THE AUGUSTAN EMPIRE (44 B.C.—A.D. 70)

CHAPTER III

THE WAR OF THE EAST AGAINST THE WEST

I. CLEOPATRA AND ANTONY

ANTONY’S marriage to Cleopatra in the autumn of 37 was the turning-point of his career, the beginning of his breach with the West. He did not propose to attack Octavian; he merely meant to go his own way without reference to his colleague. His preoccupation at present was Parthia: its conquest would prove him Caesar’s true heir and would outweigh any prestige Octavian could acquire. But his marriage had no connection with this scheme of conquest. Egypt was wealthy; but he drew nothing from Egypt for his invasion of Parthia, of which Cleopatra disapproved; and the modern belief that he married her for her money is certainly untrue. Had it been money, he had only to raise his hand and she was dethroned and Egypt and the money his, amid Roman applause; he could not do it, because he had fallen in love with her. For this he married her, though he knew that it meant a general assent to her point of view. For the shock to Roman opinion he now cared nothing; and however strongly one condemns his treatment of Octavia, one must also sympathize with his scorn of an outlook which had no objection to the queen as his mistress but every objection to her as his wife. He married her in the form the Ptolemies used, presumably the Macedonian, and to every one east of the Adriatic she was his legitimate wife; but, as a Roman citizen, he could not in Roman law either have two wives at once or contract a valid marriage with a foreigner, and this enabled Octavian for the present, whatever he felt, to take no official notice of the marriage. Antony’s is a strange story. Two women had been devoted to him. Had he followed Fulvia, he might perhaps have been master of the Roman world; had he followed Octavia, he could have ruled his half in peace, too popular to be attacked; instead, he had broken Fulvia’s heart and made Octavia homeless. Now he had married a woman whose only devotion to him was as the instrument of her ambition; and her he would follow, and follow to his ruin, because he loved her. That is what redeems his memory, that at the end he did lose half the world for love.

Cleopatra had acted as though she expected his summons, and she started to build up a position which should end in her being what she had hoped to have been had Caesar lived. She took the upper hand at once, as at Tarsus, and requested a royal wedding gift, the foreign empire of her great predecessor Ptolemy II. Antony gave her all he could. He executed Lysanias for his treason in 40 and gave her Lysanias’ kingdom of Chalcis, together with everything between Chalcis and Herod’s realm (Hippos and Gadara are expressly mentioned); it was the old Coele-Syria in the narrower sense, and comprised all central Syria. He gave her the greater part of the coast of Palestine and Phoenicia from Egypt to the river Eleutherus, the original Ptolemaic boundary; Tyre and Sidon alone remained free cities. He gave her Cyprus, which had once been Roman territory, but had already been alienated by Caesar. And he took from Polemo Cilicia Tracheia, which had likewise once been Roman territory, and gave it to her also (except the city of Seleuceia), so that she might get ship-timber from the Taurus, as Arsinoe II had done. The former Ptolemaic possessions on the Aegean being out of the question, there now remained only Judaea and Galilee, which were Herod’s, and the one-time Ptolemaic part of Nabataea. She begged hard for Herod’s kingdom, but here Antony was adamant, and all she got was Herod’s deadly enmity. But he gave her the best morsel of Herod’s realm, the balsam gardens of Jericho with the balsam monopoly, and (it seems) what of Nabataea Ptolemy II had had—the land east of the Dead Sea with the monopoly of the bitumen fishery, so important to Egypt. Nabataea, Egypt’s secular enemy, was not really a client-state; but Malchus would hardly venture to oppose Antony. The son whom Cleopatra bore in the autumn of 36, when Antony was in Media, was named by her Ptolemy Philadelphus, to commemorate her re-establishment of Philadelphus’ empire.

Antony was popular in Alexandria, where it was remembered that he had once prevented Ptolemy Auletes from killing his Alexandrian prisoners; and Cleopatra presently began to build a temple to him, which was unfinished at her death and was turned into one to Augustus. She and Antony put each other’s heads on their coins (she was the only Ptolemaic queen who coined in her own right); and since Antony had already, for a very different reason, proclaimed himself Dionysus, they were able to pose as a divine pair, as the Hellenistic East expected; to Greeks they were Dionysus and Aphrodite, to Egyptians Osiris and Isis. To Antony this was a deliberate political measure, but to Cleopatra it was probably something more. Her attitude towards the religion of Egypt has already been indicated, and just as her death shows that she believed herself to be a daughter of Re, so she perhaps took herself seriously as Isis; she wore her robes on state occasions, and in disputes in other kingdoms she sided with the woman—with Aba at Olba, Alexandra in Judaea—as became one who was Isis, goddess and champion of women.

Cleopatra had brought her twins to Antioch, and when Antony married her he acknowledged them as his and renamed them Alexander Helios and Cleopatra Selene, the Sun and the Moon. The names of all Cleopatra’s children are significant, but especially that of Alexander Helios. Helios and Selene in conjunction possibly had a political meaning; the Parthian king was ‘Brother of the Sun and Moon’, and if the sun and moon really typified the Iranian fravashi and hvareno, Antony, by annexing these luminaries to his own family, was perhaps symbolically depriving Phraates of the supernatural adjuncts of his royalty. As to the name Helios, Antony’s coin-type after Philippi had been the Sun radiate, and his momentary revival of that type late in 37 shows that he was passing on to the boy whatever the Sun meant to himself. Probably it meant to him the supreme deity of Asia, but it had other connotations also; an Egyptian oracle had derived prosperity from the Sun, in the prophecy of the Cumaean Sibyl the rule of the Sun was to precede the Golden Age, and for Greeks Iambulus, in the story of his Sun-state, had definitely connected the age of gold with the Sun. As, in addition, it was Cleopatra’s privilege, as a New Isis, to bear the Sun, and as she herself was the Sun-god’s daughter, the boy could not really be called anything else; he was the Sun-child who should inaugurate the Golden Age. The name Alexander referred primarily to Antony’s coming conquest of Parthia. Antony, like many Romans, had dreamt of being a new Alexander—had he not at Philippi covered Brutus’ body with his purple cloak?—but this too he now transferred to the boy, and became himself only the warrior king who should precede the king of the Golden Age and pacify the earth with his sword. But there was more than this. In the writer’s view, Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue was an epithalamium for the marriage of Antony and Octavia, and the child who should be a new Alexander and inaugurate the Golden Age was the son to be born to them. A coin of Antony’s may reflect this union of the two houses; but the child of the Eclogue had never been born, for Octavia’s child had been a girl, and that is why after its birth Antony returned to the idea of Asiatic conquest, proclaimed himself Dionysus, conqueror of Asia, and did his best for Octavia by putting her head on his Dionysus-coinage. But when he left Octavia for Cleopatra, the whole symbolism was transferred; though his assumption of divinity as Dionysus had been connected with Octavia, not with Cleopatra, it now fell most conveniently, for Dionysus could be Osiris and he and Cleopatra could be the divine pair Osiris-Isis; and Virgil’s ideas could, through the boy’s name, be transferred to Cleopatra’s son, for whom they were never meant, but whom they fitted well, for he was the destined king of a golden age (though not of Virgil’s) and a new Alexander, and he was cara deum suboles, the dear offspring of the gods Antony-Dionysus and Cleopatra-Isis, who would rule an Asia pacified by his father’s valour. These are some of the ideas which seem to play round the name of the boy who was never to fulfil his destiny; how one Greek in the East was to envisage the coming age of gold will appear later.

Antony spent the winter of 37—6 at Antioch with Cleopatra, not in amusement, but in strenuous preparation for the Parthian campaign. Before starting he had to secure his rear. Syria south of the Roman province was safe in the hands of Cleopatra and of Herod; but Antony now undertook the long-delayed reorganization of Asia Minor (was the impulse Cleopatra’s?) and used to the full his new liberty of choosing the best men without regard to dynastic considerations. His system in Asia Minor was built up on three men, Amyntas, Archelaus, and Polemo. The strong Amyntas, who was already ruling western Pisidia and Phrygia-towards-Pisidia, was made king of Galatia, and also received Lycaonia and part of Pamphylia; this, with his existing Pisidian kingdom, placed the whole centre of Asia Minor in one hand. The Galatian cavalry, the best in the Roman East, was valuable to Antony, and at some period he rewarded two Galatian chieftains, Adiatorix with the rule of the Roman part of Heraclea and Ateporix with part of Zelitis. He executed Ariarathes of Cappadocia for his treason in 40 and gave Cappadocia to Archelaus of Comana, but without Armenia Minor. Archelaus was a student and writer of the type of Juba II; and while previous kings of Cappadocia had called themselves ‘Friends of Rome’, he called himself Philopatris, ‘Friend of his country’. Polemo’s kingdom of Cilicia Tracheia had been given by Antony to Cleopatra, but Eastern Pontus was apparently vacant, which may mean that Darius was dead. Antony now sent Polemo to Pontus, but gave him much more than Darius’ realm; he reconstituted for him the old kingdom of Pontus from Armenia to the Halys, which gave him part of the Roman province of ‘Bithynia and Pontus’, and he added to it Armenia Minor, which carried the wardenship of the Upper Euphrates. Of Antony’s four important discoveries who now ruled the principal client-kingdoms—Herod of Judaea, Amyntas of Galatia, Archelaus of Cappadocia, and Polemo of Pontus—all had successful reigns from the Roman point of view, and all but Amyntas (who was killed in war in 25 b.c.) had very long ones. At Olba in Cilicia Cleopatra restored Aba, a Teucrid by marriage, to the priest-kingship; it had been usurped by her father Zenophanes, a local tyrant who was not of the royal line.

In spring 36 Antony left Syria to join his army; Cleopatra, who was expecting the birth of Ptolemy Philadelphus, accompanied him to Zeugma and then returned to Egypt. On her way back she visited Herod, to arrange about her monopolies; doubtless she enjoyed the knowledge that her courteous host, a barbarian beneath his varnish, would have killed her but for the certainty of Antony’s vengeance. She understood business; she leased to Herod his balsam gardens for 200 talents a year, and she leased the bitumen monopoly to Malchus for a similar rent and made Herod guarantee it and collect it for her; the arrangement would cause bad blood between her two enemies. Herod paid punctually, for he dared not do otherwise, but after Antony’s failure in Media he got little from Malchus. He seemingly took a belated revenge upon Cleopatra by stating in his Memoirs that she made love to him, so that, should he trip, she might force Antony to kill him; naturally Herod upon Cleopatra is not evidence, and the story is certainly untrue.

