THE LIFE AND TIMES OF MARC ANTHONY

CHAPTER XIX

The Final Quarrel between Antony and Octavian,

and Rome’s Declaration of War against Cleopatra, 33-32 BC

Antony, it will be recalled, had left a considerable Roman force in Armenia, and had concentrated a large army in Syria. Still enthralled by his vision of Oriental conquest, his plan, I think, was now to march several more of his legions into Armenia, and thence to move on into Media, where he and the Median King would together work out their plan of campaign and make the proper disposition of their united armies. He intended then, it would seem, to leave the invasion of Parthia from the north in the hands of his generals, and himself to return to the south with a powerful force of Median mounted archers, and to lead these and the legions left in Syria together across the desert to Parthia by the Mesopotamian route. The double invasion from the north and the south would probably overwhelm the Parthians; and, with the attendance of good fortune, the two invading armies might meet again on the far-off banks of the Indus.

He marched to Armenia and thence to Media without mishap; and there he and his generals perfected their plans with the Median monarch, who handed over to him the required force of cavalry, and at the same time delivered to him his little daughter, Iotapa, so that Antony might carry her back to Syria with him, and send her on to Alexandria to be educated in Cleopatra’s palace with her boy-husband, Alexander Helios, to whom, it will be recalled, she had already been married by proxy. As a further token of goodwill he returned to Antony the military standards captured from the Romans in the disaster to the siege-train. The scope of the alliance was then extended by the promise of the Median King that he would give what aid he could to Antony in the event of a struggle with Octavian—a contingency which seemed likely to happen at no very distant date.

Antony had already—on his arrival in Armenia—received letters from his friends in Rome reporting the capital’s first reaction to his announcement of his donations of territory to Cleopatra’s family, which had been decidedly unfavorable; and he was expecting that his relations with Octavian would soon become strained. But when he was about to set out on his long march back into Syria at the head of the Median cavalry which he was going to use in his southern campaign, he received further dispatches from Rome of so ominous a character that an his plans were upset. It was now mid-summer of the year 33 BC, and these dispatches, which had left Rome in the late spring, gave him details of what had happened there since the digestion of the news of his high-handed actions. 

In the first place there was the matter of his relationship to Octavia. When he had told that unfortunate lady to go back to Rome, Octavian had very naturally felt that she had been insulted, and had advised her, though in vain, to cease to reside in Antony’s house—that great mansion on the Palatine which had once belonged to Pompey. But when it had become clear that Antony had contracted some sort of marriage with Cleopatra, the angry Octavian had again pressed her to leave her errant husbands house, declaring that the insult could only be wiped out in blood. Octavia, however, had implored him with many tears not to resort to arms on her account, saying that it was intolerable that a great civil war should be waged simply because her husband, on the one part, had left her for another woman, and her brother, on the other, resented this treatment of his sister. "”And her behavior”, writes Plutarch, “proved her words to be sincere, for she remained in Antony’s house, and took the noblest and most generous care of his children receiving all his friends who came to Rome on any business, and even doing her best to recommend Octavian those who were seeking government employment; but this honorable behavior of hers did unintentional damage to Antony’s reputation, for the wrong he had done to such a woman caused him to be disliked, and now this donation of kingdoms to his children by Cleopatra in Alexandria also made him unpopular, for it seemed a theatrical piece of insolence to her and of actual contempt of his native land”.

Again, Antony’s declaration that Cleopatra was to be regarded as Caesar’s widow, and that Caesarion was Caesar’s true son and heir, had raised a storm of protest amongst Octavian’s supporters. Antony had declared, quite truthfully, that Caesar himself had acknowledged the boy as his own; and at this, Caius Oppius, a former friend of Caesar who had attached himself to Octavian, had issued a pamphlet which he had written to prove that Caesarion was not Caesar’s child at all.

Antony had assigned to Domitius Ahenobarbus and Sossius the duty of reading his dispatches to the Senate; but he was now informed that these two men, the Consuls-elect for the next year, had decided that the documents ought not to be read in full in the present state of senatorial opinion, and had only communicated to the House those relating to the disaffection and suppression of the King of Armenia. Thereupon, Octavian himself had told the Senate all that Antony had done, and had used his influence to arouse the public against him and also against Cleopatra whom he accused of having placed Antony under a kind of enchantment. He said it was clear that Antony intended to transfer the seat of government from Rome to Alexandria; and, indeed, it seems that in this he was quite correct, for, obviously, in view of the expected extension of the Roman empire into the Orient, Alexandria would be a much more convenient centre than Rome, as the great Caesar had already seen.

It would appear that in private letters to friends in Italy, Antony had some time ago complained that Octavian had not behaved fairly by the terms of the Triumvirate in discharging Lepidus and in seizing that deposed Triumvir’s legions and sphere of governance, and also in taking possession of all the lands, ships, and men of Sextus Pompeius, without proposing any division of these with Antony. Antony had also protested that Octavian had given all the available lands in Italy to his own ex-soldiers, and had left nothing for Antony’s men when they should be demobilized. And now came a personal answer from Octavian to these complaints, saying cynically in that he was perfectly willing to divide with Antony the new possessions which had come into his hands, on condition that Antony would, on his part, give him a share of Armenia and its loot; and that, as to the gift of lands to the soldiers, it was better, surely, to settle them on the new territory acquired in Armenia and Media.

