In the early 30s both Antony and Octavian were preoccupied with the consolidation of their rule. Although Octavian had been as guilty as anyone of bringing disruption to Italy he now sought to portray himself as a man of peace wedded to the restoration of traditional Roman values. His background as the son of a wealthy landowner from the town of Velitrae in the Alban Hills equipped him to understand the needs of provincial Italy and the deep longing there was for stability but he also showed himself an adept propagandist. He associated himself with the god Apollo, the god of reason and order. One of the symbols of Apollo was a snake and rumours spread as to how Octavian’s mother had been impregnated by one (like Olympias, the mother of Alexander). Octavian’s comparatively modest house on the Palatine, now rediscovered, was attached to an imposing temple to the god.
By fostering traditional Roman values Octavian was implicitly condemning the influence over Rome of the east. Here Antony played into his hands. When Antony had assumed command in the east after Philippi he had worked hard to restore order among the client states of the empire. One of these was Egypt, and so Cleopatra, who had strengthened her position by murdering her younger brother and placing the 4-year-old Caesarion as co-ruler in his place, was summoned to Antony in 41. She upstaged him by appearing in a magnificent barge, weighted with gold and suffused with the perfumes of the Orient. (The vivid description of her arrival in Plutarch’s life of Antony proved a direct inspiration for Shakespeare in his Antony and Cleopatra.) Antony, who, in contrast to the austere Caesar, had a weakness for opulence, succumbed. He spent the winter of 41 with Cleopatra in Alexandria and she bore him twins. It is impossible to disentangle the components of their relationship. Undoubtedly it depended partly on the exotic setting of their romance and sexual attraction, but Antony certainly had his eye on the wealth of Egypt as well. For Cleopatra Roman support was essential if her kingdom was to survive, and she was prepared to grant her favours to the strong man of the day. (Whatever the bond between the two, it was not indissoluble. The couple spent four years apart between 40 and 36, a period when Antony was married to Octavian’s sister, Octavia.)
The major threat to the stability of the eastern empire now came from Parthia, the only well-organized state on its borders. In 39 Parthian forces invaded Syria and even entered Jerusalem. They were repulsed. Antony, who had sent Octavia home when she had become pregnant and renewed his relationship with Cleopatra, now planned a major invasion of Parthia. It was launched in 36 and ended in disaster. Antony was forced to withdraw his forces with the loss of 22,000 legionaries, a third of his men.
Little help could be expected from Octavian and from now on Antony was increasingly dependent on Cleopatra. In 34 the lovers staged a great ceremony in Alexandria. They sat together on a pair of golden thrones with Cleopatra robed as the goddess Isis. Caesarion was declared the true heir of Caesar (an obvious affront to Octavian) and, with his mother, joint ruler of Egypt and Cyprus. Antony had already granted Cleopatra the rich timber-bearing coastline of Cilicia. (Egypt was as short of timber as it had been 2,000 years before.) Their three children, the twins and a son now 2 years old, were each proclaimed rulers of eastern provinces. Antony claimed no royal powers for himself, but when the news of the ceremony reached Rome in 33 it was easy for Octavian to damn him as the plaything of a powerful woman who was corrupting Roman virtues with the decadence of the east. Octa-vian unscrupulously published Antony’s will showing that he wanted to be buried with Cleopatra in Alexandria. To stress the contrast he put in hand a vast mausoleum for himself that dominated the approach into Rome whether by river or along the Via Flaminia. (It survives in a much dilapidated state.) Although Antony retained some support in Rome, Octavian was winning the propaganda battle. Antony too had associated himself with a god, Dionysus. Dionysus was acceptable as a role model for a ruler in the east but in Rome he was seen only as a god of indiscipline and decadence and Octavian played on the connotations. The campaign paid off. A swell of support for Octavian in provincial Italy gave him the auctoritas, the status, to cancel the consulship promised to Antony for 31. When Cleopatra now crossed with Antony to Greece, the move could be sold as an invasion of the empire to which Octavian as consul himself for the year must respond.
The final act was in many ways an anticlimax. Both Antony and Octavian mustered vast forces. Antony had thirty legions and 500 ships, Octavian a fleet of 400. They met at Actium, a cape on the western coast of northern Greece. Octavian’s forces managed to cut Antony off from the Peloponnese and Antony was reduced to trying to break out with his fleet. When the breakout failed he and Cleopatra abandoned their forces and fled to Egypt. Octavian was able to take the surrender of both army and navy. A year later Octavian arrived in Egypt, and seized
Alexandria and the treasures of the Ptolemies. In one of the more memorable death scenes of history (Plutarch once again excels himself) Antony stabbed himself, while Cleopatra had herself bitten by an asp. Caesarion was later murdered. Egypt, the last of the great Hellenistic kingdoms, was now in the hands of Rome. At last, wrote the poet Horace in one of his Odes, the time for drinking and dancing had come. Octavian celebrated his victory by creating a vast monument overlooking the sea at Actium whose fragments, with reliefs of his triumph in Rome, have only recently (in the 1990s) been excavated.
World History