Herod had begun his reign by making one Ananel High-Priest; but Alexandra had asked Cleopatra to use her influence with Antony for her son, the young Aristobulus, grandson of Aristobulus II and last male representative of the Hasmonaean line; and early in 36 Herod did make Aristobulus High-Priest, whether because Antony requested it or because he wished to conciliate the Hasmonaean interest. Whether Alexandra subsequently began to intrigue for the crown for her son is uncertain; but that autumn she thought that she and the boy were in danger, and sought Cleopatra’s help. Cleopatra sent a ship to bring them to Egypt, but their attempt at flight was frustrated; the people however showed such favour to the boy that late that year, Antony being far away, Herod had him murdered. Alexandra he did not touch, it is said through fear of Cleopatra, and she again appealed to the queen, this time for vengeance; and when in January 35 Cleopatra met Antony in Syria on his return from the Parthian expedition she urged him to punish Herod. But though Antony sent for Herod, he had too much trouble on his hands to think of removing his loyal and capable supporter, and yielded to his argument that, as he had been made king, he must be allowed to act as such.

II. THE INVASION OF PARTHIA

In 38—7 a new king ascended the Parthian throne. Orodes, broken by the death of his beloved son Pacorus, had made another son, Phraates (IV), his heir; but the old man died slowly, and Phraates murdered him and seized the crown. He is called cruel, and he had trouble with his nobles; some he killed, others fled from Parthia. But the trouble was probably connected with the same difficulty which had brought down Surenas, the jealousy between noble and commoner, cataphract and horse-archer. The nobles had had their chance against Ventidius and had failed completely, and Phraates meant to rely on the horse-archers against Antony; fortunately for Parthia he was strong enough to have his way. He had the support, among others, of Monaeses, the powerful Warden of the Western Marches, who owned great estates in Mesopotamia and was designated for the supreme command. Monaeses played the common trick of fleeing to Antony in simulated fear and offering him his services, with a view to discovering his plans. Antony welcomed him, gave him the one-time kingdom of Alchaudonius, and promised him the throne of Parthia, but whether he was really deceived does not appear; certainly Monaeses did not inform him of Parthia’s change of tactics. In spring 36 Monaeses suddenly lost his fear of Phraates and returned to Parthia to take command; throughout the war Phraates never took the field himself.

Antony was a good tactician and cavalry leader, but he had never tried to plan a great campaign. As he had Caesar’s papers, none could gainsay his claim to be carrying out Caesar’s scheme; but it is certain that he was not. Caesar no doubt had meant to strike at the Parthian capital Ecbatana through Armenia, but he would never have left an uncertain ally of some power between himself and his base; even Crassus had been too wise to do that. Caesar presumably meant first to reduce Armenia and create there an advanced base; after that, it may be conjectured that he intended to take Ecbatana and cut off Babylonia from Parthia proper, and finally to annex Babylonia and establish his new frontier. But Antony, who had been prevented for two years by events in Italy from making a start, had become impatient and perhaps tried to do too much the first year, though it is not known whether it was early or late in 37 that Canidius Crassus was sent to carry out the preliminary conquest of Armenia; if the latter, Antony had in mind Alexander’s winter campaigns. Canidius defeated Artavasdes in a battle, and the king, who had been Parthia’s ally since 53, formally submitted and again became the ally of Rome. Either Canidius or Antony was mad enough to think that this sufficed; there were no guarantees—no towns were occupied, no hostages taken, no garrisons left; in spring 36 Canidius passed on and, like Pompey, reduced the Albani and Iberi of the Caucasus, and Antony struck a coin with the Armenian tiara as though Armenia were his. Armenia’s regular policy was to maintain independence by playing off Parthia against Rome, but as between them her sympathies, like her civilization, were Parthian; Artavasdes had lightly deserted Rome in 53, and though he submitted to Antony he maintained an understanding with Phraates; Antony had failed before he started. For his preparations had thoroughly alarmed Asia; the other Artavasdes, king of Media Atropatene (hereinafter called Media), had joined Parthia, as perhaps Elymais did also; Asia was closing her ranks against the Roman, and Armenia could not well hold aloof.

Early in May 36 Antony left Zeugma and went northward through Melitene and along the Euphrates to Carana (Erzerum), where Canidius joined him; our sources imply that he started too late, but it was no use reaching Carana before Canidius was ready. At Carana he reviewed his army, the best he ever commanded. He had left seven legions in Macedonia and one at Jerusalem, but none in Syria; in face of his attack, Parthia could hardly spare men for a diversion on the Euphrates. He had sixteen seasoned legions of about three-quarter strength, totalling 60,000 men; 10,000 Gallic and Spanish horse; and 30,000 auxiliaries, which included Artavasdes with some 16,000 Armenian cavalry and the forces of some client-kings; among his legates were Domitius and Canidius, and Plancus’ nephew Titius was quaestor. He brought an enormous siege-train, including an 80-foot ram, for he was going to operate in a country devoid of good timber. The large force of legions shows both that he expected to meet the cataphracts and that he meant to garrison Ecbatana and other towns till Phraates submitted; there was no question of one summer sufficing. His first objective was the Median capital Phraaspa, on his road to Ecbatana; but whether he hoped to reach Ecbatana before winter, or meant to winter in Media, cannot be said.

Leaving Carana, he marched through the open country east of Lake Urumia, but his train of wagons, extending for many miles, made progress slow, and he divided his army; he left Artavasdes, Polemon, and Oppius Statianus with two legions to escort the wagons, and pushed on ahead with his main force. Alexander too had sometimes divided his army; but he had always left his best general and a majority of the troops with the wagons. Moreover Antony was marching blind; he had no idea where the Parthian army might be, while Monaeses had accurate information of his movements, proof of Artavasdes’ understanding with Phraates. Monaeses in fact with 40,000 horse-archers, and the Median king with another 10,000, were quite close; the subsequent campaign shows that they must have had some system of a reserve of arrows. With their perfect intelligence they eluded Antony and came down on the wagons. Artavasdes, whose troops formed the greater part of the escort, rode off home before the attack; the two legions were annihilated and their eagles added to the Parthian collection; Polemo was captured by the Medes; the siege-train was burnt, the food burnt or carried off; the victory was as decisive as could be, and Antony found himself in mid-August helpless before Phraaspa, a strong fortress well garrisoned and provisioned.

But he was too proud to retreat. He threw up a mound against the wall, but his attacks were repulsed, and what machines he could improvise proved useless. The army soon ate up all the food in the neighbourhood and had to go far afield, while the Parthians shot down every weak foraging party. As a last resource Antony offered battle; Monaeses accepted, but could not shake the legions and just rode away again; Antony claimed a victory, but the Parthians only lost 80 killed, and meanwhile the garrison in a sortie had burnt his machines. It was now October, and the cold was beginning; even his stubbornness had to recognize that retreat was inevitable. The story that, at some time after the equinox, he sent envoys to Phraates, who received them seated on the golden throne of the Arsacids (which was in Ecbatana) and promised them peace if they retired, seems impossible, in view of the time needed to reach Ecbatana and return; for the retreat cannot have begun later than mid-October. A Mardian deserter, one of his race settled in Media, offered to guide the Romans back by a different way, avoiding the plains; Antony wisely accepted, and the man saved them, taking them through the hills by Tabriz.

The terrible retreat to the Armenian frontier lasted 27 days. The army marched in square; in spite of the hilly ground, Monaeses hung on its rear, cut off stragglers and foragers, and attacked at every opportunity; there were frequent desertions, and though the slingers made themselves respected in skirmishes there was one regular battle in which the Romans had 8000 casualties. They suffered from disease, thirst, and hunger, and ate ‘unspeak­able food’; but through it all the veterans remained too steady to be overwhelmed. The danger brought out all that was best in Antony; once more, and for the last time, he was the Antony of the retreat from Mutina, the worshipped leader who shared every privation and never lost heart. One night the army did get out of hand and he prepared for suicide, but in the morning he recovered control. At last, at a river six days from the frontier, the victorious Parthians turned back, after shouting a tribute to their enemies’ courage; they had established a tradition of the invincibility of Parthia in defence which lasted till Trajan. It may or may not have been a consequence of his victory that Phraates appears later in Greek poems from Susa as ‘god omnipotent,’ a unique title quite outside the sphere of the Mazdean religion.

On entering Armenia Antony sent off a message to Cleopatra, which somehow reached her. He could not winter in that hostile country; he would have had to divide his army into detachments, and would have courted the fate of Antiochus Sidetes. He spoke Artavasdes fair, for there was no alternative, and got food; and the wornout men started afresh on their long march through the snow-bound land. He stayed with them till he was sure that Artavasdes would not attack them, and then, like Napoleon from Russia, pushed on ahead, leaving Canidius and Domitius to bring the army home. Syria might already be in Parthian hands and every city in revolt; that was why he had told Cleopatra to meet him, not at one of the great sea-ports, but at Leuke Kome, a village where she could force a landing. Even though he found Syria safe he was terribly anxious, for he did not know in what temper the army might arrive; it was only an army of the Civil Wars, whose allegiance sat lightly on it; it had already mutinied once, and in fact another 8000 men died in the Armenian snows. The story goes that day after day at Leuke Kome he would rush from dinner to scan the horizon for the Egyptian ships. But Cleopatra did not fail him; dangerous as winter navigation was, she arrived in time, bringing what he had asked for—masses of clothing and comforts for the troops; thanks to this help, the army was got quietly into winter quarters. But she brought little money; though Antony somehow supplemented it, it only sufficed to give the men some 28 shillings apiece; it was her method of explaining to him that her Treasury was not at his service for useless adventures. His expedition had indeed been worse than useless; he had lost some 37 per cent, of his army, including over 22,000 of his veteran legionaries. True, Xenophon had lost nearly as high a percentage on his much-praised retreat from Cunaxa to Trapezus, and he had not had to face Parthian arrows. But to Antony the loss was irreparable; he could get no more Reasoned Roman troops, and probably the men who did return were never quite the same again. Meanwhile Octavian had con­quered Sextus and removed Lepidus, and controlled forty-five legions.

III. THE DREAM OF EMPIRE

Antony returned to Alexandria with Cleopatra and sat down to consider the position. Octavian might send the promised four legions, which would largely replace his losses; but any illusions on that subject were dispelled in the early spring, when Octavian sent him, not the legions, but what remained (70) of his 130 ships. Octavian’s policy must have seemed to them clear: cut off from recruiting in Italy, Antony’s power was to die like a ring-barked tree; Octavian only had to wait till the tree fell of itself. Cleopatra seized her opportunity; the sequel shows that it was now that she won Antony over to her own scheme. Parthia (she must have argued) mattered nothing; his enemy was Octavian. Sooner or later he would have to fight him, and he must mobilize all his resources for one great effort while success was still possible; that victory once won, Parthia or anything else he wanted would follow. Doubtless she knew that it was very late in the day and that the chances were against them; but it was the only chance she had had since Caesar’s death of realizing her supreme ambi­tion to rule the Roman world, and, whatever the odds, her courage was equal to taking that chance. She had of course no more right to conquer Rome, supposing she could, than Octavian had to conquer Egypt, but she had a right to resent Rome’s treatment of her country and her line; it had broken the spirit of her predecessors, but it did not break hers. But she could only work through Antony; that was why she had married him. Her design of attacking Rome by means of Romans was one of such stupendous audacity that we must suppose that she saw no other way. There was indeed an alternative—to try and raise a semi-religious Graeco-Asiatic crusade; this was what Rome feared, but we cannot say whether she considered it, though Virgil, who made the whole of the Asia of the Alexander-tradition—Bactria, India, Sabaea—follow her to Actium, shows that some Romans thought she did. As for Antony, had he himself ever desired to oust Octavian he would never have let Sextus and Lepidus fall as he had done, and his inactivity during 33, a wasted year, shows that his heart was not in the business; he was being driven on by two stronger natures, on the one side Cleopatra, on the other Octavian, and all Cleopatra’s gifts both of mind and person must have been lavished on securing his assent. He had however first to punish Artavasdes for his treason; both knew that to be imperative.