In this same letter another sore spot was touched upon. The execution of Sextus Pompeius had been much regretted by the old republican party in Rome, and now Octavian, wishing to gain the approval of this section of opinion, accused Antony of having unkindly put him to death when he, Octavian, would have spared him (Antony, it will be recalled, had also wished to spare him, but the execution had taken place before his orders to this effect had been received). Moreover, Octavian further accused Antony of having taken the King of Armenia prisoner by treachery when he had visited the Roman camp under a truce, which, apparently, was not true. Octavian also took the opportunity to make some rude remarks about Cleopatra, describing Antony’s relations with her as immoral in view of the fact that he was married to Octavia.

These dispatches made it clear that Octavian felt strong enough to press his quarrel with his rival to an issue, now that the five years of the renewed Triumvirate were drawing to a close. With the end of the present year the agreement made between the two rivals at Tarentum in 37 BC would terminate; and Octavian’s truculence, which meant that he had no wish to renew the arrangement, came as a shock to Antony who, just now, was regarding himself as supreme in the world and was not prepared to brook defiance from any source whatsoever. He was beside himself with fury, and his anger was increased, no doubt, by the fact that he knew in his heart that, in regard to Octavia at any rate, these censures had good cause. He saw immediately that the Parthian adventure would have to be postponed, and that he would have to fight it out with his rival before venturing to lose himself in the Orient. Impulsively he wrote a reply to Octavian in which he hotly defended his relationship to Cleopatra, and asked how his colleague could dare to criticize him in that regard when he himself was notorious for his loose morals.

He spoke of the scandal of Octavian’s divorce from Scribonia, which, he said, was due to that lady’s resentment at her husband’s misbehavior with other women; and he declared that the circumstances of his hasty marriage to Livia had been disgraceful. He reminded him of an occasion when Octavian had, at a banquet, taken the wife of an ex-Consul from the table to his bedroom, and had brought her back to her outraged husband, who was also his guest, with her hair and clothes disordered and her ears very pink. He stated, further, that Octavian’s friends were in the habit of procuring women for him, and of making an inspection of them as though they were slaves in the market.

He then mentioned several of the young man’s mistresses by name, referring in particular to a certain Drusilla who was his last fancy. “And you do not make free with Drusilla only” he wrote. “When you read this letter, if you still have your health and strength, you will probably be dallying with Tertulla, or Terentilla, or Rufilla, or Salvia Titiscenia, or all of them together, for what do you care where, or upon whom you spend your manly vigor? But why are you changed towards me? Is it because I live with a Queen? She is my wife. Is this a new thing with me? Have I not done so during these last nine years?” - that is to say from 41 BC, in which year Cleopatra came to Tarsus.

He sent this angry and vulgar letter off, and therewith proceeded on his way to the south, dispatching messengers back to the King of Media telling him that the invasion of Parthia must be postponed, and others ahead to Cleopatra notifying her of his change of plans and asking her to meet him.

History has nothing trustworthy to tell us of the meeting or the meeting-place, and it is a question whether Antony crossed the Mediterranean to Alexandria, or made a rendezvous with the Queen in Syria or Asia Minor. It was now his purpose to collect his forces at Ephesus, and presently to proceed to the western coast of Greece whence he could hurl his defiance at Octavian across the Adriatic and force him to fight; but, in the innumerable calls upon his time and in the urgency of the business of gathering men, ships, money, and munitions, it is a question whether he found it necessary to give his personal attention to the mobilization of Egypt’s contribution to the cause, or was content to leave the matter to Cleopatra. He knew, at any rate, that she would be glad to hear that he had decided to tackle Octavian at once; and he could be certain that she would strip her country to the bone to provide the sinews of war.

In the late winter of 33 BC, or in the early weeks of 32 BC, he and Cleopatra arrived together at Ephesus where the great gathering of his forces had already begun. Both of them must have been in a state of great excitement, though in the case of Antony there was an anger, an exasperation, in his heart which must have flashed its flames across the ferment of his hopes and plans. From Cleopatra’s point of view the coming war was greatly to be desired, because the ending of the Triumvirate and the expected eclipse of Octavian would not only place her consort and lover, Antony, in a position to establish a world-throne for himself and her, but would raise her son Caesarion—now nearly fifteen years of age to the status of sole heir of the divine Caesar. It was customary for a youth of Roman blood to assume the toga virilis, the dress of a grown man, on his fifteenth birthday; and thus Caesarion would soon be able to be presented to the Roman world as something more than a child, and when she and Antony should enter Rome in triumph the boy would ride through the streets like a young soldier at the head of the adoring veterans of his father, the deified Caesar. The crushing of Octavian had been delayed too long already; and the removal of that further cause of delay, the Parthian campaign, with its terrible risks of disaster, was a matter of extreme relief to the anxious Queen.

Antony himself viewed the situation somewhat differently. He had been so eager to have his revenge on the Parthians, to emulate the exploits of Alexander the Great, and to add the vast Orient to his Roman dominions; and this necessity of dealing first with Octavian must have come as a great shock to him. But now that he was committed to it, he had thrown himself into the enterprise with confident hopes of success. He knew that there was a large body of opinion in Rome which was warmly attached to him and hostile to Octavian. The two Consuls for the new year, 33 BC, Domitius Ahenobarbus and Sossius, were his firm supporters, and he could reckon on about half the members of the Senate as his friends. Thus, his rival would be beset by enemies in his own camp.

