Gaul and the civilian area of Italy, Caesar began a civil war that went on for four years. Caesar defeated all his enemies, and, in the end, he was proclaimed Rome’s first-ever dictator in perpetuity. That created so much hostility among the old elite that a group of senators stabbed him to death in a meeting of the Senate in Rome on March 15, 44 BC. The infamous Ides of March.

The assassins thought that they were restoring the republic. Instead, they stirred up a coalition that eventually united Caesar’s fractious followers. It took more than a year for those followers to come together, and then only after a period of armed conflict that left a legacy of distrust. In April 44 BC, however, their paths briefly crossed. It was the month after Caesar’s murder, in a season of rain showers and blossoms but overshadowed by death.

April 44 BC found all the leading players of the next decade and a half in and around the city of Rome. They were the protagonists of the history not just of Rome but also of the Mediterranean. Mark Antony was one of two consuls, Rome’s highest public officials; the other consul was a man of much less authority. Cleopatra was queen of Egypt, ruler of the wealthiest independent kingdom left in the Roman sphere. Octavian had just been named Caesar’s son by posthumous adoption and heir to most of the dictator’s enormous fortune. His older sister, Octavia, was married at the time to an important Roman politician and ex-consul, but that would change in the not-distant future. Finally, there was Agrippa, Octavian’s boyhood friend and trusted companion, later to become his indispensable admiral. These men and women were about to scatter across the Roman world, but they would all meet again, most of them in battle at Actium, thirteen years later.

Cleopatra left Rome first. A combination of business and pleasure had brought the young queen to the city the year before. She was twenty-five years old. It was not unusual for foreign rulers to visit Rome on diplomatic matters, but Cleopatra was also Caesar’s mistress. After their affair in Egypt, she gave birth to a son in 47 BC. Named Ptolemy called Caesar, he is better known by his nickname, Caesarion. Cleopatra claimed that Caesar was the father. The dictator himself neither acknowledged nor denied it. Perhaps she had brought the boy with her to Rome. In any case, it appears that she had just conceived another child by Caesar but suffered a miscarriage.

Cleopatra did not depart Rome quickly after the Ides of March. She wasn’t just a grieving mistress but also a queen, and, for Egypt’s sake, she needed to ensure the continued friendship of Rome’s new rulers—whoever they would be. She had met many prominent people during her time in Rome, including Mark Antony.

One of Caesar’s best generals, Antony was the scion of a leading but louche noble family. At thirty-nine, he was the old man of this company. A warrior at heart, he was also a gifted orator. He was no revolutionary and had more respect for the republic’s traditional institutions than some, but he was hardly a principled conservative.

Aged eighteen, Octavian was a prodigy. On his father’s side, he came from the Italian upper middle classes, but his mother’s mother belonged to one of Rome’s great noble houses, the Caesars. Julius Caesar was his great-uncle, and he took the boy under his wing after Octavian lost his father at the age of four. In autumn 45 BC, six months before his death, Caesar changed his will to Octavian’s benefit. Caesar then sent the eighteen-year-old across the Adriatic Sea to take part in the organization of a new military campaign in the East planned for later 44 BC. At the news of Caesar’s assassination, Octavian returned to Italy and, moving cautiously, eventually made his way to Rome, accompanied by an entourage including Agrippa. Now Octavian, undaunted by his youth, aimed for great power. Antony resented the young man’s claim to have leapfrogged to the top because of Caesar’s will, and he had every intention of thwarting Octavian.

Already in that Roman spring of 44 BC, these five men and women must have suspected that their ambitions would bring them together and apart. They could never have guessed, however, just how much drama lay ahead.

The Rise of Antony

In April 44 BC Caesar’s assassins made their way out of Rome and Italy to the various provinces. Some commanded armies, some governed provinces, some raised money, some recruited allies—but all prepared for a coming struggle with the supporters of the late dictator. In Rome, politics coalesced around Antony and Octavian.

It isn’t easy to tell Antony’s side of the story. Most works produced after Actium championed the victor, Octavian, not the defeated Antony. With the exception of the coins issued in his name—indicators of his communications strategy—and a few quotations from his letters, Antony’s own works are lost. What does survive is Plutarch’s Life of Antony, the single most important literary source. A masterly writer, Plutarch (Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus, who died sometime after the year 120) is at his best in Antony, the most memorable of his fifty biographies known collectively as Parallel Lives or Plutarch’s Lives. Shakespeare used the Life as the basis for his play Antony and Cleopatra in 1607. But Plutarch must be read cautiously. To begin with, he wrote more than a century after Antony’s death. Although he consulted earlier sources from both sides, Plutarch tends to give the official, Augustan point of view. Besides, Plutarch has his own literary and philosophical agenda to advance, and he is not above creative invention from time to time. In the ninth volume of Lives, Plutarch paired Antony with Demetrius the Besieger (337 to 283 BC), famous as a great but failed Macedonian king and general.