Antony had written to Italy that the Parthians had been defeated, and Rome held festival accordingly; but Octavian knew the truth, as did his sister. Octavia held that Antony’s purported marriage with a foreign woman did not make herself any the less his wife; it was enough that he needed help, and in March 35, as soon as navigation opened, she started to go to him, as Cleopatra had done, with large stores of clothing and necessaries for his army and 2000 picked men given her by her brother. Probably the troops really were meant as an invitation to Antony to leave Cleopatra and return to Octavia; Aeneas’ treatment of Dido, who in some aspects recalls Cleopatra, may show what kind of conduct was expected of him. Octavia reached Athens, and there found a message from Antony ordering her to send on her troops and supplies and go back herself to Rome. It was brutal; a man between two women is likely to be brutal. She obeyed, and went back. Octavian, naturally furious, told her to leave Antony’s house, but she refused; as his wife, her place was there till he himself told her to go. So she stayed, and looked after his political interests and his children; not only her own two daughters, but also Fulvia’s two sons, whom she had taken charge of, though the elder soon afterwards went to Antony. The sight of her unselfish goodness did Antony much harm in Italy, though to harm him was the last thing she would have wished.

Probably Antony meant to rest his troops for some months and invade Armenia in summer 35; but he lost that year through Sextus Pompeius, whose activities in Asia compelled Antony to send against him the legions from Syria under Titius. Titius ultimately hunted him down and killed him, whether with or without Antony’s knowledge; it shows Antony’s changed position that the surviving murderers of Caesar, Turullius and Cassius of Parma, who had been with Sextus, now joined him. Antony could not ask his troops to do any more that season; but he began to arm. He had now twenty-five legions, some very weak in numbers,—seven in Macedonia, thirteen in Syria (including one at Jerusalem), two in Syria or Bithynia, and three mixed legions of recruits taken from Sextus; he raised five more, giving him thirty in all. He could get some Italians from Caesar’s colonies and the numerous Italian traders; but the inscriptions show that he also enlisted many Asiatics or Greeks, who took Latin names. Following Caesar’s practice, he did not fill up the gaps in the legions of the Parthian campaign, using his recruits solely for the new legions; but he brought from Macedonia six of the veteran legions there, now the strongest he had, and replaced them by six legions of recruits. He also started shipbuilding on a great scale, and began to strike thirty series of coins, each giving the number of one of his thirty legions and on the reverse his flagship. He further flouted Roman opinion by marrying his daughter Antonia (by his first wife) to a wealthy Greek, Pythodorus of Tralles; their daughter was the notable Pythodoris.

The Parthians had not invaded Syria after Antony’s retreat because, with the external danger removed, internal troubles had broken out again; Phraates’ dated tetradrachms fail from 36 to April 34. Also they had quarrelled with the Medes over the booty, and the Median king, in anger and fear, released Polemon and sent him to Antony with an offer of his alliance against Parthia. Antony had no intention of attacking Parthia again, but he welcomed the alliance as proof that his expedition had not been fruitless. This was the position when early in 34 Antony, who on January 1 had taken and laid down the consulship, invaded Armenia, mastered the country, and captured Artavasdes and his younger sons Tigranes and Artavasdes; the eldest son, Artaxes, escaped and tried to raise the people, but was defeated and fled to Phraates; Antony gave a section of Armenia to the Median king and betrothed Alexander Helios to that monarch’s little daughter Iotape. A story remains that he only captured Artavasdes by inviting him to a friendly conference and then seizing him—‘Antony’s crime’; but as Octavian is also accused of having instigated Artavasdes’ treachery towards Antony, the two stories are obviously charge and counter-charge in the propaganda war of 33 and are both untrue. For two years Armenia became a Roman province, and ‘Roman’ traders, i.e. subjects of Rome, flocked into it. Antony left his legions to winter there and returned to Alexandria before autumn, bringing with him Artavasdes and his sons and much booty, including the solid gold statue of Anaitis from her temple in Acilisene. The effect of his arming was now seen, for the reason was known or guessed at Rome, and while Rome had celebrated his earlier successes she ignored the conquest of Armenia; it was as though he were no longer her general.

The subsequent developments beyond the Euphrates may be anticipated here. Early in 33, in response to an urgent message, Antony again hurried to the Median frontier and saw the king, who feared a Parthian attack; he restored his share of the Roman eagles, and possibly Antony, who took Iotape back with him as hostage, gave him temporary help, for he did not withdraw his legions from Armenia till the autumn; but the Mede really se­cured himself for a time by an alliance with Tiridates. Tiridates, perhaps a general of Phraates in the war with Antony, revolted in 32 or early 31, and in summer 31 expelled Phraates; but Phraates came back in 30 with help from ‘Scythians’, probably the Sacaraucae, and Tiridates, who was not an Arsacid, could not maintain himself; he and the Median king fled to Syria, then in Octavian’s hands, and Phraates took Media and also restored Artaxes to the Armenian throne. Artaxes promptly massacred all the Roman traders in Armenia, and that country and Media were definitely lost to Rome.

To come back to the main story. In the autumn of 34, after Antony’s return from the conquest of Armenia, Alexandria witnessed two extraordinary spectacles. He staged a triumph in the city, a thing hardly ever before celebrated by a Roman except in Rome. High above the people Cleopatra sat in state on a golden throne, and Antony entered the city in a triumphal car, followed in procession by his Armenian captives, whom he presented to the queen. The presiding deity of a Roman triumph was Juppiter Optimus Maximus of the Capitol as the embodiment of Rome; and, whatever Antony may have meant, men naturally saw in his act the glorification of Cleopatra as an embodiment of the ‘goddess Rome’, and attributed to him (almost certainly wrongly) the intention of shifting the capital from Rome to Alexandria. In one other respect his triumph differed from the Roman form; he spared Artavasdes’ life, even though he had been a traitor.

The triumph was followed by the ceremony generally known as the Donations of Alexandria. A great concourse of people gathered in the gymnasium; above them Antony, and Cleopatra robed as Isis, sat on thrones side by side, and somewhat lower, on other thrones, sat their three children and Ptolemy Caesar (whom Alexandrians nicknamed Caesarion, little Caesar). Antony first harangued the people; he said that Cleopatra had been Caesar’s wife (i.e. by a Macedonian marriage), that Ptolemy Caesar was Caesar’s legitimate son, and that what he was going to do was a tribute to Caesar’s memory. He then declared Cleopatra Queen of Kings and Ptolemy Caesar King of Kings, joint monarchs of Egypt and Cyprus and overlords of the kingdoms or overlordships of Cleopatra’s other children. To Alexander, who wore the dress of the Achaemenid kings and received an Armenian bodyguard, he gave as his kingdom Armenia and the overlordship of Parthia and Media, that is, everything east of the Euphrates. To Ptolemy Philadelphus, who wore Macedonian dress and received a Macedonian bodyguard, he gave as his kingdom the Egyptian possessions in Syria and Cilicia and the overlordship of all client-kings and dynasts west of the Euphrates ‘as far as the Hellespont’; the most westerly dynast known is Cleon in Mysia, but the phrase may pass. To Cleopatra Selene he gave as her kingdom the Cyrenaica and Libya. To commemorate the ceremony he struck a coin bearing on one side his own head and the legend ‘Armenia conquered’ and on the other the head of Cleopatra with the legend ‘Queen of kings and of her sons who are kings’; she was therefore overlord of the whole hierarchy, including Ptolemy Caesar. It was a glorious house of cards; whether it could be solidified might depend on the answer to one prosaic question— would the legions fight?

Antony’s own position in the new hierarchy of powers was carefully not defined, for he was filling a double role. It was necessary, for his Roman supporters and his Roman troops, that he should remain Marcus Antonius, Roman magistrate. But to Greeks and Asiatics he was a divine Hellenistic monarch, Antony who is Dionysus-Osiris, consort of Cleopatra-Isis, queen of Egypt. What was this position of his which could not be defined because of Roman susceptibilities? It was something which could be inherited; for he had already (1 Jan. 34) struck the first of the coins bearing his own head and the head of his elder son by Fulvia, Marcus Antonius the younger (nicknamed by Alexan­drians Antyllus, little Antony), which shows that this boy was his destined heir. Again, it was something which dated an Era, like a king’s reign. Documents of the joint rule of Cleopatra and Ptolemy Caesar in Egypt are always dated by a single date, the year of her reign; but in 34 there begins to appear in Egyptian papyri a double dating, the year of Cleopatra equated with another year, and this double dating, found also in Syria, con­tinues till her last year, 22 which is also 7. In the writer’s opinion the meaning of this second Era is not now in doubt; it denotes Antony’s regnal years, and though the first instance so far known of its use is in August 34, it was reckoned as from his marriage with Cleopatra in 37. Antony then at the time of the Donations was royal and had named his successor. But he was not king of Egypt; Ptolemy Caesar was that. And he was not King of Kings; he was greater than that, for he had given that title away to others, which shows that it was not his design to divide the Roman realm and become king of a Hellenistic kingdom in the eastern half. Only one possibility therefore remains: Antony, supreme ruler of the inhabited world, of the East and of Rome alike—that is, Roman Emperor, with the oecumene under his feet, like Caesar. And where he was, there Cleopatra would be beside him, she also supreme ruler of the inhabited world; that is, Roman Empress. The form of oath now attributed to Cleopatra, ‘so surely as I shall one day give judgment in the Capitol,’ only underlined what was already plain.

There was some weakness in Antony which led him to represent intentions as accomplished facts. He had celebrated the conquest of Armenia on a coin two years before it was really conquered; he had given away Parthia when Parthia had just defeated him; and now he represented himself, or let Cleopatra represent him, as world-ruler because he was going to defeat Octavian. Cleopatra must have known just what the Donations and Antony’s Era were worth; but her object was victory, and anything was worth while which might drive Antony forward or influence opinion. She did influence opinion; prophecies of the overthrow and enslavement of Rome by Asia were recalled or renewed, and some Jews foretold that her victory would be the signal for the end of the current world-period, to be followed by the reign of the Messiah. Octavian for his part cared little if Antony gave Roman territory to client-kings—he did it himself later— but Cleopatra as Roman Empress was another matter. It brought the day of battle very close. He had already a larger army and fleet than he could use, but he needed money, and public opinion behind him. He understood very well what Cleopatra and Antony meant, and gave himself forthwith to making Rome understand also.