Moreover Antony could undoubtedly put a larger army into the field than Octavian; and Cleopatra’s fleet, combined with his own, would give him a superiority on the sea also. Again, Italy was on the verge of financial ruin, whereas Antony could command not only the wealth of Egypt but that of a hundred states and cities in his Eastern Empire.

The overthrow of Octavian, therefore, seemed almost a certainty; but when it should become an accomplished fact what, then, would he do? For some time he would have to remain the first magistrate of the Republic, having the title Autocrat or in the eastern empire, and its equivalent, Imperator, in the western dominions; but at length, with Cleopatra as his consort, he would convert his position into an actual sovereignty, and, in the end, would hand on his throne to Caesar’s son, Caesarion. His capital would be Alexandria, or perhaps one of the great cities of Asia Minor or Syria; and Rome would become this world-empire’s second city.

There was one all-important question, however, which must have exercised his thoughts, and have overshadowed all else: during the coming war with Octavian, what would Rome’s attitude be towards Cleopatra? Gradually she had become a very part of his existence. Not by a violent onrush of romantic passion, but by the slow results of intimacy, interdependence, and familiarity, she had taken possession of him little by little, until today he could not think of a life that was separate from her. Octavian’s insulting remarks about her had aroused in him a fury of resentment, and had made him eager to secure her acknowledgment in Rome as his legal wife; yet he knew well enough that her presence at his side would displease all those who supported the old institutions of the Republic and still nursed that ancient hatred of kingship which was the traditional mania of conservative Romans.

Already he had received a letter from Domitius Ahenobarbus urging him to send Cleopatra back to Egypt to await there the outcome of the struggle, in order that public opinion in Rome might not be outraged by his intimate relationship with a queen. But, apart from all other considerations, he could not in fairness dismiss her when he was spending her money—for she had brought with her a huge sum drawn from her Treasury—and was relying on her supplies and armaments, which included a quarter of the ships at his disposal. After all, as one of his generals, quoted by Plutarch, put it, “it would not be just that she who was bearing so great a part of the cost of the war should be robbed of her share of glory in carrying it on, nor would it be polite to offend the Egyptians who were supplying so considerable a part of his naval forces, especially as the Queen was not inferior in wisdom to any one of the kings who were serving with him, she having for years governed a great kingdom by herself alone, and having long lived with him and gained experience in public affairs”.

Antony could argue, too, that his position was surely strengthened in its Caesarian aspect by the fact that he had with him, under his protection, Caesar’s “widow” and the mother of his only son. Yet such arguments were superfluous for the reason that his determination to keep her with him was based upon a now genuine love for her and dependence upon her, and that this determination was rendered all the stronger by the opposition of his supporters in Rome. Opposition always stirred him to defiant, hostile action.

With the ending of the Triumvirate on January 1st, 32 BC, and the beginning of Antony’s great mobilization at Ephesus, the situation became startlingly clear to the people of Rome, and the city was seething with excitement. On that date the Senate met, and the new Consul, Sossius, greatly daring, delivered a speech in praise of Antony and in denunciation of Octavian—who had gone out of town to mark by so doing the termination of his tenure of office as Triumvir. The speech has not been preserved, but it is to be supposed that he enumerated Antony’s causes of complaint, an asked the senators to invite him to return so that he might be given special powers to reorganize the whole empire; and he told them no doubt, that if by blind adherence to Octavian they were to give Antony cause for fear for his own position, a sanguinary war will result.

When this speech was reported to Octavian he at once convened the Senate again, and, on the appointed day, guarded by soldiers and by a large company of his supporters, all of whom carried daggers concealed beneath their robes. Seating himself upon his chair of state between the two Consuls, he addressed the anxious senators, accusing Antony and Sossius of being engaged in a plot to overthrow the Republic; but when his words were received in nervous silence, nobody daring to take sides, he declared in anger that he would bring documentary proof before the House at its next meeting in a few days time. This speech was regarded as tantamount to a declaration of war in defence of Rome, and within a day or so Ahenobarbus and Sossius, the two Consuls, together with several of the leading supporters of Antony, secretly left the city and made their way to Brindisi where they took ship for Greece to join their chief.

Octavian, now thirty-one years of age, was no longer the rash and hesitating opportunist of earlier days. The turmoil and racket of his strangely fated career had accustomed him to life’s alarms, and he was able to think clearly in a situation fraught with dangers. The silent reception of his speech in the Senate revealed to him, perhaps for the first time, the extent of Antony’s following in Rome; and with admirable cunning he decided to direct his attack not against his popular rival but against Cleopatra. Rapidly he spread the story that this unholy Queen of Egypt had set her dark heart upon the conquest of Rome, and with this object in view had bewitched the easy-going Antony by her voluptuous charms, assisted by magic, so that he was no more than her slave. He said that her common form of asseveration was “As surely as I shall one day reign in the Capitol in Rome”; and he told of her skill in enchantment, and how, for instance, she wore that magic ring which enabled her to remain sober while Antony, drinking with her, passed into oblivion.