Even more problematic is Philippics, consisting of fourteen speeches against Antony written in 43 BC by Marcus Tullius Cicero—a very hostile source. Various histories written in the Imperial era preserved information about Antony, and the most important are works by two Roman citizens from the Greek East: Appian of Alexandria (who died sometime around AD 165) and Cassius Dio of Bithynia (today’s northwestern Turkey) (died about AD 235).

Reading between the lines will help to reconstruct Antony’s version of history, but it can never provide as much detail as there is about his victorious rival, Octavian—soon to become Augustus, Rome’s first emperor. Even two thousand years later, we study Augustus for lessons in everything from the rules of power to life hacks. Nobody looks to Antony for lessons except negative ones.

Antony was born on January 14, around 83 BC, into a noble Roman family. The Antonii were successful but scandalous, and Antony ran true to form. His paternal grandfather, Marcus Antonius, a distinguished orator and lawyer, served in the two high offices of consul and censor. Yet he was murdered in 87 BC during the civil wars between two Roman generals: Gaius Marius and Sulla (Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix). It was said that his hiding place was betrayed by his weakness for wine. The old man’s severed head was nailed to the speakers’ platform in the Forum along with those of other prominent victims, including Antony’s maternal grandfather and uncle.

Young Antony grew up in the shadow of their deaths and of his father’s failure when given command of a campaign against pirates based in Crete. The father, also named Marcus Antonius, performed so poorly that people stuck him with the catty nickname Creticus, implying he was the “Conqueror of Crete.” He died shortly afterward.

Antony’s mother, Julia, remarried a patrician who was expelled from the Senate for immorality a year after serving as consul. In 63 BC he joined in what became known as the Catiline Conspiracy, a violent movement in aid of debtors and political renegades. Betrayed and arrested, he was executed without trial on the order of Cicero, who was consul. Antony loathed Cicero from then on.

Handsome young Antony was vigorous, athletic, charming, and charismatic. At various periods of life, he wore a beard in imitation of Hercules, the demigod claimed by his family as an ancestor. Yet Antony was no model youth. He grew notorious in Rome for drinking, womanizing, racking up debts, and keeping bad company before settling down some by his midtwenties. He studied rhetoric in Greece and excelled as a cavalry commander in the East between 58 and 55 BC. In his earliest armed encounter, he was the first man on the wall during a siege, thereby demonstrating great physical courage. Other military engagements followed. As an officer, he endeared himself to his soldiers by eating with them.

Antony served Caesar well in Gaul. Among other things, he was Caesar’s quaestor—both paymaster and quartermaster—and he worked closely with his commander, to whom he then owed a lifelong obligation of loyalty (fides). Back in Rome in 50 BC, Antony held elective office as one of the ten people’s tribunes, elected each year to represent ordinary citizens’ interests. Antony tried to stop the Senate from replacing Caesar as governor of Gaul and ordering his arrest, but he was rebuffed and fled Rome for Caesar’s camp.

Antony then emerged as a fine general and political operative during the civil war (49 to 45 BC) that followed Caesar’s crossing the Rubicon. He received such important assignments as organizing the defense of Italy, bringing Caesar’s legions across an enemy-infested Adriatic Sea, and linking up with Caesar in Roman Macedonia. Antony rendered his greatest service at the Battle of Pharsalus in central Greece on August 9, 48 BC, where he commanded Caesar’s left flank in that decisive battle against his rival, Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (106 to 48 BC), known as Pompey the Great. When Caesar’s veterans broke Pompey’s ranks, Antony’s cavalry chased the fleeing enemy.

Yet for all his success in the field, Antony was never the man in charge. In politics, he displayed less than a deft touch. He went back to Rome on Caesar’s orders after Pharsalus, while Caesar spent the next year in the East. In Rome, Antony served as master of the horse (magister equitum), as a dictator’s second in command was called. Antony now resumed with abandon his debauched lifestyle. The sources speak of wild nights, public hangovers, vomiting in the Forum, and chariots pulled by lions. It was hard to miss his affair with an actress and ex-slave who went by the stage name of Cytheris, “Venus’s Girl,” since she and Antony traveled together in public in a litter.

Both civil and military order in Rome slipped away from Antony’s control. When proponents of debt relief and rent control turned violent, he sent troops into the Forum, and blood flowed—they killed eight hundred. Meanwhile, some of Caesar’s veteran legions, now back in Italy, mutinied for pay and demobilization. Caesar returned to Rome in the fall. He put down the mutiny and agreed to reduce rents, although he refused to cancel debts. As for Antony, Caesar condemned him in the Senate but soon forgave him.