Statements that Cleopatra drove Antony to ruin are not impressive, as he need not have been driven; it would be more important to know her own mind. Was it only ambition with her, or was there something greater behind? Did she share the vision of one of her followers, who saw in her the destined leader of a great uprising of Asia against Rome, of the oppressed against the oppressor, not for vengeance only, but for a better world to follow? What she herself thought we may never discover; we only know the great prophecy of that nameless Greek, who foretold that after she had cast Rome down from heaven to earth she would then raise her up again from earth to heaven and inaugurate a golden age in which Asia and Europe should alike share, when war and every other evil thing should quit the earth, and the long feud of East and West should end for ever in their reconciliation and in the reign of justice and love. It was surely no unworthy cause that could give birth to such a vision, or make men, even one man, see in Cleopatra the ruler who should carry out Alexander’s dream of a human brotherhood. We know what Augustus was to do, and how Virgil in the Aeneid was to interpret it for all time; but if Antony was to be Roman Emperor, and Cleopatra was to be the instrument of Alexander’s idea of the reconciliation of East and West, can we say that the ultimate ideals of the two sides were so very far apart after all? What were far apart were the actual possibilities. Past history had shown that if such ideals were ever to be realized, however imperfectly, it could only be done from the West, by a Roman through Romans; no one, Roman or Macedonian, could have done it from or through the East, for he could never have carried Rome with him. In that sense, but perhaps in that sense alone, the common verdict is just, that it was well for the world that Octavian conquered.

IV. THE WINNING OF ITALY

But in the West too something great had been coming to birth, the consciousness of an united Italy. The statesmanship of two generations before had produced out of civil war a people and made a nation from what had been a city: the labours of the scholars and poets of the Ciceronian age had given that nation a language and a culture; all it now needed was a leader, and that leader would be one who could promise and bring above all peace and relief from Civil War, but he must give as well the assurance that the hard-won heritage of the Italian people would not be wasted. At the end of 36 Octavian had declared to his rejoicing hearers that the Civil Wars were over; disbandment began immediately, and while some of the veterans were planted in overseas colonies (as the men of the Seventh Legion at Baeterrae in Narbonese Gaul), others were settled on land for which a proper purchase price or compensation could now be offered. But the winter of 36-5 was scarcely past before Octavian was on the move. The suggestion of campaigns against Britain or Dacia can hardly have been seriously intended, save as a proof that the young Caesar had not forgotten any of his father’s plans or conquests, for what Italy most needed was security against attack. In the north-west the Alpine Salassi were continually giving trouble, from the north-east the Iapudes and kindred tribes had raided Tergeste and Aquileia unscathed, the colony of Pola had been destroyed about 40, Liburnian pirates infested the Adriatic, and though Pollio had been granted a triumph for his successes against the Parthini, the Delmatae still held standards captured from Gabinius. For the proper de­fence of Italy it was essential to gain the Alps as a boundary and bring the mountain tribes into subjection, whether Salassi in the north or Iapudes in the east, while control of the Ocra pass and of the upper Save meant that Italy would be freed from the inveterate fear of invasion from the east. True, the Dacians were no longer formidable, for the empire of Burebista had split up into four warring kingdoms, but other enemies might try that line of attack. Most important of all was that Octavian must himself preserve his prestige as a soldier and leader, must keep his numerous legions employed and in fighting trim, and must rivet to himself the loyalty and goodwill of the whole Italian people for deliverance from raids. Herein lies the importance of these Illyrian campaigns. Great expectations had been aroused, and Octavian elaborated his favourite plan of a complex offensive; the fleet, possibly under Menas, was brought round from South Italy, and while Octavian’s legates were to advance north-east from Aquileia towards Emona (Ljubljana) and the head waters of the Save, he himself marched , south-east from Tergeste to Senia (Senj) in order to strike across the range of the Kapela and descend by the valley of the Kupa upon the Save.

The region in which the campaigns of the next three years were to be waged corresponds roughly to the western half of the modern kingdom of Yugo-Slavia, but its condition was then very different from the pleasant valleys of Croatia or the stony uplands of the Karst as they now appear to the traveller. There was little cultivation: thick and tangled forest prevailed, with sparse clearings where the native villagers grew the spelt and millet upon which they relied. The population was a mixture of races with the Illyrians as a substratum: upon this mixture conquering bands of Celts (such as the Taurisci) had imposed themselves, but though their influence was strong—some tribes, for instance, had adopted Celtic weapons and armour—it was not everywhere dominant. Civilization was in an early stage: many of the tribes practised tattooing, some of the Delmatae used to redistribute their land every seven years, and though fortress-towns built of wood crowned hills here and there for shelter and defence in time of war, there were as yet no cities, no common councils and no possibility of united action. In a remarkable passage the historian Dio suddenly breaks into personal reminiscence to record the rigours of the climate and the worthlessness of the land; the tribes are brave fighters and reckless of peril just because they can find nothing in their country which makes life worth living; ‘I know,’ he adds drily, ‘for I have been a governor there myself.’

The programme for the year was carried out with complete success. The fleet, as it sailed northwards, dealt faithfully with the piratical Liburni and the islanders of Melite (Mljet) and Corcyra Nigra (Korcula), killing or enslaving, and received the submission of the tribes on the coast such as the Taulantii: in the North Octavian’s legati brought over such tribes as the Carni and Taurisci (who became allies and supplied boats for use on the river) and reached Emona. Octavian had chosen the hardest part, the subjugation of the warlike Iapudes amid their rocky and close- timbered valleys; a few strongholds such as Monetium (Brinje) and Avendo (Crkvina) surrendered, but henceforward progress was slower, for the troops had to hack their way through the dense growth that encumbered the valley, while reconnoitring bodies advanced fan wise on the ridges above; an attempted , ambush was repulsed and after the capture of Terpo (Gornji Modrus) the army moved on to the capital Metulum where greater resistance was to be encountered. Octavian erected a mound against the wall; the Iapudes, using Roman engines captured in previous campaigns, undermined it. Two more were raised from which four gangways were constructed for the final assault on the wall. But the desperate defenders succeeded in cutting away the supports and gangway after gangway collapsed till only one remained; the Romans wavered and stood still. The crisis in the assault had come; from the tower, whence he had been directing operations, he rushed down, seized a shield and (followed by Agrippa and a few of his bodyguard) advanced across; shamed into courage the soldiers crowded behind, but the weight was too great and the gangway gave way. Though badly injured by the fall, Octavian showed himself at once; his example was enough and the soldiers at the sight of their young general’s bravery and danger found themselves again. More gangways were run out, and to this indomitable resolution the doomed town surrendered; even so there was one last maddened sortie and the wooden walls and houses of Metulum went up in flame. The remainder of the Iapudes now submitted and M. Helvius was left to guard against outbreaks, while the main Roman force headed eastwards for Siscia (Sisak) lying near the confluence of the Save and Kupa. The headmen at first offered hostages and corn, but the sight of this tribute proved too much for the people; they made a furious rush to close the gates and prepared the town to stand a siege. But against such numbers resistance was unavailing, on land and on the rivers the Romans beat off attempts at relief and in thirty days Siscia fell. In late autumn Octavian returned to Rome, leaving a garrison of over two legions in Siscia under the command of Fufius Geminus; the winter-quarters of the others are unknown, but were presumably in Northern Italy.

Rumours of an attack on Siscia forced Octavian to leave Rome before winter was finished; but the garrison had resisted successfully and he turned south into Dalmatia, where Agrippa and other legati had been assigned their tasks. He next appeared before Promona (Teplju), a hill-fortress which had been occupied by the Dalmatian leader Versus. Again sheer weight of numbers rather than any tactical skill prevailed and the stronghold, together with the positions on the surrounding ridges, was soon stormed. Marching southwards Octavian passed through the defile in which a few years previously Gabinius had been entrapped and so took all the necessary precautions against surprise. He captured Synodium and began the blockade of Setovia (Sinj) on its impregnable rock, but the season was by now far advanced, a wound he had received in the knee was slow in healing and so, leaving Statilius Taurus in command, he journeyed to Rome to enter upon the consulship for 33 b.c. His own campaigns had taken him to the Cetina, but his legati had pressed even farther, for Appian’s mention of the Derbani and of the Docleatae (whose capital appears to have been the modern Duklja, north of Podgorica), shows that at least the northern half of Montenegro was reached and that his forces came very near to the dividing-line between Antony and himself, the town of Scodra.

But in the past two years events had been occurring which brought a breach with Antony ominously near, and it became important to husband his resources and bring the campaigns to a close quickly. Octavian accordingly laid down his consulship on the very first day, just as Antony had done a year previously, and began operations in Dalmatia in early spring. Setovfe was forced by famine to surrender, and the Dalmatians at last made their submission, giving 700 hostages, promising to pay tribute and—best of all—yielding up the lost standards of Gabinius. In the west he put a stop to the indecisive campaigns which Antistius Vetus had been waging against the Salassi; Terentius Varro Murena was to settle the account six years later. Apart from this minor check Octavian had every reason to be satisfied with his achievements; the garrisons at Emona and Siscia controlled and guarded a route of great antiquity and barred any invasion from the north-east; his conquests in Dalmatia had secured the eastern Adriatic coast and won him a splendid recruiting-ground for the Roman navies. Illness had prevented him from carrying out the whole of his projects, but he had delivered Italy from a great fear, he had displayed courage and skill as a leader, and he could recite a lengthy list of tribes conquered—Iapudes, Docleatae, Carni, Taurisci, Naresii, Glintidiones, Interfrurini, Oxyaei, Bathiatae, Cambaei, Cinambri, Taulantii, Meromenni—many of them mere names to the Italians as to us, but which he could set in profitable contrast to what he called the inactivity of Antony. And in the North the consolidation of the gains made was begun by the planting or refounding of colonies; to Tergeste (Trieste), which Caesar had made an Italian colony, he presented new fortifications, Pola rose again from its ruins as Colonia Pietas Julia, and Emona became in 34 b.c. Colonia Julia; from their garrisons the soldiers faced eastwards towards the great river that was to be the boundary of their Empire, and the linking-up of communication between Danube and Rhine would tax the skill of Roman generals for many years to come.