He then issued an edict which had as its object the removal from the city of all those who would be likely to work against him: he announced that every senator who wished to leave Rome and go over to Antony might do so without hindrance. He was not prepared, however, for the great exodus which immediately took place; and when some four hundred senators promptly left Rome in a body to follow the two Consuls across the Adriatic, he must have received an unpleasant shock. The numbers of the Senate, however, had been greatly increased since the days of Sulla, who had raised them to six hundred; and the departing four hundred represented considerably less than half the assembly. It speaks highly for Antony’s prestige, nevertheless, that so large a company of Rome’s legislators should thus have placed their trust in him and their fortunes in his hands, and should have left their homes and their families in order to associate themselves with him. Allowing for the numbers of like-minded senators who yet did not dare to take the step, it may be supposed that more than half the Senate was really on Antony’s side, in spite of his long absences from the capital, and in spite of the stones spread against him particularly in regard to his relations with Cleopatra and his desire to found a Roman throne for himself and her.

But if Octavian were disturbed by this debacle, Antony must also have been dealt a serious blow by the sudden flight of two of his most trusted friends, who slipped away from him and went over to Octavian. These two were Plancus and Titius. Plancus was last seen by us, it will be recalled, dancing about at one of the Alexandrian parties, painted blue in an impersonation of a sea-god: he had been the foremost of Antony’s boon-companions, and having apparently fallen foul of the Queen, he carried to Rome an exaggerated tale of her influence over her lover which may well have almost raised the hair on the heads of conservative Romans. Titius was the man who had put Sextus Pompeius to death, and it may be that he had quarreled with Antony in regard to the assigning of blame for that unpopular act. But whatever may have been their personal reasons for their departure their change of sides must have been the cause of misgiving to Antony. Could it be possible, he may well have asked himself, that these two men supposed Octavian to have a chance of victory? He could hardly believe it, surrounded as he was by Roman legionaries and foreign soldiers in number like the sands of the sea.

From all directions fighting forces were trooping into Ephesus in response to his general call to arms. From Asia Minor came King Tarcondemus (or Tarcondimotus) of Upper Cilicia, and the young King Archelaus of Cappadocia whom Antony had raised to the throne in 36 BC as a tribute to the charms of his mother, Glaphyra. The Cilicians and Cappadocians, with the Carians, were known as “the three bad C's”; and the troops which these kings brought with them must have been little better than brigands. Philadelphus, King of Paphlagonia, Amyttas, King of a part of Galatia and Lycaonia, and Deiotarus, King of the other part of Galatia, and son of the monarch of the same name who had been restored to his throne by Antony shortly after Caesar’s death, were three other sovereigns of Asia Minor who arrived with their contingents of troops; while King Polemo of Pontus and Armenia Minor, though unable to come in person, sent strong bodies of his celebrated javelin-throwers and light cavalry. The rulers of Bithynia, Phrygia, Pamphylia, Lydia, Lycia, Mysia, and other districts of Asia Minor, also provided their contingents of fighting men. Sadalas and Rhoemetalces, joint Kings of Thrace, arrived at the head of their world-renowned slingers; and the Athenians, Boeotians, Spartans, Macedonians, Thessalians, Rhodians, and other Greek nations, sent their still famous soldiery; while from Crete came a body of the unequalled bowmen of that island.

Mithridates, King of Commagene, the successor of that monarch whom Antony had besieged in Samosata, rode in with his contribution of men. King Herod of Judaea sent a contingent of Jewish troops; the soldiers of Syria were led in by their Roman officers; King Iamblicus of Emesa (Homs) and other kings of the Syrian desert and Sabaea (Sheba) each provided a picturesque quota. King Artavasdes of Media had already supplied a force of mounted archers, and from his new realm of Armenia he now sent further detachments of light cavalry. Even from the shores of the far-off Sea of Azov, north of the Black Sea, came an unruly band of soldiers.

From North Africa arrived King Bogud of Mauretania, son of that Bocchus who betrayed Jugurtha, bringing with him the flower of his army; Libyan troops and the warriors of Cyrene made the long voyage across the sea at Cleopatra’s command; and from the Queen’s own country came troops of Greeks, Egyptians, Ethiopians, and Bedouins. The Roman legions included men recruited in Italy, Gaul, Spain, and Illyria; and there were divisions of Gallic and German cavalry.

The total land-forces at his disposal—not counting four legions left in Egypt, four in Cyrene, three in Syria, and many others at different strategic points amounted to between a hundred and a hundred and fifty thousand men; and against this Octavian could muster no more than eighty thousand, drawn from Italy, Sicily, Gaul, Spain, Sardinia, and parts of North Africa. Antony’s ships numbered at least eight hundred, of which five hundred were men-o’-war; but Octavian, according to Plutarch, had only two hundred and fifty first class fighting ships and a collection of other vessels, which brought his total fighting-force up to about four hundred.

It is not surprising, therefore, that Antony was confident of victory; and he must have felt himself already to be the sovereign lord of the world as he reviewed these troops who had come to him from the corners of the earth, watched the legions of Rome march before him in their tens of thousands, received the respectful salutations of the vassal kings, presided over the meetings of the four hundred senators who had now arrived at Ephesus, gave his orders to the two Consuls, the highest magistrates of Rome, and all the while enjoyed the loving attentions of Cleopatra, Queen of Kings, who, with admiration in her eyes, saw him thus transforming her dreams into reality. There can be no doubt that she loved him now to the depth of her capacity; for glory, magnificence, majesty, and power were the gods of her woman’s heart, and Antony was ringed about with these in such a blaze of splendor that his hours of simple and intimate relaxation at her side or in her arms were a source of boundless pride to her—and pride in the loved-one is a very root of love.

