Cleopatra and Antony

by Diana Preston

  *Castration was forbidden in Italy. Consequently, to the Romans eunuchs were always a subject of prurient interest and an easy and tantalizing signpost to the decadence of the East.

  *The Roman citizens’ exemption from direct taxation had long since disappeared to pay for the costly upheavals of the civil wars.

  *Octavian disregarded one particular element of the traditional process for the declaration of a just war—the requirement to attempt to negotiate a peaceful settlement before war could be declared.

  CHAPTER 20

  The Battle of Actium

  AS THE CAMPAIGN BEGAN ANTONY, with his powerful forces and the economic, military and political backing of Cleopatra and his allies in the east, as well as his still substantial support in Rome among exiled republicans, had as good a chance of emerging victorious as Octavian. In the autumn of 32, with Cleopatra at his side, Antony transferred his headquarters from Athens to make a winter base at the city of Patras. Strategically situated at the head of the Gulf of Corinth, this city was at the middle of the string of naval bases Antony had established from Corfu in the north to the coast, of North Africa in the south in order to protect his supply routes. Command of the sea would be key to the forthcoming struggle. It would allow the domination of the Ionian coast, where Octavian would need to land if he wished to come to grips with Antony and Cleopatra’s forces in Greece.

  However, for reasons never satisfactorily explained, Antony did not keep his main fleet with him at Patras but ordered it to the Ambracian Gulf, just north of the island of Levkas. The Gulf is about ten miles long and about five miles across. It provides a safe harbor because two protruding promontories narrow the mouth to only half a mile wide. Actium is at the tip of the low, flat southern promontory. At that time, Actium was a small village used by pearl fishermen with a small five-hundred-year-old temple to Apollo nearby on the shore. Marshy, barren and dank, the area’s isolation rendered it both difficult to supply and inconducive to the maintenance of morale. Octavian, on the other hand, had the advantage of wintering his troops and navy in Italy at the port cities of Brundisium and Tarentum, where facilities and health were better and morale much easier to maintain.

  During the winter, when uncertain weather ruled out a major sea campaign, both sides redoubled their efforts to build new ships and to repair old ones, replacing frayed rigging, caulking leaking seams, careening the hulls and reapplying coats of pitch and wax to make the ships sail more easily and quickly through the Mediterranean waters. The Romans had by tradition been soldiers, not sailors. The long wars with the Carthaginians had taught them how to fight at sea, and their first warship designs had evolved from a close study of captured Carthaginian vessels. Roman ships were still crewed to a great extent by foreigners, some pressed, some volunteers. Octavian’s navy had the great advantage of recent experience of naval warfare in the sea battles against Sex-tus Pompey around Sicily in which the young Agrippa had shown himself an astute admiral and naval tactician. On the other hand, Antony was able to draw on the long naval tradition of Egypt and of other of his allies and clients in the Mediterranean, such as the sailors of Rhodes.

  The ships the two navies were gathering came in a variety of shapes and sizes. The large transports that, on the orders of Cleopatra, brought grain and other supplies from Egypt to Antony’s armies were sail-powered vessels of around thirteen hundred tons’ burden. They carried three masts, were approximately 180 feet long and 45 feet in both depth and width, had several decks divided into compartments and were well ballasted. Their pumps were based on the screw system invented by Archimedes at the Museon in Alexandria, in which a screw rotated within a pipe to pull water upward.* Supply ships would take about a week to reach Antony’s forces from the Egyptian capital.

  The warships on both sides were galleys and thus relied mainly on the use of oars for their propulsion. Most had more than one bank of oars, but their designation as threes, fours or sixes came not from the number of banks of oars, one above the other, but from the number of rowers who manned the oars in a particular location. For example, a five might consist of one bank of two men above another bank of two, with a further man using a single oar on the level above; or, indeed, it could designate one bank of five men pulling on a single long oar.