It was not only in military prestige, not only in the heightened loyalty and improved discipline of his troops that Octavian had gained: by beautification of the city during these years he carried out yet another of his father’s projects, and by a steady revival of pride in the past of Italy and her religion he filled the people with some of his own feeling and fostered a national consciousness. The Romans saw their city adorned by the efforts of Octavian or his friends and lieutenants. From the booty won in the recent campaigns he himself rebuilt the Porticus Octavia in which he deposited the recaptured eagles of Gabinius; at great expense he restored the theatre of Pompey, without adding his name, in 32 b.c. L. Aemilius Lepidus Paullus, who had been on his staff during the Sicilian campaigns, completed the reconstruction, begun by his father, of that Basilica Aemilia which Pliny reckoned among the most beautiful buildings in the world, while Statilius Taurus, after his triumph ‘ex Africa’ in 34, began work upon a great stone amphitheatre in the Campus Martius. Mae­cenas, who had been in charge of the city during the Illyrian Wars and entrusted with Octavian’s seal, cleared away a hideous stretch of burial ground on the Esquiline close by the Servian agger, and transformed it into a spacious park and walks for the populace. Still greater was the energy of Agrippa who at his own expense assumed in 33 the unwanted office of aedile: by restoring the century-old Aqua Marcia and by raising a new aqueduct, the Aqua Julia, he increased and assured the water-supply of Rome, where hundreds of new basins and fountains, adorned with marble, facilitated distribution: he repaired public buildings, reconditioned the drainage system, relaid streets, and spent money lavishly in providing amenities such as free baths and theatrical performances for the people.

Deeper and nobler was the sentiment that inspired Octavian in rekindling pride in the old Roman religion and institutions and in counteracting foreign practices. Greek cults were not banned for they had been long known to the people, Apollo was his protecting deity, and later, by his initiation, Octavian was to manifest his approval of the ‘augusta mysteria’ of Athens; but Asiatic, Syrian or Egyptian rites were not to be allowed. In every way men were encouraged to restore the sacred buildings and so reawaken belief: Octavian himself, on the prompting of the aged Atticus, undertook the repair of one of the most hallowed spots in Rome, the temple of Juppiter Feretrius wherein reposed the original spolia opima dedicated by Romulus^, Cn. Domitius Calvinus from the spoils of his Spanish campaign rebuilt the Regia, adorning it with statues provided by Octavian, L. Marcius Philippus restored the temple Herculis Musarum and L. Cornificius took charge of the temple of Diana on the Aventine. Already Horace, shedding his Republicanism, could write of Octavian as one whose care it was to protect ‘Italy and the shrines of the gods’, and could advise a parvenu freedman to make good use of his pile by spending it on decaying temples. Nor were the great priesthoods or the aristocratic families that supplied them forgotten. Octavian was himself an augur and his reward to the ex-Republican Messalla Corvinus for his services during the Sicilian War was the grant of an extra numerum place in the college of augurs; in 33 he was empowered by the Senate to create new patrician families for the express purpose of filling the priesthoods; the children of these noble families had been accustomed to take part in a ceremony (of supposedly great antiquity) called the Lusus Troiae, and this was celebrated by young men in 40 and again in 33 b.c. By every possible means, small and great, material and spiritual, Octavian was slowly educating Italy to his own faith and giving it strength for the coming struggle. Significant was the edict that in the year 33 expelled from Rome astrologers and fortune-tellers and magicians, those poor Greek or Asiatic charlatans whose antics Horace used so to enjoy watching³ the time was not so far distant when Octavian as fetial priest of an united Roman people would demand reparation from a queen whose more formidable magic menaced the existence of the Roman State.

V. THE BREAK

The agreement reached between Antony and Octavian at Tarentum was not to last for long. By the winter of 34 b.c. ominous signs had appeared, yet it is unlikely that the inner history and exact truth of the important period lying between 37 and 30 will ever be discovered, because the facts have been obscured and distorted by the propaganda of both sides, propaganda which has survived (and still defies complete analysis) in our sources. Some discussion of these sources is imperative, therefore, at this point, for though Octavian’s ultimate victory did not succeed in obliterating versions and traditions hostile to himself or favourable to Antony, the conquering cause naturally pleased the majority of Augustan historians. In the earliest narrative available, the brief history of Velleius Paterculus, the tone is ‘official’; Antony has scarcely a redeeming feature and is wrong almost from start to finish. Still the fact that both Gaius and Nero could claim descent from Antony must have exercised a restraining influence upon writers, and the ordinary orthodox view is probably represented by Seneca’s verdict that ‘a great man and of notable ability was turned to foreign ways and un-Roman vices by his love for drink and his equal passion for Cleopatra’. But the fall of the Julio-Claudians made such circumspection unnecessary; Tacitus readily reproduces traditions hostile to Augustus and in Plutarch, Suetonius, Appian and Dio both sides are to some extent represented. Sometimes the name of an authority is given and the tendency is clear, but usually the strands are more closely interwoven, and it may be suspected that much which now passes for fact is merely an echo from this war of recrimination; on the other hand merely to reject on suspicion all favourable notices (or alternatively all unfavourable notices) as obvious propaganda leads to impossible reconstructions.

A few instances will show something of the problem: the existence of the society of the ‘Inimitables’ might be questioned as sheer Caesarian invention were it not confirmed by an inscription; on the other hand the fishing exploit of Antony, which Plutarch sedulously chronicles among his ‘Follies,’ was obviously an attempt by Cleopatra to stir him to war and action. But when Dio, speaking of the banquets that followed the pact of Brundisium, asserts that Octavian entertained ‘in a soldierly and Roman fashion’ but Antony ‘in an Asiatic and Egyptian manner,’ the cautious will scent a Caesarian writer, especially when in the next sentence Octavian is portrayed as rescuing Antony from the violence of soldiers who were demanding bounties promised after Philippi. And though it is easy to see through such absurdities as the suggestion that Antony was never engaged in the first battle of Philippi and only took part in the pursuit, or the charges made against Octavian’s early life—mere stock-in-trade of Italian polemic—other passages do not disclose their origin so readily. What, for example, is to be made of the statement that the triumvirs in the winter of 43—2 seized large sums of money deposited with the Vestal Virgins? Is it simply true? Or is it a convenient fiction utilized afterwards to defend Octavian’s extortion of Antony’s will? Even though it were possible to track down with absolute certainty the narrative sources that underlie such works as the Antony of Plutarch, the Augustus of Suetonius, the last three volumes of the Bella Civilla of Appian, or books xliv to l of the History of Dio (for Velleius presents no serious problems) we should be little nearer a solution, as both Asinius Pollio and Livy, to mention the two most favoured candidates, were men of independent judgment and not mere partisans. In such circumstances all that the historian can hope to do is to set forth a probable story based upon close examination of the sources and a sympathetic study of the chief actors.

The pact of Tarentum had included among other clauses two pledges of good faith for speedy fulfilment: Antony was to provide Octavian with a fleet for the Sicilian War, Octavian was to give to Antony in return four legions. Antony fulfilled his part immediately, Octavian did not, and mutual suspicion began again its fatal work. A year and a half elapsed before Octavian gave thought to his pledge, but he went about it in a manner that revealed his resentment over Antony’s abandonment of his sister; in the spring of 35 some seventy of Antony’s ships were returned to him (which he had neither asked for nor desired) and Octavia started eastwards with 2000 legionaries and funds. Antony’s reply was direct and brutal: he accepted the men and money but bade Octavia come no farther; she must have returned to Rome in the winter of 35—4 and her brother tried to persuade her to leave Antony’s house. But he was met by a determination and passion as great as his own; she remained loyally in the house, attending to Antony’s interests, receiving his friends and lieutenants and looking after his children. But the facts that Octavian continued his Illyrian campaigns and celebrated the death of Sextus Pompeius by the conferment of fresh honours upon Antony, show that, however perturbed inwardly, he was still prepared to preserve the outward semblance of concord.

But Antony must have felt differently: Octavian’s pledges were worthless, a breach was bound to come; let it come quickly before his armies weakened yet further and before Octavian gained greater strength and favour in Italy. In the winter of 34, therefore, he staged the famous Donation, wherein he declared that Cleopatra had been the wife of Julius Caesar and that Ptolemy Caesar (Caesarion) was their acknowledged son. This was a definite step against his fellow triumvir, for it suggested that Octavian was usurping the place and title of another and had no real claim to the allegiance of the soldiers. Such news, reaching Rome in the spring of 33, moved Octavian to angry remonstrance in a letter; he reproached Antony with his ill-treatment of Octavia, his liaison with a foreign queen, and his support of her son. Antony, genuinely surprised, replied that Cleopatra was his wife; if he was married to an ‘Egyptian’, had not Octavian been ready to offer his daughter Julia to a Dacian? And what of Octavian’s own love-affairs? There followed more serious grievances: in accordance with the treaty of Brundisium Antony claimed half the recruits levied in Italy and allotments for his veterans, and asked where were the promised legions; finally he declared that Octavian alone stood in the way of the restoration of the Republic. To these fair demands Octavian would not reply: rage at the insult offered to his sister, mingled with his previous mistrust, had made him determined that until Octavia was righted there should be nothing. Instead he suggested sneeringly that Antony should find land for his veterans from his conquests in Parthia and attacked him for his enslavement to the Egyptian queen. This response reached Antony in the autumn while he was still in Armenia, and although he made no immediate move in hostilities—for it was not until November that Canidius brought his army to Ephesus—he realized that it was essential for him to reach the Senate and win its approval in the struggle that was bound to come; he addressed to it a despatch, asking for the ratification of his acta (which would include the Donations), and intimating his willingness to lay down the powers of the Triumvirate if Octavian would do likewise. From now on began a campaign of vituperation in which partisans of both sides joined, among them Cassius of Parma for Antony and Oppius and Messalla for Octavian; amid such activities the year 33 closed and with the last day of December the legal term fixed for the second period of the Triumvirate expired.

It is especially at this point that we regret the meagreness and inexactitude of our sources. Precedents were few, if any, but it looks as though both surviving members of the Triumvirate (or rather the legal-minded among their supporters) could argue with some show of justice that the law merely fixed a day up to which they could hold their powers and that after that only a formal act of abdication on their part or a vote of termination by the original granting body, the Roman People, could end their tenure. Antony certainly kept the title and continued to act as triumvir; Octavian dropped the title, though whether he made use of his powers or not is uncertain. But his tribunician right gave him sacrosanctity, he had the advantage of holding Italy, he knew he would be consul in 31, the position of privatus was not likely to terrify one who, twelve years ago, in equal certainty of the justice of his cause, had appealed to force and raised armies on his own authority, and he must have been aware that whatever illegalities or unconstitutionalities he might commit would be covered (if he emerged victorious) by retrospective legislation—as actually happened in 29 and 28 b.c. It seems likely therefore that while Antony continued to use both the powers and the title of Triumvir (for which he had at least an arguable case), Octavian dropped both and relied upon other means, and so could write in his Res Gestae that he was a member of the Triumvirate for ‘ten consecutive years’ and no more.