When Octavian’s defiant actions, and his libels upon Cleopatra, were reported to Antony he responded by sending a bill of divorcement to Octavia, at the same time ordering her to leave his house in Rome, which she did, taking with her her own three children by Marcellus, Julus, Antony’s second son by Fulvia, and his two daughters, Antonia the Elder and Antonia the Younger. She wept bitterly as she took her departure; but, in view of the stories which had been spread of Antony’s bewitchment by Cleopatra, “the Romans pitied her not so much as they pitied him, and more particularly those who had seen Cleopatra, whom they reported to have no sort of advantage over Octavia, either in youth or in beauty”. Cleopatra, indeed, was not remarkably beautiful, though it seems that she carried well her thirty-seven years: her attractions, as I have already said, lay in her beautiful voice, her grace, her elegance, her brilliance, her brains, her wit, and her general charm, and with these the unfashionable Octavia’s good looks and docile nature could not compete.

It must be mentioned in passing that history tells us nothing more of Antony’s mother, Julia, after her visit to her son at Athens in 40 BC, eight years ago. If she were still alive she would now have been nearly seventy years of age; but being herself a Caesar and a kinswoman of the great Dictator, she would have been in no danger of molestation in Rome or anywhere else. It is not unlikely that she was spending the evening of her life in Athens.

Towards the end 01 April of this year 32 BC Antony transferred his headquarters to Samos, the historic city on the island of the same name, lying on the western coast of Asia Minor not more than twelve miles, as the crow flies, from Ephesus; and here he celebrated a great festival of some kind. The city was famous for its beautiful buildings, amongst which was the Temple of Hera, the goddess of marriage, which was supposed to mark the site where she was wedded to Zeus. We are not told the nature of Antony’s festival, although Plutarch states that the island resounded for some days with the music of pipes and harps, and that “every city sent an ox as its contribution to the sacrifices”; but I venture to suggest that the celebrations were those of the marriage of Antony and Cleopatra according to Greek or Roman law now that their union had been made legal by the divorce of Octavia, for it is surely more than a coincidence that they should have thus held high festival at a renowned nuptial shrine just at the time when this divorce enabled them to be joined in recognized matrimony. Antony, of course, had regarded Cleopatra as his wife for several years, but their marriage had not been legal outside the sphere of Egyptian law until now.

For these festivities Antony gathered all the stage players from round about to entertain the company, and rewarded them afterwards by assigning them lands near the city of Priene, a few miles south of Epnhesus, thus founding a kind of theatrical colony. Magnificent banquets were given during these days at Samos, and the vassal kings are said to have vied with one another in the sumptuousness of their entertainments.

In May Antony sailed with Cleopatra across the Aegean Sea to Athens, giving orders to the army to follow him into Greece so that a new concentration might be made on the coast opposite Italy. Now Octavia had made herself very popular with the Athenians during her residence there while waiting for Antony’s return; and Cleopatra therefore felt it incumbent upon her to court public favor so that Antony’s change of partners might be understood. So successful was she in this that the Athenians presently decreed her all sorts of civic honors; and Antony came under a good deal of criticism because, on the occasion of the sending of the humble deputation to her to confer upon her these honors, he insisted upon being its leader and making a speech to her. It was considered very droll of him by some, and very undignified of him by others, in view of the fact that he was the prospective lord of creation; but he caused an even greater sensation shortly afterwards by going over to her at a public banquet and affectionately patting her feet. People commented too, on the way he followed her about; and it was said that when they were away from one another, even for a few hours, they were always exchanging tender little notes and messages.

Here at Athens, in fact, they were enjoying a belated honey­moon; and Antony, at the age of fifty-one, was at last in love to distraction. She was now his wife in the eyes of the entire world, and he was immensely proud of her. Her success in winning the affection of the Athenians seemed to prove to him that nobody could resist her; and he felt sure that she would one day have the heart of the good citizens of Rome at her feet as now she had that of the people of Athens. Ephesus, too, during their short stay there, had gone mad about her, and in the streets had shouted at her that they wanted her for their queen. He felt that he could not do enough for her; and he looked forward with eagerness to the day when he would be able to enthrone her at his side as sovereign lady of the whole earth.

Meanwhile in Rome Octavian was suffering from the fears which had followed his bold movement towards warfare, and was collecting his forces at the highest possible speed, believing that Antony would attack before the summer was gone. There is some indication that he attempted to exact from all the cities of Italy an oath of fidelity to him; and he certainly imposed a heavy tax all round, demanding an eighth of the total property of the rich, and a quarter of the income of the small landowners; this, of course, led to riots and bloodshed which he suppressed with a heavy hand, his pitilessness serving him now in good stead, for he soon inspired the refractory elements with a blanched and open-mouthed dread of him little short of petrifaction.

At the same time, however, he made himself as condescending and gracious to his supporters as his callous nature would permit, and he went out of his way to win those whose friendship was doubtful. To Asinius Pollio, Antony ‘s former governor of Macedonia, for instance, he offered a command in his army; but this old general, who had been in retirement for some years, made a reply which is worthy of notice. “No”, he said, “my services to Antony are too great; his kindnesses to me are too notorious: I must keep aloof from this war—and be the prey of the conqueror”.