  Responding to the instructions of a hortator, who set the speed and rhythm, the rowers worked from benches, half standing to push back the oars and then falling back on their seats as they hauled the oars toward them. The bow of each ship was heavily reinforced with stout timbers and, at the waterline, a two- or three-pronged, brass-encased wooden ram protruded forward ready for use in disabling enemy vessels. According to surviving representations of them, the ships of Cleopatra’s Egyptian navy, which made up at least a quarter of the fleet assembled by Antony, seem to have been distinguished by a model of a crocodile fixed to the bow above the ram and below the prow as some kind of figurehead. Cleopatra’s contribution to the fleet was not limited to these ships. Many other of Antony’s vessels were rowed by Egyptians.

  The trireme or “three,” about 150 feet long and displacing some 230 tons, was the most common type of galley on both sides. However, Antony had, in general, the larger vessels. Their sides were reinforced with ironbound beams to withstand ramming. They were so massive that they looked like fortresses and “caused the sea to groan and the wind to labor as they were carried along.” Their size and weight, however, rendered them unwieldy. Agrippa, on the other hand, had introduced into Octavian’s fleet a lighter, smaller version known as a Liburnian, from its place of origin on the Adriatic coast, where it had been the craft of choice for pirates. Tough enough to withstand high winds and bad weather, it had two banks of oars, was fast and maneuverable and would give Agrippa a vital advantage in the campaign to come.

  On whatever part of the Mediterranean coast—Egyptian, Greek or Roman—the shipwrights working during the winter of 32–31 used very similar construction techniques. First they laid down on the stocks the keel and the stem and stern posts. Then they began assembling the outer shell of planking, which was between one and a half and four inches in thickness and joined edge to edge to its neighbor or the keel and secured by frequent mortise and tenon joints so well made and so close together that very little caulking was required. Only after the shipwrights had completed this outer shell did they begin to insert structural framing timbers to strengthen the ship and to lay the planking for the decks. All ancient ships used side rudders to steer, one on each side of the ship. They were a kind of oversized oar on a pivot operated by a tiller.

  Before they launched the ships the workers coated the hulls with tar and then painted the superstructure with hot wax. A Roman work on naval warfare describes how some ships, particularly the lighter craft used for scouting and shadowing, were painted with an early version of camouflage: “Their sails and ropes are dyed blue, the color of seawater; and even the wax with which the hull is painted is similarly colored, while the soldiers and sailors aboard them likewise dye their clothes.” The larger warships were painted in stronger-colored wax—purples, yellows and reds—to emphasize their size and destructive potential.

  While the shipwrights labored busily that winter, neither side let up in the propaganda war. Antony had coins minted, one side of which bore his own image and titles and the other those of Cleopatra holding the ritual rattle, a symbol of Isis. Octavian challenged Antony to allow his forces to land in Greece and then to come to battle in five days or else to cross himself with his armies to Italy on the same basis. Antony responded with the very sensible question “Who is to judge between us if the agreement is broken in any way?” But he followed up with an equally empty invitation to single combat.

  Octavian’s propagandists began to report a series of omens favorable to their leader. (So too, presumably, did Antony’s, but these are lost to us.) Octavian’s spin doctors claimed sweat oozed from a statue of Antony and, however hard people tried to wipe it away, they could not make it stop for a number of days.
They also claimed that a figure of Dionysus, Antony’s divine counterpart, crashed to the ground, followed swiftly by one of his ancestor Heracles, and that a chasm swallowed up one of the colonies founded by Antony. According to Plutarch, Cleopatra’s flagship, the Antonias, was also the object of a terrifying portent: “Some swallows made their nest under the stern, but others attacked them, drove them away, and killed the baby birds.” Both Octavian and Antony, in his case bankrolled by Cleopatra, kept up a campaign of bribery of influential Romans and potential foreign allies.