The consuls who entered office on 1 January 32 b.c., C. Sosius and Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus, were both supporters of Antony, and as Octavian had prudently withdrawn from Rome before the new year came in, it looked as though Antony could at last gain the hearing of the Senate free and unfettered. But there was a difficulty; the consuls did not dare read to the Senate the full contents of the despatch they had received from their leader, for they guessed how damaging an effect the reiteration of the gifts and titles bestowed upon Cleopatra and her children would have upon public feeling in Rome. So they tried different methods: Sosius, the more fiery of the two, delivered a harangue in praise of Antony and would have made a motion against Octavian had not Nonius Balbus interposed the tribunician veto. Octavian did not delay his answer long, though he surrounded himself with a bodyguard of his friends and soldiers before he took his seat in the Senate-house; there he defended his own acts and attacked gravely both Antony and Sosius, offering to prove by written documents to be produced to the fathers on a fixed day the justice of his cause. None dared utter a word in reply and the meeting dissolved, but before the fixed day arrived both consuls and some four hundred senators had left Rome for the East.

Antony had made no overt move during 33, but with the return of his army from Armenia in November he had finally decided upon war. He and Cleopatra wintered at Ephesus (33—2) amid strenuous preparations; and on the arrival of the consuls he set up a counter-Senate. He removed many works of art from Asia Minor to Alexandria, and gave Cleopatra the library of Pergamum in compensation for the books burnt by Caesar, but it is doubtful if it was ever transferred. The great fleet was mobilized; besides her squadron of warships, she supplied half of the 300 transports and probably a large force of rowers. She had undertaken to pay and feed the army and navy, and she started the war-chest with 20,000 talents; this was what she had been working for, and she was ready now to throw in everything she possessed. Antony called up all the client-kings in his sphere except Polemo and Herod, and took an oath of allegiance from them. Polemo was left to guard the Armenian frontier; and though Herod came to Ephesus Cleopatra would not have him with the army, and at her request Antony told him to punish Malchus for withholding her rent. He did defeat Malchus after a hard struggle, but was nearly baulked of victory by Cleopatra’s general in Coele-Syria, who knew that she only wanted the pair to damage each other. But before leaving Ephesus, Herod, who had grasped Antony’s situation, tried to take his revenge by telling him that the path to success was to kill Cleopatra and annex Egypt.

This abominable advice was sound, for at Ephesus the radical impossibility of Antony’s dual position had become patent: he could lead Romans against Romans as a Roman, but not as a Hellenistic king, the husband of Cleopatra. There were fierce quarrels between some of his Roman supporters, who wanted the queen sent back to Egypt and kept out of sight and mind, and Cleopatra, who meant to fight in her own war. Antony’s officers were of many minds. Some, like Canidius and Turullius, had to follow him whatever he did, as they could expect no mercy from Octavian. Some, like Domitius, were ready to fight for him, but only if they approved of his policy. Some, like the hardened deserters Titius and Dellius, merely meant to be on the winning side at the end. And there were plain honest men who had no wish for war at all; they preferred Antony to Octavian, but their real allegiance was to the Roman State. Cleopatra had the hardest struggle of her life. At one moment Antony ordered her back to Egypt, but she refused to go; the feeling aroused was shown when Canidius, who supported her, said that a woman who was paying and feeding the army and had a better head than most of them could not be sent away, and was at once told that she had bribed him. She strained her influence over Antony to carry her point, and she did carry it once for all, but the trouble was only glossed over, for the cause remained; Antony did his best by declaring that six months after victory he would lay down his powers. In April 32 headquarters were transferred to Samos, and she got him into good humour again with the usual banquets and amusements, while the transports were ferrying the army across to Greece; the whole body of Dionysiac artists were gathered in the island, and Antony rewarded them with Priene. In May they crossed to Athens, and the city gave Cleopatra the honours once given to Octavia. Antony’s supporters in Italy sent him a message begging him to send away Cleopatra, but she was strong enough now to have the messenger turned out.

Meanwhile in Rome, though the consuls had left, Octavian had the advantage of holding the capital; he convened what was left of the Senate and read a detailed defence of his position and acts, attacking those of Antony (especially the Donations), and contrasting his own campaigns in Dalmatia and Pannonia with the failures of Antony. For the coming war he must be secure of two things, money and loyalty, the more so since Antony had the support of Egypt’s wealth and boasted that gold could win him many friends in Italy. Fresh taxation was imposed, one-quarter of the annual income from all citizens and a capital levy of one-eighth on all freedmen, and a great effort was made to stir up national feeling. Some thirty years ago Pompey had persuaded Naples to pass a resolution urging the recall of Cicero from exile and bidding other municipalities follow suit, and now representatives began to move among the more important towns and municipalities in Italy, with rumours that Antony was drugged and dominated by a foreign sorceress, and suggesting that they should pass votes of confidence in Octavian, as leader of Italy. The movement slowly gathered impetus, and in May or June Antony took a step which alienated sympathy from him; he sent Octavia formal letters of divorce. For over two years, despite pressure from her brother, she had refused to leave Antony’s house; now his messengers expelled her weeping, with the children she was mothering, and the sight and act roused in her brother such a fury of resentment that he did not hesitate to seize an opportunity suddenly placed in his grasp.

At Antony’s headquarters the divorce of Octavia was taken to mean that Cleopatra was irresistible; and Plancus and Titius left and went over to Octavian, the first of many desertions. They had been trusted followers; they brought not only information about plans, but also news that Antony had recently drawn up a will (details of which they professed to know), which he had entrusted to the keeping of the Vestal Virgins. Octavian thus learnt that there was in Rome a document which would prove authoritatively to Italy all he wished to prove but had been unable to do owing to Sosius’ withholding of Antony’s official despatch to the Senate. The Vestals naturally refused to surrender the will to his request, and he seized it by force, risking the indignation which this act excited. A first glance convinced him that the will did indeed contain what would serve his purpose, and he read it publicly to the Senate. Among other clauses it is said to have included a declaration that Ptolemy Caesar was the true son of Cleopatra and Julius Caesar; but it certainly gave great legacies to Antony’s children by Cleopatra, and it directed that he should be buried beside her in Alexandria.

This last provision roused Rome to fury, for it was taken to mean that Antony intended to transfer the capital to Alexandria: he was no longer a Roman, but the tool of the foreign woman. There was a fresh outburst against him, much of it pitiful enough: he had given Cleopatra a Roman bodyguard (they were in fact Galatians), he had acted as gymnasiarch in Alexandria (as he had done without comment in Athens), he walked by her litter or rode with her; the real charge was that he was a traitor to Rome, ready to lead strange foes against her, like a second Pyrrhus. But against Cleopatra was launched one of the most terrible outbursts of hatred in history; no accusation was too vile to be hurled at her, and the charges then made have echoed through the world ever since, and have sometimes been naively taken for facts. This accursed Egyptian was a sorceress who had bewitched Antony with drugs, a wanton who had sold herself to his pleasures for power; this one and that one had been her paramours; Caesar’s alleged son was the bastard of an unknown father. She was a worshipper of beast-gods, a queen of eunuchs as foul as herself, a drunkard and a harlot; later she was to be called a poisoner, a traitor and a coward.

Some indeed of these jackal-cries needed the assurance of victory before they were voiced at their loudest, but even so the effect of the publication of the will was decisive. A vast body of hitherto uncertain sympathies now swung round definitely to Octavian; by October the discontent, culminating in some regions in rioting and arson, that the new taxation had stirred up had practically subsided and money began to flow in. In the late autumn the whole of Italy, town after town, joined in a solemn coniuratio, swearing allegiance to Octavian as its general in a crusade against the menace of the East, a demonstration of the solidarity of that new citizen-body which had been created by the wise statesmanship of two generations before, and this oath was taken also by the municipalities in the provinces of the West, Sicily, Sardinia, Africa, and the Gauls and Spains. Fortified by this public vote Octavian could take the final steps: Antony was deprived of his triumviral power and of his right to hold the consulship for 31, and Octavian himself, as fetial priest of the Roman people, before the temple of Bellona went through the impressive ritual that accompanied the formal proclamation of a iustum bellum. But he declared war on Cleopatra alone, not on Antony; partly because he had in 36 announced that the Civil Wars were at an end, but chiefly because opinion would be solid against a foreign enemy. And it corresponded to the facts; it was her war. Nor need we doubt that Octavian believed both in the mandate given him and in himself.

During the turn of the year Antony with his fleet and army was wintering in Greece, while the fleets of Octavian gathered at Brundisium and Tarentum. Though diplomatic interchanges had ceased publicity and propaganda continued unabated; the legal position of both protagonists was not strong, and no effort that might win support could safely be neglected. Charges and counter­charges now took their final and grossest shape: Antony was ridiculed for posing as Dionysus, Octavian for posing as Apollo; Octavian was a coward; Antony was a madman and a drunkard, a charge which stung him to a personal defence; he abused Octavian’s ancestors, and Octavian abused Cleopatra’s ministers; political crimes were alleged on both sides, like the Artavasdes matter; there were the sexual accusations which for centuries had been a commonplace of propaganda. Unsavoury in itself, this exchange of invective cannot be omitted from the history of the period and must even be stressed, because it had a definite effect upon historical writing of the next century and a half, and through these upon modern works, and it is not too much to say that both the conventional portraits—of Antony as a drunken sot occasionally quitting Cleopatra’s embraces for disastrous campaigns, of Octavian as a cowardly runaway, cruel and treacherous in his dealings—are due mainly to this propaganda and are wholly unreal. But they served their purpose.

The beginning of the year 31 greatly strengthened Octavian’s constitutional position, for he entered upon his third consulship (which he was to have shared with Antony), having as his colleague M. Valerius Messalla Corvinus. Within a few months everything was in readiness: Maecenas was left in charge of Italy and the capital, all disturbances in the peninsula had been suppressed, the coasts of the Western provinces were protected by naval squadrons, and Cornelius Gallus was dispatched to guard Africa against attack from the East. As soon as the spring sea was fit for navigation, with fleet and transports and accompanied by a large number of senators Octavian crossed the Adriatic.

VI. THE ACTIUM CAMPAIGN

Antony’s forces reached the coast of the Ionian Sea, his western boundary, about September 32. His fleet, which had picked up the detachments at Cephallenia and Zacynthus, totalled eight squadrons of the line of 60 ships each (one being Cleopatra’s, led by her flagship Antonia) with their complements of light scouts, normally five to a squadron—over 500 warships; no such fleet had ever yet been seen. He had noted the advantage which Octavian had had over Sextus in the size and weight of his ships, and had outbuilt him; his ships ranged upward to vessels of nine men to the oar, the flagship having ten, while the larger vessels had belts of squared timbers bound with iron to prevent ramming; the crews might number some 125,000—150,000 men. His land army comprised nineteen legions, doubtless the seven of the old army of Macedonia and twelve, now very weak, which had been in Media—about 60,000 to 63,000 men, all Italians and well-seasoned troops; with the light-armed, partly Asiatics, he perhaps had some 70,000-75,000 foot, the latter an outside figure, and perhaps 12,000 horse, partly the remnant of his original cavalry and partly supplied by the client-kings. That Cleopatra undertook to feed an army and navy of these dimensions shows that Egypt was still producing a large surplus of corn; but he had formed food depots in Greece and elsewhere. Of his remaining eleven legions, four under Scarpus were in the Cyrenaica to watch Octavian’s army of Africa under Cornelius Gallus, and the rest were distributed between Alexandria, Syria (under Q. Didius), and the Macedonian frontier. There was some disaffection in his rear, but of little account; Sparta under Eurycles, whose father he had executed, joined Octavian, as did Lappa and Cydonia in Crete; and during the winter Berytus revolted from Cleopatra.