The renegades Plancus and Titius had both been witnesses of the will which Antony had made in the previous year before setting out for Armenia; and they now told Octavian of the contents of the document and revealed that it had been secretly deposited with the Vestal Virgins in Rome, it being customary to place important legal papers of this kind in the keeping of these sacrosanct nuns. Octavian at once caused the will to be seized by force, although an act of this kind was sacrilege; and, taking it to the Senate, he read to that assembly the clauses which in his opinion were likely to tell against his rival. The document, however, bore the impress of a sincerity by which only Octavian himself was too obtuse to be touched; and Plutarch tells us that many of the senators expressed the opinion that Octavian’s action was scandalous, and they deemed it unfair, in any case, to call a man to account for what was not to be until after his death. In this will Antony had stated that his children by Cleopatra were to be his co-heirs with Caesarion, whom he declared to be the rightful son and heir of Caesar; and he asked that his body should be carried to Alexandria and laid to rest in the tomb wherein Cleopatra was also to lie.

Few thought the less of Antony for the terms of this testament, but many saw in it a confirmation of the Queen’s mysterious power over the great general, and they were ready enough to believe the tales which Octavian was assiduously spreading. He declared that Antony had allowed the people of Ephesus to hail Cleopatra as their queen, thereby indicating that he was going to add this part of Asia Minor to her dominions; he said—which was quite true—that Antony had made her a present of the great library of Pergamus, consisting of nearly a quarter of a million books, which ought to have been sent to Rome; and he repeated with awful gravity the story that the Queen had given love-potions to Antony to drink, which had bereft the poor fellow of his senses, so that nowadays her very ladies-in-waiting, Iras and Charmion, were amongst his chief councilors, and were the generals whom they would have to fight.

Antony’s friends in Rome—and they were still many at length decided that they must warn him of the great danger of this propagation of hatred against Cleopatra and contemptuous pity for Antony for his subservience to her: they felt that the queen’s presence at his side was likely to ruin his cause, and that he ought to be urged to send her back to Egypt at once to await the issue of the war. They therefore deputed one of themselves, an important personage named Geminius, to go over to Athens to try to persuade Antony to separate himself from her for the time being; but when this well-meaning envoy arrived there and made it known that he had something of a secret nature to say to Antony, all the staff regarded him as a spy, and treated him with studied rudeness at those daily banquets in the house of Antony and Cleopatra to which his high standing gave him entrance.

One day, however, when most of the company was slightly intoxicated, somebody brought the matter into the open by drunkenly demanding to know what was the business on which Geminius had come; and to this, having lost his patience, he blurted out a truthful reply: “I will keep most of what I have to say for a soberer hour”, he declared, “but this much I will say here and now, drunk or sober—all will be well if Queen Cleopatra will go back to Egypt”.

Antony turned upon him in anger and surprise; but Cleopatra, her voice icy with resentment, said: “You are wise to have told your secret, Geminius, without having to be put to torture”. The unfortunate man, no doubt, was given an opportunity next day of explaining his mission to Antony; but the advice from Rome fell on deaf ears; and, in fear of his life, Gemimus fled from Athens.

With that began a struggle, partly hidden, partly open, which caused Antony’s headquarters to become a hotbed of intrigue, and introduced a dark element of suspicion into all future discussions of plans and policy. From that hour there was no peace for Antony. Geminius, he discovered to his astonishment, had expressed the views not only of his friends in Rome but of the majority of the Roman senators and officers who were here with him. These men saw clearly that Octavian’s cunning in arousing the resentment of the people at home against Cleopatra was a master-stroke which could only be countered by the Queen’s retirement from active participation in the war. They knew that if the struggle were to be kept as a direct issue between the two great Roman commanders, each desiring simply the political leadership in the Republic, victory was pretty well assured to Antony, and, indeed bloodshed on a large scale might be wholly avoided. He was far more popular than Octavian; and if he were to present himself to the yearning gaze of distracted Rome as democracy’s hero coming to restore peace and prosperity to the Republic, there might well be a landslide in his favor. But the presence of royal Cleopatra at Antony’s side gave Octavian the opportunity to pose as the defender of Rome against foreign monarchist aggression, and placed in his hands a deadly weapon.

Octavian could say, and, in fact, was saying, that Cleopatra was bent upon establishing herself and Antony as actual sovereigns of the eastern empire over which they already ruled, and that she seemed to have ruined his prestige in Rome, and his hopes of returning there to settle triumphantly the dispute between them and Octavian—between the landowners and the veteran soldiers—had to be abandoned. He had no money to take home; and money was the essential factor. The funds which he had expected to receive from Cleopatra had been greatly reduced, I suppose, because of the needs of the Queen herself in placing her country in a state of defence against the Parthians; and whatever amount he had been able to procure from her was now required for the war against these invaders here in Asia Minor. Moreover, matters, in any case, had gone too far in Italy to be so simply set to rights.

It will be recalled that Octavian had shut up Antony’s brother, Lucius, in Perugia, and had wrecked his and Fulvia’s foolish attempt to rid themselves of him by forming a militant coalition of democrats and republicans. After a long but hopeless siege Perugia had surrendered early in March; and Octavian, being anxious not to rupture his relations with Antony for good and all, had allowed Lucius to go unmolested into retirement, at the same time, however, showing the utmost severity to the other prisoners, sentencing great numbers to death, and, to those who implored his mercy, making but one invariable reply: “You must die”. It was said that he had actually selected three hundred of the half-starved citizens, and had slaughtered them before the altar of the deified Caesar on the anniversary of the Ides of March, as a sort of human sacrifice; but we may infer from the words of Suetonius that this story lacked confirmation.