  With the arrival of the spring, the navies were readied for action. Marines, often land-loving legionaries, marched up the gangways to their stations on the decks built over the banks of rowers. Other Mediterranean navies had relied to a great extent in battle on the use of superior seamanship to vanquish their enemies. Their captains proceeded on a parallel course to an opponent before increasing speed to the maximum of which the rowers were capable—at most ten miles per hour—and swiftly changing course, either to ram the enemy or to disable them by sweeping away their oars before they could be pulled inboard. However, the Romans, being soldiers at heart, preferred to rely on the firing of arrows and other weapons from collapsible towers raised on the deck as well as the firing from deck-mounted heavy catapults of iron darts and grapnels. The latter were designed to become entangled in the opposing vessel and allow it to be winched into a position where it could be boarded. Literally to provide greater firepower, laborers carried onto the ships buckets of combustible pitch and oil. When battle was near, the crew attached these to long poles and pushed them out beyond the bow before setting them alight, so if an enemy came within range, the fire could be poured onto his decks.

  Agrippa’s fleet struck the first blow, crossing the Ionian Sea not by the usual northern route opposite the heel of Italy but much further south, diagonally toward the Peloponnese. Here, on its west coast, Agrippa seized Antony’s naval station of Methone, killing Antony’s commander there, Bogud, the deposed king of Mauretania. From here, he proceeded to harass Antony’s supply route from Egypt and to make further amphibious hit-and-run raids on his bases along the coast, causing Antony to move some of his forces south. So successful were Agrippa’s diversionary tactics that Octavian was able to ship his main army across the northern route to Corfu undetected by Antony’s fleet, which, preoccupied with the southern threat, had failed to keep a northern shield of guard ships in place.

  On reaching Corfu, Octavian found it abandoned by Antony’s forces, and he crossed safely to the mainland. Octavian, perhaps on Agrippa’s advice, had not brought with him all the legions he had mobilized. With a smaller, less unwieldy force, his mobility was increased and his supply problems lessened. He had about eighty thousand men compared to Antony’s one hundred thousand. However, Octavian’s forces were nearly all Italian, well disciplined and committed to his cause, whereas Antony’s troops were drawn from all across the eastern Mediterranean and the loyalties of some, at least, were more questionable.

  According to the historian Dio Cassius, Octavian brought with him to Greece “all the men who carried influence in public life, both senators and knights.” His astute intention was both to ensure that they could not make trouble at home in his absence and also “to demonstrate publicly that he had on his side the largest and strongest body of support among the Roman people.” He wanted to make clear that he, not Antony and the numerous renegade senators among his multinational army, represented Rome and legitimacy.

  Octavian had seized the military initiative, which he would never again lose, and was quickly making his way down the mainland in a series of amphibious leaps. In response to the news of his landings, Antony mobilized his forces and, with Cleopatra at his side, moved them up toward the peninsula of Actium and the Ambracian Gulf, where his major fleet lay. Over the winter, his commanders had taken the precaution of fortifying both sides of the narrow entrance to the gulf with palisades, watchtowers and catapults.

  By the time Antony reached Actium with Cleopatra, Octavian, moving with the speed and decisiveness of his adoptive father, Julius Caesar, was already on the shores of the gulf, where he had encamped some way from the mouth, on the northern side on a low hill that dominated the surrounding flats. He had also established a naval base on the open sea nearby in the Bay of Comaros. While Antony’s fleet could ride safely at anchor in the gulf, if his ships attempted to put to sea, Agrippa, on Octavian’s behalf, could severely maul them as they negotiated the narrow mouth and deployed. Similarly, Agrippa could harass incoming supply ships. Antony’s great fleet was partially blockaded and, as a consequence, the freedom of movement of his land armies severely restricted. If his main armies marched away from the shores of the gulf, Antony’s fleet would have little alternative but to surrender.

  Octavian’s position did have some weaknesses. His water supplies were not secure, since they came from a river about a mile to the east of his camp or from springs at least a similar distance away. Octavian had built a temporary breakwater to protect his fleet from the sea but even so, in a westerly storm—fortunately for him, rare in summer—his ships would have to quit their anchorage or face being driven ashore. It was in Octavian’s interest to force a decisive battle as soon as possible while the weather was good and before Antony could marshal fully his diverse forces and summon more ships to break Agrippa’s naval blockade of the gulf. Antony knew this and refused to give battle, contenting himself with harassing attacks and cavalry raids on Octavian’s water supplies.