The army wintered on a line extending from Corcyra to Methone in Messenia, the largest force occupying the Actian peninsula, the southern of the two promontories flanking the narrow entrance to the Gulf of Ambracia, which was well fortified; Antony’s headquarters were at Patrae, where Cleopatra struck coins. The life-nerve of the army was the Egyptian corn-ships, which rounded Cape Taenarum and came up the Peloponnesian coast; their route was guarded by stations at Leucas and elsewhere, the most southern being Methone, which was commanded by Bogud, driven from Mauretania by his brother Bocchus in Octavian’s interest. It was a bad position, for it surrendered the Via Egnatia and all good land communication with Macedonia and the East, and was very vulnerable from the sea; it gives the impression of being chosen by one whose aim was, not to crush his enemy, but to cover Egypt.

To challenge Octavian for the mastery of the world and then stand on the defensive was strange strategy, and Antony has naturally been blamed for not invading Italy in the early autumn of 32, while Octavian still had trouble there. But in fact he had no choice; he could not invade Italy, not because the season was late or the ports guarded, but because he could not go either with or without Cleopatra. To take her with him meant that the whole peninsula, including his friends, would stand solid against the foreign invader; and she would not let him go without her and perhaps, through Octavia’s mediation, come to another accommodation with Octavian, at her expense. As he could not go to Octavian, he must make Octavian come to him; hence the surrender of the Via Egnatia, while in winter he withdrew from Corcyra, leaving free the passage to Dyrrhachium. Octavian, he thought, had not the money for a long war, and must seek a decision.

But if we understand why Antony surrendered the initiative, much of the ensuing campaign, as given in our secondary sources, is incomprehensible. Why did Antony not use his great fleet to attack Octavian when crossing? Why was that fleet never used at all till too late? And how came it, when he meant Octavian to cross, that Octavian surprised him—if he did surprise him? None of these questions can be answered. We might conjecture that his position and the quarrels in his camp had paralysed his will; that he only wanted to end it somehow, and believed that, given any sort of a land battle, his own generalship must prevail; but it would remain conjecture. Even the details are wrong; Turullius’ coins prove that Antony won some victory after which he was hailed Imperator for the fourth time, but it cannot be fitted into the extant secondary tradition. Till we come to Antony’s final defeat on land, no satisfactory account of the campaign is possible.

Octavian had mobilized 80,000 foot and 12,000 horse, and something over 400 ships; the bulk of his fleet was formed by the large heavy ships which had defeated Sextus, strengthened like Antony’s by belts of timber and equipped with catapults for firing Agrippa’s harp ax; his fleet organization is unknown, but he perhaps had more Liburnians (light scouts) than the usual complement. As he possessed far more men and ships than he mobilized, he must have decided that these numbers would suffice, as they did. The land forces he meant to command himself, but the fleet he wisely entrusted to the tried skill of Agrippa. Maecenas he left in Rome to manage Italy, but he brought most of the Senate with him, except Pollio; Pollio had broken with Antony on his marriage to Cleopatra and was living in Italy, but he refused to fight against his former friend, and Octavian respected his scruples. Octavian crossed very early in 31, while Antony’s army was still in winter-quarters. Agrippa with half the fleet attacked the Peloponnese, stormed Methone, Bogud being killed, and thus secured a base for his cruisers on the flank of Antony’s corn-ships; and under cover of this diversion Octavian with the army landed in Epirus, moved southward very fast, tried but failed to surprise Antony’s fleet from the land (perhaps Antony’s victory comes in here), and seized a position on the high ground at Mikalitsi in the northern of the two promontories which enclose the Gulf of Ambracia. Perhaps Antony was not really surprised—witness Cleopatra’s unconcern at the capture of Toryne in Epirus; perhaps his fleet was a bait to draw Octavian into a position where he thought he could trap him; but, if so, things did not go according to plan. For by the time he had collected his army in the Actian peninsula Octavian had fortified his position and connected it by long walls with the roadstead of Comarus, while Agrippa had stormed Leucas and destroyed the squadron there; from Leucas and Comarus the fleet could now blockade the Ambracian Gulf, so far as galleys could blockade, and prevent the entrance of corn-ships. Agrippa subsequently took Patrae and Corinth and cut Antony off from the Peloponnese.

An unsuccessful sortie of part of Antony’s fleet, in which the dynast Tarcondimotus was killed, may show that, as a dynast was on board, Antony was refusing legionaries to the fleet and depending entirely upon his land operations. He crossed from Actium and camped in face of Octavian; then he shipped troops up the Ambracian Gulf, sent his cavalry round it, and attempted by a combined attack to close Octavian in and cut off his water-supply, the weak point of his position. The attack was defeated by the failure of Antony’s cavalry, who formed the northern (outer) wing of the encircling force, and two dynasts, Rhoemetalces of Thrace and Deiotarus of Paphlagonia, went over to Octavian; ‘I like treason’ said Octavian to Rhoemetalces when he abused Antony, ‘but I don’t like the traitors’. Antony made an effort to recruit more cavalry and led a second attempt in person; Amyntas, the man he had made, went over to Octavian with his 2000 Galatian horse, and the attempt was completely defeated. Amyntas and the other dynasts may have objected to the alteration of their position under the Donations; but their allegiance was due to Rome, not to a party, and they may merely have believed that Octavian would be victor. Antony recognized the defeat as decisive for the operations on land, and withdrew to Actium.

Instead of besieging Octavian, he was now virtually besieged. The troops and crews who had wintered on the low ground about the Gulf had suffered from disease; his press-gangs provided more rowers, but that did not help the troops. Rations were short; Agrippa had cut him off from Egypt and the Peloponnese, and food had to be brought on men’s backs across the mountain paths of Aetolia (Plutarch’s grandfather was pressed as a carrier, which helps to explain Plutarch’s want of sympathy for Antony), and even this resource might fail, as Octavian had sent detachments eastward. Officers and dynasts alike were now deserting to Octavian, and Antony’s attempt to stop the movement by severity—he executed Iamblichus of Emesa and a Roman senator—only increased it; even Domitius himself, desperately ill, left and went to Octavian to die. Dellius followed; and Antony called a council of war. Canidius wished to abandon the ships, retire into Macedonia, and fight in the open; Cleopatra insisted on using the fleet, and Antony agreed; Octavian learnt his decision from deserters. Cleopatra was right in theory; but it was much too late. At sea,  with about 400 ships left—seven squadrons of the line, some under strength—they were on paper still at least as strong as Octavian; what came in question was the legions to man them. In those civil wars in which no principle is at stake, only personal ambition, men easily change sides wholesale; the wars of Alexander’s Successors supply many instances, and Antony’s troops had seen Lepidus’ legions go over. Antony had been beaten on land, and the men, weakened by disease and short rations, disheartened by the desertions of officers, and suspicious that they were really fighting for Cleopatra, were thinking that it was time to end it. Antony knew that all was not well, but believed that the common man would always follow him in battle.

On that coast in summer the wind in the morning normally comes in from the sea, but about midday shifts to the north-west and blows with some force. Antony knew that when he came out he would find Octavian’s fleet to seaward of him, and he meant to use the wind when it shifted to turn their left and drive them southward (down wind) away from their camp; were they broken or dispersed, he could starve the camp out. As rowers could not pursue far, he took his sails on board, an unusual course. But in case the battle miscarried he had a second plan, probably known only to Cleopatra and Canidius (certainly Octavian knew nothing of it): they would break through to Egypt with what ships they could, and Canidius would bring the rest of the army back overland. The war-chest was accordingly shipped in secret upon some of Cleopatra’s transports, which shows that Antony contemplated the possibility of not returning to his camp; otherwise he would not have risked the money going to the bottom. Probably what actually decided the troops was his order to take the sails; this, to them, obviously meant flight, and they were not going to Egypt to fight for Cleopatra.

The number of Antony’s ships shows that he shipped? some 35,000—40,000 legionaries, more than half his strength; Octavian shipped about the same force, eight legions and five cohorts. Agrippa commanded Octavian’s fleet, Octavian being on a Liburnian. After stormy weather it fell calm on September 2nd, and Antony’s fleet came out and lay on its oars, waiting for the wind to veer; he had six squadrons in line, with Cleopatra’s squadron, manned by her own mercenaries and trustworthy, in the rear, to stop any preliminary attempts at desertion. He commanded the three squadrons of the right, 170 ships, with himself on the extreme right to lead the turning movement; he had two squadrons on the left and one in the centre, but when the right stretched out to turn Agrippa Cleopatra was probably meant to come up into the gap, completing the centre. Well out at sea Agrippa also lay on his oars, waiting for the wind; he was on his own left, to counter Antony’s move and if possible turn him instead and cut him off from his camp. When the wind shifted, Antony and Agrippa raced to turn each other and the ends of their two lines met; here there was fighting, and Antony ultimately lost some ten to fifteen ships, while his flagship was grappled; what Agrippa lost is not recorded. At this point the three squadrons of Antony’s centre and left backed water and returned to harbour; the two inner squadrons of his right, unable to follow because of Cleopatra, raised their oars and surrendered; and Antony was left with nothing but his personal squadron on the extreme right, which was engaged, and Cleopatra’s, which was isolated. He signalled Cleopatra to carry out their second plan; she hoisted sail and stood southward, waiting for him once she was out of enemy reach; Agrippa’s right, which may have followed Agrippa, was nowhere near her. Antony could not extricate his flagship; he transferred himself to the first ship of the line which was free, and with the rest of his squadron, some 40 ships, followed Cleopatra. He boarded her flagship and sat on the prow with his head in his hands, forgetting even her and staring at the sea, but what he saw was not the sea but his ships returning to harbour; he knew now that all was over, for there was scarcely anyone in the world whom he could trust to follow him. From that hour he was a broken man.

Octavian could hardly realize what had happened, and remained at sea all night; but in the evening he had sent a despatch to Maecenas in Rome with the bare facts, and from this Horace wrote his ninth Epode, which records the treachery of Antony’s fleet. Next morning however he took over the five surrendered squadrons, the ‘300 ships’ of his Memoirs; he burnt the larger part, as was Roman practice, and used their bronze beaks to decorate the monument raised where his camp stood and the temple of Divus Julius in Rome; the rest he ultimately stationed at Forum Juliense (Frejus) as one of the Imperial fleets. Canidius tried to get the army away, but though it did not surrender for seven days it was only negotiating terms; finally Canidius had to fly for his life, and went to Antony in Egypt.