Antony’s family, and the few of his highly-placed officers who had lent support to this armed movement against Octavian, had been allowed to betake themselves unmolested out of the country for Octavian had persisted in his refusal to annoy his colleague by punishing any one of them, and, indeed, his troops would never have allowed him to harm a relative or friend of the popular Triumvir. Antony’s mother, Julia, now a woman of over sixty, had taken flight, however, and had crossed the sea to Sicily, where she had placed herself under the protection of the gallant and picturesque Sextus Pompeius, who was still leading his sea-roving life as the pro-republican commander of an independent fleet. The ill-starred and officially cursing the Queen of Egypt and all her works.

“He had made no declaration of war against Antony himself”, writes Dion Cassius, “knowing that he would be made an enemy in any case, since he was certainly not going to betray Cleopatra and take up Octavian’s cause; and, indeed, it was desired, that this additional reproach should be placed upon him, that lie had of his own free will gone to war against his country in behalf of this Egyptian woman, although no provocation had been offered him, personally, by his countrymen”. Nevertheless, he, Octavian, deprived him officially of his authority, on the grounds that he had allowed a foreign queen to exercise it in his stead;  but this action meant little to Antony, of course, who had the two Consuls and a great part of the Senate with him at Athens and could snap his fingers at the assembly in Rome.

The leader of the party in Athens which advocated the retirement of the Queen to Egypt so that the issue between Antony and Octavian might be clarified, was the Consul Domitius Ahenobarbus whose sympathies had always been stoutly republican and who had been concerned, it will be recalled, in the conspiracy against Caesar. He was a Roman aristocrat of the old school, and his training had imbued him with so proud a republican disdain for all foreign royalty that he would never address Cleopatra by her title, but only by her name, as though to emphasize the fact that she was now simply the wife of a plain Roman magistrate. The news from Rome made him all the more eager to be rid of the Queen, so that Antony might give the lie to Octavian and might, indeed, make a fool of the young man by telling him that Cleopatra, against whom alone war had been declared, had returned to far-off Egypt to await the threatened attacks—an attack which could not be delivered without exposing Italy, almost defenseless, to Antony’s invasion. Ahenobarbus, therefore, implored his chief to send her away; but his appeal was received with a distracted but absolute refusal.

Antony, indeed, was in a terrible dilemma. He saw the force of these arguments, but against them he could advance the plea that Cleopatra, as his wife, as the “widow” of Caesar, and as the mother of Caesar’s child, was too deeply involved in this business to withdraw from it, even if he could do without her aid in ships, supplies, and money. Supposing he were to tell her to go, what would she think? She would think that he was a traitor, abandoning her cause in the interests of his own ambitions; and his love for her did not permit him to tolerate the thought of hurting her thus. She would suppose that he had in mind an accommodation with Octavian, another patching up of their quarrel which, in the event of Antony’s death or loss of power, would leave her and her boy at the mercy of this cold and heartless ruler of Rome. Her life, Caesarion’s life, and all their hopes of safety and happiness, depended upon Antony and upon the removal of Octavian from their path.

But, apart from these considerations, he wanted her to be with him because he loved her, and he believed that she loved him. His destiny had gradually become so linked with hers that he could not so much as consider an existence bereft of her presence. He needed her beside him; and all else in life, even his vast ambitions had become secondary to this overwhelming necessity. The mere suggestion that she should leave him, moreover, had aroused, one may suppose, such a passion of anger and dismay in her that he could not discuss the matter with her nor face the rebuke in her eyes and the heart-breaking lash of her tongue.

I think she must have said to him, that, so far as she was concerned, the matter of the creation of a Roman throne for herself and him could be relegated to the far future, since all she wanted was to be relieved of this gnawing dread of Octavian which haunted her thoughts by day and night. Octavian had let it be known that there could not be two Caesars in the world, there could not be, that is to say, an Octavian and a Caesarion now that the latter was about to come of age; and her one supreme desire was that Antony should rid her life of this menace, even though in doing so he would have to abandon all immediate thought of the dreamed-of throne of the world.

Be this as it may, Antony now told his Roman supporters that it was his chief purpose to re-establish the Republic, and he gave them the promise that immediately after victory had been he would place himself entirely in the hands of the Senate, so that the Roman People might decide in what future capacity he should act. He was able to say this with confidence, and I think he must have had Cleopatra’s approval in saying it, because there was no real doubt in his mind that the extinction of Octavian, followed by the long deferred conquest of Parthia, would throw up a wave of enthusiasm for him which would carry him of itself to the desired throne.

These protestations, however, did not mend the rift; and Ahenobarbus and his party continued with such vehemence to urge him to send Cleopatra away that the enemy’s spies seem to have reported to Rome the likelihood of her immediate departure, and to have set Octavian thinking of the possibility of attacking her in her own country. Antony was harassed by these angry differences of opinion which were causing the Queen often to show towards him a mistrust and a defiant contempt most devastating to their loving companionship; and it seems that on many an occasion he turned for comfort to the wine-cup, and drank himself into a condition of quiescence. Cleopatra, as has been said, was a woman of great tenacity of purpose, and she was determined to prevent Antony from passing under the influence either of those who even now saw the possibility of a compromise between him and Octavian, or of those who desired him to assert his democratic standing by severing his connection with her. With this purpose in view she refused to consider the matter of her departure, but at the same time gave Antony no peace: she wounded him by withdrawing her love from him; she maddened him by her tearful mistrust; she alternately froze him by quarrels and melted him by passionate reconciliations.