Antony now settled down once more by marrying again after a divorce, this time choosing a twice-widowed noblewoman, Fulvia. Of all the powerful Roman women of the era, Fulvia is in a class of her own. She recruited an army. Hostile propaganda claimed that she once even wore a sword and harangued the troops, but she did most of her fighting with words. A supporter of the common people through and through, Fulvia married three politicians in turn: first, the street-fighting demagogue Publius Clodius Pulcher; then, Gaius Scribonius Curio, a people’s tribune who supported Caesar; and, finally, and most fatefully, Antony. His enemies claimed that Fulvia controlled Antony, which is not true. But this strong woman probably stiffened his spine, and she almost certainly shared with Antony the political skills learned from her two previous husbands. Antony benefitted from this partnership.

Antony played key roles in the events of the fatal year of 44 BC. At the festival of the Lupercalia in Rome on February 15, it was Antony who offered Caesar the crown, thereby shocking a crowd in the Roman Forum. Caesar refused ostentatiously—twice.

At a Senate meeting on the Ides of March, March 15, a group of assassins, led by Marcus Brutus, Gaius Cassius Longinus, and Decimus Brutus, struck down Caesar. Had Antony been sitting beside his colleague in the Senate House, he might have helped fight off the killers long enough to allow friendly senators in the room to come to Caesar’s aid and save his life. But Antony was outside the building, where one of the conspirators had purposefully detained him, thereby leaving Caesar alone on the podium when the assassins surrounded him and struck.

Antony fled after the murder, supposedly having disguised himself by changing his toga for a slave’s tunic—but that is surely slander. In the following week, he played a key role. He talked armed and angry supporters of Caesar out of attacking the assassins, who had taken refuge on the Capitoline Hill. He steered the Senate into a compromise, offering amnesty for the killers while maintaining all of the measures that Caesar had put into effect as dictator. He moved successfully that the Senate abolish the hated title of dictator. Then, he turned around and presided over a funeral for Caesar so emotional that it devolved into a riot, after which a mob murdered one supposed assassin (it was the wrong man) and intimidated the others, who soon fled Rome.

Antony was in the prime of life and ready to don Caesar’s mantle as heir. But in his will, Caesar left his name and most of his fortune to Octavian. Antony no doubt burned about this. Octavian was kin to Caesar, but so was Antony—although only a distant cousin. Time and again Antony had risked his life for Caesar on the battlefield and sealed the great man’s victories; Octavian had yet to draw first blood.

The Rise of Octavian

He was born on September 23, 63 BC. Or, rather, we might ask: Who was born then? Even Octavian’s name is a matter of public relations. He was born Gaius Octavius. After accepting the offer of posthumous adoption in Caesar’s will, Octavius became known as Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus. Or, rather, he should have been called that, according to standard Roman naming practices. But he rejected the name Octavianus and insisted on being called Caesar. Most historians today call him Octavian, but only until he reached the age of thirty-five in 27 BC. From then on, he took the title by which he is best known today: Augustus. It is complicated, but so was the man behind the names.

His father, also Gaius Octavius, was wealthy and ambitious but not a Roman noble, and he came not from the capital but from a small town to its south. His ticket upward was his marriage to Julius Caesar’s niece Atia Balbus, but he died suddenly when Octavian was four years old. Although Atia remarried soon, she entrusted Octavian to her mother, Julia, who raised the boy during his formative years. Julia’s brother was in the process of conquering Gaul and becoming the first man in Rome.

While Octavian grew up, Caesar was revolutionizing Rome, which functioned as a self-governing republic. The people and the elites shared power through institutions such as assemblies, courts, elected officials, and the Senate. In theory, at any rate: in practice, the republic could not prevail against a conquering general like Caesar and his tens of thousands of loyal soldiers.

Rome, it seems, was caught in a maze of political, military, social, economic, cultural, and administrative impossibilities. Only someone who could tame Rome and its empire could bring lasting peace. Caesar was not that man. He was a conqueror, not a builder. But if Caesar couldn’t do it, who could?

Caesar had no legitimate son of his own, although, as mentioned, he probably had sired Caesarion. Technically, Cleopatra might well have held Roman citizenship, as her father had, but what mattered in the public eye was that she was queen of Egypt. Instead of Caesarion, Caesar chose Octavian as his heir.

Burning with ambition, Octavian was a natural politician: intelligent, charming, and careful in his choice of words. He was bright eyed and handsome, with slightly curly blond hair. Short and somewhat frail, he was not imposing in his looks, but he made up for it by the force of his character. Although not a born soldier, he was tenacious, cunning, and brave, with an iron will. And he had his mother, Atia, who surely sang his praises to Caesar at every opportunity.

A prominent boy such as Octavian had many friends, one of whom turned out to be his lifelong right-hand man, Marcus Agrippa. Like Octavian, he came from a prosperous Italian family, although without any connection to the Roman nobility. What Agrippa had in abundance was practical genius. He was courageous, assertive, and, above all, loyal. To be sure, Octavian had a gift for making men follow him. In Agrippa’s case, Octavian went to Caesar and got Agrippa’s brother fre...