Octavian was hailed Imperator for the sixth time, and Cicero’s son had the satisfaction of reading to the Senate his letter announcing Antony’s defeat. Some of Antony’s prominent adherents were put to death, but some were spared, including Sosius; his corn was distributed to a hungry Greece, and his legions broken up; the veterans from both armies were sent back to Italy and the rest distributed in different places, lest they should mutiny. Octavian sent Agrippa to Italy to aid Maecenas, who during the campaign had had to deal with a plot by Lepidus’ son, and himself went to Athens, where he was initiated, and thence to Samos; but the veterans sent to Italy saw themselves excluded from the plunder of Egypt and became so unruly that in January Agrippa urgently begged him to return. At great personal risk from storms he crossed to Brundisium; he distributed what money he had secured or could obtain, and took land for his own troops from communities which had favoured Antony, some of the dispossessed owners being settled at Dyrrhachium and Philippi, and from other communities which became military colonies; but he really tided over the trouble by promising to pay both troops and landowners in full from the treasure of the Ptolemies, and they agreed to wait. He then returned to Asia, with the knowledge that his career and perhaps his life depended on securing that treasure.

VII. ALEXANDRIA

Though Antony was broken by the catastrophe of Actium, Cleopatra was not. She sailed into the harbour of Alexandria with head erect and ships garlanded for victory; it gave her the few hours she needed, and she seized and executed all who might have raised a revolution against her. Antony went to Cyrene, but his legions there joined Gallus, and he went on to Alexandria. Cleopatra began to make plans; they might sail to Spain, seize the silver mines, and play Sertorius; they might found a new realm in the Indian seas, beyond reach of Rome. This was feasible enough, and she drew some ships over the isthmus to Heroonpolis; but Malchus joyfully attacked and burnt them. She executed Artavasdes to secure the Median alliance, in case they could defend Egypt. But every plan depended on Antony’s co-operation, for she had no thought of abandoning him, and Antony was useless; as men had deserted him, he would desert men, and he was living alone in a house near the shore, playing Timon the misanthrope. The first necessity was to restore him to some sort of sanity, and she tried to do this by the only way she knew of, a fresh round of feasts and amusements, under the shadow of death. He did return to the palace; but as he never attempted to collect his remaining legions and hold the enormously strong line of the Nile, which had so often saved Egypt from invasion, he must have told her that defence was impossible; the troops would merely go over, as the legions at Cyrene had done and as Didius and the Syrian legions soon did. One body of men alone remained pathetically loyal to him; some gladiators training at Cyzicus to make sport for him after his expected victory started for Egypt to help him, but Didius prevented them passing through Syria and they were destroyed later by Octavian’s general Messalla. Antony might have been expected to imitate Cato and Brutus and commit suicide; the sequel shows that he meant to live while Cleopatra lived, perhaps with some vague idea that he might yet be of use to her.

Cleopatra had to decide whether she would defend Egypt by herself; she faced the situation with her usual courage. After her two bids for supreme power she was again what she had been at the start, a client-queen of Rome. That she must lose her throne, if not her life, she knew. But if she fought, her children would fall with her, for the result was certain; if however she acted as client-kings did act in such circumstances—as Deiotarus had done and Herod was doing—and put her crown into Octavian’s hands, there was a chance that he might follow Roman custom and give it to one of her sons. She made her decision accordingly, and when Egypt offered to rise for her she forbade it, giving as her reason that she would not inflict useless suffering on her people; it may well be true, though her primary reason was her children.

In the summer of 30 Octavian approached Egypt through Syria, while Gallus occupied Paraetonium; Antony went to Paraetonium, but merely lost his 40 ships. He sent envoys to Octavian, offering to kill himself and spare him trouble if that would save Cleopatra; Octavian did not answer. The stories of Cleopatra’s attempted treachery to him (what was there to betray?) are all demonstrably untrue. Following her decision, she sent Octavian her sceptre and diadem, asking him to crown one of her sons. Officially, he ordered her to disarm. But secretly he assured her that she had nothing to fear; for she still had one piece to play, the treasure of the Ptolemies. On the strength of it he had made many promises in Italy both to veterans and landowners; he still had to face the claims of his victorious army; if he failed to secure the last great accumulation of wealth in the world, army, veterans, and landowners would all turn on him in earnest. Cleopatra had built herself a mausoleum, not yet completed, near the temple of Isis; as Octavian approached, she shut herself up in the upper room with her two women, Iras and Charmion, while in the lower part was stored the treasure, gold and jewels, ivory and spices, heaped round with inflammable matter; should he refuse the crown to one of her sons, she could light a royal pyre and bring him to ruin.

On July 31 his advance cavalry reached the suburbs. Antony could not die without one fight; he fell on them and scattered them. But that night a sound was heard in the city not made by man, interpreted as the god Dionysus leaving Antony; and when next day he drew out his forces, his cavalry and Cleopatra’s ships (i.e. her mercenaries) went over to Octavian, and Antony, returning to the city, heard that Cleopatra was already dead. That was all he had waited for, and he stabbed himself, but did not die at once; then he heard that she lived, and begged to be taken to her. With much effort the three women drew him in at the upper window of the mausoleum, and Cleopatra mourned him as Briseis had mourned Patroclus, tearing her face and breasts with her hands; and he died, as he would have wished to die, in her arms. That same day, the first of the month afterwards called in commemoration by his name, August, Octavian entered Alexandria. He was not hailed Imperator by his troops, as he entered without resistance; but it was publicly recorded in the Fasti that on that day he saved Rome from the most terrible danger, that is, from Cleopatra. He at once sent his friend Proculeius with orders to take her alive. She spoke with Proculeius through a grating and named her terms, the crown for one of her sons; but he saw the window and returned next day with Gallus, and while Gallus held her in talk at the grating he and others climbed in at the window; she tried to stab herself, but was seized, disarmed, and carried off to the palace, and Octavian was safe at last; he had the treasure. When it was taken to Rome, the standard rate of interest at once dropped from 12 to 4 per cent., and Octavian was easily able to satisfy all claims of the army and the veterans and pay for all the land he took, though all prices doubled, and, after executing many public works, still distribute a large surplus in bonuses to the people.

He allowed Cleopatra to bury Antony, and he only put to death four men: Turullius and Cassius of Parma, Caesar’s murderers; Ovinius a senator, manager of Cleopatra’s wool-mill; and Canidius. But he killed the two boys, the young Antony as his father’s designated successor, and Ptolemy Caesar (whom his mother had tried to send to the Indian sea for safety) because of his name and parentage; the world must not hold two Caesars. It was the final brutality of a brutal age, and he meant it to be final; if the world was to have peace, he had to make an end of all who might yet trouble it. But there was still Cleopatra. Doubtless Rome expected her death, but he seemingly objected to killing a woman, or even to being thought accessory to her suicide; when on her removal to the palace she began starving herself he stopped her by threatening to kill her children. Yet she must die, both for what she had done and because she knew too much; Cleopatra on some Aegean rock writing her Memoirs might have been awkward for the future Augustus. His problem was to induce her to kill herself in such a way that he could not be blamed. Had he really meant to preserve her for his triumph he would have given her a Roman gaoler, with trustworthy women never quitting her; instead, she was left in the palace with her own people in charge of his freedman Epaphroditus, who knew his wishes; if necessary, a freedman could always be disavowed and executed, as Antigonus I had executed the women he employed to murder another Cleopatra.

Cleopatra, her first impulsive attempts at suicide having failed, desired now before dying to be sure that there was no chance of the crown for one of her sons—why had Octavian neither killed nor imprisoned her? Octavian knew her motive through Proculeius; he knew too, as did everyone, that she had declared that she would never be led in his triumph; she was not going to be shamed before the Roman mob, like her sister Arsinoe. On these facts he could work. Which of them sought the interview between them is immaterial; it was necessary to both. It was more than the meeting of two great antagonists; two civilizations, soon to be fused, stood face to face in their persons. What passed was never known but to their two selves; our accounts are merely rhetorical exercises. But Octavian could only say what, if it became known, would not inculpate him, and the sequel shows something of what happened. He told her that he meant to annex Egypt, which removed her last reason for living; and he gave her some vague assurances which he knew that she would see through and would conclude that she was to be led in his triumph. Still she did not die, for she wished to die in one particular way; Octavian became impatient, and word reached her, as from a friend, that in three days’ time he would take her to Italy. Then she asked his leave to make a libation at Antony’s tomb; and over the tomb she prayed—many must have heard—that, as they had not been divided in life, so they might not be divided in death. It was not acting; they could not have done and suffered together what they had done and suffered without her having some feeling for him; perhaps she did love him dead whom she had never loved living. One of her people used the occasion to arrange for the asp, and a peasant brought it to the palace in a basket of figs. If the story we have be true—if no snake was seen after her death and yet Octavian at once sent the snake-charmers called Psylli to suck the poison from the wound—then he knew beforehand of the sending of the asp; but he would hardly have given himself away so glaringly, and doubtless the story of the Psylli is untrue. On receiving the snake, Cleopatra wrote him a letter, asking to be buried beside Antony; and Epaphroditus, with the palace slaves at command, quitted his post and took the letter himself, the final proof that Octavian intended her to have her opportunity.

Of the manner of her death no doubt should now exist, for it is known why she used an asp; the creature deified whom it struck, for it was the divine minister of the Sun-god, which raised its head on the crown of Egypt to guard the line of Re from harm. Once she was alone she arrayed herself in her royal robes and put the asp to her breast; the Sun-god had saved his daughter from being shamed by her enemies and had taken her to himself. With her died her two women; of how many queens is it written that their handmaids disdained to survive them? So Octavian’s men found them when they broke in: Cleopatra dead on her couch of gold, with Iras dead at her feet, and Charmion, half-dead and trembling, trying to adjust the diadem upon her head. One of the men burst out ‘Is this well done, Charmion?’ ‘Aye,’ said she, ‘it is very well.’

The ancient world had little pity for the fallen; and it had little for Cleopatra. The hatred which Romans felt for her can be read at large in their literature; but through that literature there runs too another feeling, publicly recorded in the Fasti, and if Octavian’s propaganda directed the hate, it did not create the fear. Grant all her crimes and her faults; grant that she sometimes fought her warfare with weapons other than those used by men; nevertheless it was the victors themselves who, against their will, raised the monument which still witnesses to the greatness in her. For Rome, who had never condescended to fear any nation or people, did in her time fear two human beings; one was Hannibal, and the other was a woman.

CHAPTER IV

THE TRIUMPH OF OCTAVIAN