  However, while Antony was assembling his troops, Agrippa struck again by sea to tilt the balance further in favor of Octavian, capturing the large craggy island of Levkas just southwest of the Actium promontory. Separated from the mainland by only a narrow channel of mudflats, the island dominates the southern approaches to the gulf. Surviving records do not recount Agrippa’s feat in detail nor whether Antony had neglected to garrison the strategic island properly. However, its capture meant that not only Antony’s fleet but also his army were now effectively blockaded. Agrippa’s ships had secured a better anchorage and could prevent the great transports dispatched on Cleopatra’s orders from Egypt with grain and other supplies from approaching the gulf or even landing supplies nearby. Only the bravest captains would attempt to run the blockade.

  It was now to Octavian’s advantage to defer mass combat while Antony’s troops sweltered in the summer heat and caught malaria from the mosquitoes infecting the marshes and dysentery from the unsanitary conditions likely to affect any confined military camp where there was insufficient tide to wash away the feces and other waste.

  These trying conditions understandably began to sap the strength and unity of Antony’s multinational army and navy. Antony now had to bring in what supplies he could on the backs of local men press-ganged for the purpose. Lashed on with long whips by Antony’s overseers, they struggled over the rugged mountain tracks from the nearest supply point. Among the locals was an ancestor of Plutarch—a fact that cannot have raised Antony in the historian’s esteem. To try to break the deadlock, Antony ordered part of his army to march round the shores of the gulf to the northern side and, once encamped there, to launch probing attacks, partly to try to cut off Octavian’s water supplies and partly to provoke Octavian to battle. Antony may even have had the idea of attempting to cut off Octavian’s camp from the north and, in turn, to put him under siege if all went well. It did not.

  Antony’s cavalry were defeated in a major skirmish in which Octavian’s troops were led by Titius, a man who had only recently deserted from Antony and been rewarded with a consulship. As a consequence of this new setback, two of Antony’s client kings defected to Octavian with their men. When one attempted to curry favor with Octavian by abusing Antony, Octavian told him curtly, “I like treason but I don’t like traitors.”

  The desertions were more damaging to the morale of Antony’s army than they were in strategic terms; more seriously, Agrippa’s fleet was already capturing further ports in Ant
ony’s rear, thus lengthening his overland supply routes. Agrippa’s greatest success was in capturing Patras and encouraging Eurycles, ruler of Sparta, one of Antony’s client states, to go over to Octavian—a decision he found easy since Antony had executed his father for piracy.

  Reports of these amphibious actions in their rear, together with the worsening disease within the camp and the trickle of desertions, further eroded the morale of Antony’s men. However, worse were the continuing differences within the leadership of Antony’s forces between the remnants of the Roman republican faction led by Enobarbus and those who supported, or at least hoped to benefit from, the nebulous idea of an eastern Mediterranean empire being developed by Cleopatra and Antony. Even Antony’s client kings were not entirely happy. They had been affronted by the diminution of their status at the Donations of Alexandria, which had subjected them to the children of Cleopatra and Antony.

  Soon, a sickly Enobarbus, “angered” by some new action of Cleopatra’s, decided that he stood no chance of weaning Antony from her to the republican virtues and had himself rowed in a small boat across the gulf to Octavian’s camp. Even though this “upset Antony a great deal,” he sent along after him all his equipment and retinue, despite Cleopatra’s protests, joking that Enobarbus clearly wanted to be in the arms of his mistress in Rome. He never reached them, dying almost immediately—probably not, as Plutarch claimed, “from the shame of his disloyalty and treachery” but more prosaically from dysentery or malaria, the fever from which he was suffering before he left Antony’s camp.