In her anxious state of mind her own disposition became soured, and, suspecting enmity in all around her, she made enemies right and left. Ahenobarbus withdrew himself, insulted, from her society; Marcus Silanus, half-brother of Brutus, but a firm Caesarian and friend of Antony, took his departure from Athens; and Dellius was so estranged that he, too, contemplated a return to Rome—the first cause of the quarrel being in his case no more than a remark of his that Cleopatra offered him wine of a poorer quality than that given by Octavian to his servants.

Antony ought to have struck at his rival in the early summer while he was yet unprepared and while Italy was seething with discontent at the taxes just imposed; but these troubles in his own camp dislocated his plans. Moreover, he had sent his agents over to Rome, well provided with money, to stir up rebellion there and to win adherents to his cause; and the reports of their activities were so promising that he believed delay to be in his favor. It was a serious mistake; for the disaffection around him in regard to Cleopatra was increasing more rapidly than were Rom’s mutinous sentiments in regard to Octavian. At length, however, at midsummer, he sent his transports and a fleet of two hundred of his largest battleships, including the Egyptian squadron, to the Gulf of Ambracia (Arta), just to the south of Epirus on the western coast of Greece, opposite the toe of Italy, there to prepare for the attack; and early in the autumn he transferred his headquarters to Patrae (Patras) on the west coast of Achaia, just south of the narrow entrance of the Gulf of Corinth, this town being a port much used min passenger-traffic between Italy and Greece.

At the same time, however, he placed ships and men at Corcyra (Corfu) and Leucadia (Santa Maura)—islands to the north and south of the Gulf of Ambracia; at Methone (Modon) on the south­west coast of Greece; at Cape Taenarium (Matapan) in southern Greece, below Sparta; and he increased the force in Cyrene on the opposite coast of North Africa, and presumably, sent men and ships to the western ports of Crete. These dispositions, which can only have been intended to defend the east-end of the Mediterranean from attack, indicate that he had reason to believe that Octavian, thinking Cleopatra would be forced to return to her own country, was seriously contemplating the expedition to Egypt, or a feint in that direction made plausible by the fact that he was nominally at war only with that country. It is possible, indeed, that while both commanders really expected the final clash to take place in the Adriatic, Octavian was anxious to distract Antony’s attention from that area by appearing to wish to strike at Alexandria itself, and Antony was anxious to give the impression that he had been hood-winked by this maneuver and was moving south to meet it.

At all events winter here intervened, and the war had to be postponed until the spring. It was a winter overshadowed for Antony by a cloud of misunderstandings and quarrels with Cleopatra which reduced him to a condition of such misery that he seems to have been as often drunk as sober. He knew that her presence was ruining his cause; he saw that in her state of nervous irritation she was becoming more and more unpopular with his Roman supporters, if not with the vassal Kings and princes; he heard continuously of the growing hatred of her in Rome, nurtured by those ridiculous tales of her vices, her cruelty, her arrogance, and so forth, which Octavian was gathering about her and which have survived to this day to blacken her memory. Yet he could not bring himself to capitulate to the force of public opinion and bid her go, since her retirement to Egypt would mean that he might not see her for a year or more, and would perhaps end for ever their mutual love and trust.

He was haunted, moreover, during this winter by an increasing dread of the uncanny Octavian who again was emerging, triumphant, from his difficulties, and whose mysteriously growing strength was being heralded or followed by strange portents and omens which were reported to him from time to time, or which he saw with his own eyes. The Temple of Hercules, his divine ancestor, in this town of Patrae where he was staying, was struck by lightning, and a cyclone at Athens threw down a figure of Dionysus, the god with whom he was identified, and damaged two statues inscribed with his name. Some swallows which frequented the rigging of Cleopatra’s flagship, the Antonias, were attacked by other birds and driven off. At Pisaurum (Pesaro), on the east coast of Italy, a settlement of ex-soldiers founded by Antony was destroyed by an earthquake; and at Alba a statue of him oozed moisture like a bloody sweat.

A wolf entered the Temple of Fortune in Rome and was caught and killed, and a strange dog which had invaded the Roman race­course was killed by a local dog—both of which occurrences indicated the coming destruction of the enemy. Somebody’s pet monkey entered the Temple of Ceres, and tumbled the sacred furniture about before it was caught; and a large snake frightened many people in Etruria, but was killed by a flash of lightning. Some Roman boys, playing a game in which they called themselves Antonians, were defeated by their opponents who had named themselves after Octavian—an incident which indicates, by the way, that Antony was still a hero amongst the youth of the capital.

These and many other ominous occurrences spread an intangible feeling of depression throughout Antony’s headquarters; but it would be a mistake to suppose that there was any real alarm or any serious doubts of ultimate victory. Antony, though drinking heavily and obviously worried almost to the point of frenzy by Cleopatra’s doubts and fears, was still the greatest and most beloved figure in the world, and the expectation was still general that his progress to the dizzy summit of mortal ambition could not now be checked.

CHAPTER XX

The Battle of Actium and the Return of Antony and Cleopatra to Egypt

31-30 BC