All power in Rome was now in the hands of one man. Formally, however, the republic had not ceased to exist. Magistracies and honors were heaped upon Caesar in the first years, but his position seemed to require a more formal expression. In 46 BC, he became dictator, as Sulla had been, first for ten years, then in 45 BC for life. In fact, it was the inauguration of a monarchy, albeit without the name. As dictator Caesar reorganized the administration of the provinces and enlarged the senate to 900 men, opening that body to many new families from now totally Roman Italy. The number of recipients of free grain in Rome was brought down to 150,000. For the proletarians and for countless veterans, new Roman colonies were founded outside Italy, the most famous of which were the rebuilt cities of Carthage and Corinth. The Italian towns received a uniform municipal organization. Lastly, the traditional lunar calendar, which had gone wildly wrong (the intercalations required to make the lunar calendar run more or less parallel to the solar year had been neglected for a long time), was replaced by a modernized solar calendar, the work of Alexandrian scholars who improved upon the old Egyptian solar calendar. Caesar’s calendar numbering 365 days, divided over 12 months in 3 consecutive years, and 366 days in the fourth year, came into effect on the 1st of January 45 BC and has since then remained the basic calendar in the West and since the last few centuries in the world at large.
Caesar’s position had by 45 BC become that of an absolute ruler. Presumably, he himself wanted to formalize this by instituting a monarchy after the model of Hellenistic kingship. That provoked the bitter resistance of traditionally minded senators, and on the 15th of March 44 BC, when he was entering the assembly of the senate, Caesar was murdered by a small group of senators, among whom Brutus and Cassius were the best known. There immediately ensued a period of political chaos and renewed civil wars. Caesar had in his will made a grandnephew named Octavius his heir, and this young man of 18 years at once presented himself to Caesar’s troops and, having assured himself of their loyalty, came to Rome to claim the political heritage of the dictator by convincing the senate and the people that Caesar had posthumously adopted him. The senate, which had for a very short time played with the idea of restoring the old republic, was forced to grant the
Young Caesar Octavianus various powers and soon even the consulship. Allied with Marcus Antonius (Mark Antony), Caesar’s most important general, Octavian proved to be a shrewd politician. Together with another general, Lepidus, he and Mark Antony coerced the senate in 43 BC to recognize their triumvirate as a provisional government with plenipotentiary powers to reform the state and punish the murderers of Caesar. These, under the leadership of Brutus and Cassius, had in the meantime assembled an army in the eastern provinces. There, in 42 BC in two consecutive battles at Filippoi in Macedonia, they were defeated and killed, after which Antony remained in the east, while Octavian returned to Rome. Shortly thereafter, they more or less divided the Mediterranean world among themselves: Antony got the eastern provinces, and Octavian the western ones, while Italy remained as a recruiting base for both. In practice, however, Italy fell within the sphere of Octavian, who soon asserted his authority also over Sicily, where a son of Pompey had managed to maintain himself and harass Italy with his fleet. He disarmed Lepidus, and now only Antony was left, who in the meantime had met Cleopatra, married her, and started to reorganize his power around Egypt, dreaming of a Roman-Greco-Egyptian empire centered on Alexandria. Octavian began a propaganda war against his “degenerate” rival, who had been ensnared by an oriental queen, and mobilized opinion in Rome and Italy against the couple. In 32 BC, the final rupture between the rivals occurred. The Roman population of Italy and the western provinces swore an oath of loyalty and obedience to Octavian, who thereafter set out for the east with a huge army and fleet. In 31 BC, the decisive battle took place at sea off the western Greek coast at Actium (Aktion). Antony’s fleet was defeated, and he and Cleopatra fled with the Egyptian squadron to Alexandria. Octavian followed with his army, and in 30 BC Antony killed himself. A few days later, Cleopatra, taken prisoner by Octavian, committed suicide too. The state of the Ptolemies was then formally annexed by the victor. The Mediterranean world was now united in one empire under one ruler.
World History
