Augustus

by Anthony Everitt

  Antony presumably hoped that other ships of his would also be able to break away, but they were fully engaged trying to fend off Octavian’s larger fleet. After about an hour, the wind strengthened. Some of Antony’s ships began to give up the unequal struggle and surrendered. Others withdrew into the Actium strait.

  It is often difficult at the height of a battle for generals or admirals to know what is going on around them. Had Octavian won, or had he lost? He suspected he was the victor, but could not be absolutely sure. The light was failing. There was a swell. It was not always easy to distinguish enemy ships from those of friends. If he received any reports from across a battlefront that was probably not less than four miles long, he could not rely on them. As he was somewhere in the center of his line, he would have witnessed the queen’s departure under full sail, but could have had no idea that Antony had left the scene with her.

  What Octavian did see was some sort of retreat by enemy ships. During the wars against Sextus Pompeius he had learned the hard way that admirals were often obliged to spend a sleepless night after a battle at sea. Now that he and Agrippa had probably succeeded in bottling up what remained of Antony’s fleet, they wanted to avoid any risk of it slipping away under cover of darkness or at first light. So, uncomfortable and dangerous though it was, they kept their ships at sea in the Actium roads throughout the hours of darkness.

  At daylight Octavian, now back on land, could assess the outcome. He saw now that he had won at least a partial victory. About thirty or forty enemy galleys had been sunk and about five thousand of Antony’s troops killed. The commanders of the remaining one hundred thirty or one hundred forty ships briefly considered their position, realized it was hopeless, and surrendered. However, a sizable army of up to fifty thousand men was holding together under Canidius Crassus, who started leading it toward the Pindos mountains and the relative safety of Macedonia. Unless that force could be neutralized in some way, the battle of Actium would simply be a passing incident in the war, not its decisive encounter. So he marched after Antony’s legions.

  As things turned out, he did not need to worry. Until the day after the battle, the soldiers had no idea that their commander had abandoned them. The men longed to see him and were sure that he would soon turn up from somewhere or other. But the days passed with no sound or sight of him, and their confidence collapsed. The time had come for them to do a deal with the victor. In essence, the soldiers demanded to be treated as if they had been on the winning side. After a week of tough negotiations, Octavian agreed to keep the legions in being instead of disbanding them and, most important, he promised to give them the same rewards as the victorious army.

  The deal done, Canidius and other senior officers wanted no part of it. One night they left camp secretly and made their sad way to Antony.

  XV

  A LONG FAREWELL

  31–30 B.C.

  * * *

  Now the tourist resort of Mersa Matrouh, this small coastal town commands a large and beautiful lagoon with miles of sandy beach. In this delightful spot (promoted today as a “corner of paradise”), Antony plunged into the deepest gloom. He had hoped to make contact with four of his legions in Cyrene, but they declared for Octavian and refused to meet him. He sent Cleopatra ahead to Alexandria, where her ships arrived garlanded as if in victory. Before the truth came out, she had any potential opponents killed. In the meantime, her disconsolate paramour was able, in Plutarch’s dry words, “to enjoy all the solitude he could desire.”

  Octavian sent a victory dispatch to Rome, but, patient and methodical as ever, was in no hurry to deal with Antony and Cleopatra. He decided to spend the oncoming winter on the island of Samos.

  Many more soldiers were under arms than were needed or could be afforded. Octavian sent Italian veterans above a certain age back to Italy for formal discharge, but gave them neither land nor money because for the moment he had none. There were soon disgruntled mutterings, and Agrippa was sent back to deal with the problem.

  There was other evidence that the regime was unpopular. Maecenas uncovered a plot to assassinate Octavian on his return to Italy. It was ineptly masterminded by Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, son of the self-seeking former triumvir and a nephew of Marcus Brutus. “A young man whose good looks exceeded his prudence,” he was put to death. Dio writes that Antony and Cleopatra schemed to “actually kill [Octavian] by treachery.” Were they, one wonders, ever in touch with young Lepidus?

  It is a sign of Octavian’s managerial good sense that while he was away from Rome, he was willing to delegate powers to Agrippa and Maecenas, men who had been at his side throughout the long adventure and whom he trusted completely. He allowed them to read in advance his dispatches to the Senate, and correct them if they so wished. He had a duplicate made of his seal ring—the image of a sphinx—so that they could seal his letters up again.

  The Donations of Alexandria were swiftly canceled. While deposing many minor princelings, Octavian confirmed on their thrones most of the major client kings—Amyntas of Galatia, who had defected to him with his cavalry; Polemo of Pontus, who had stayed behind in his kingdom; and Archelaus of Cappadocia. These were capable rulers, who knew it would be in their interest to remain loyal to whoever was in charge of the Roman empire. His former colleague was a good judge of character and Octavian saw no reason to disturb the arrangements he had made. So far as directly governed provinces were concerned, trustworthy colleagues were appointed in due course as proconsuls; for example, Cicero’s son, Marcus, frequently drunk but a safe pair of hands, was given Syria.

  The newly formed province of Armenia was irretrievably lost, for its deposed king had seized the distraction of the Actium campaign to reclaim his realm. Octavian coolly ignored this insult to Roman power and interests. The question of what to do about the eastern frontier—the Armenians, the Medes, and behind them the fierce Parthians, who still held the lost standards of Crassus—would have to wait. He was too busy.

  In January of 30 B.C., Agrippa wrote to Octavian on Samos that he was unable to handle the Italian veterans, who were now openly mutinous, and that his presence was urgently needed. This was the worst possible time of year to undertake a long sea journey, but there was nothing for it. When Octavian disembarked at Brundisium, he was met by the entire Senate (except for a couple of praetors and the tribunes), many equites, and large numbers of ordinary citizens. He received an enthusiastic welcome. It was usual for senators to meet a returning statesman outside the gates of Rome, but for them to travel three hundred miles was a unique honor. Official Rome recognized that it was now under the control of one unchallenged ruler.

  Not willing to be left behind, the angry veterans marched down to Brundisium as well. Octavian wasted little time in meeting their demands, although he did not have enough ready cash to pay them all off on the spot and was obliged to issue promises postdated to the expected fall of Alexandria. The veterans were reluctantly satisfied, and after a month on Italian soil Octavian returned to Samos, where he laid plans for the invasion of Egypt.

  In theory, Antony and Cleopatra had no reason to despair, for they still ruled half the Roman empire, and all its financial and human resources should have been at their disposal. But since Actium, people of power in the eastern provinces were unwilling to supply yet more soldiers to bolster what they judged to be a lost cause.

  When Antony eventually arrived in Alexandria from Paraetonium, he abandoned the palace and his friends, living by himself in a quayside house beside Alexandria’s great lighthouse, more than three hundred feet high, on the island of Pharos. On January 14, 30 B.C., he entered his fifty-fourth year. The queen eventually tempted him from self-indulgent misery by throwing a spectacular birthday party for him. According to Plutarch,

  Cleopatra and Antony now dissolved their celebrated Society of Inimitable Livers and instituted another, which was at least its equal in elegance, luxury and extravagance, and which they called the Order of the Inseparable in Death. Their friends joined it
on the understanding that they would end their lives together, and they set themselves to charm away the days with a succession of exquisite supper parties.

  The couple knew that with the arrival of spring Octavian would march against them. They had no realistic prospect of escaping to some other part of the world, although they had briefly thought of Spain and Cleopatra had tried and failed to organize an expedition to Arabia. The star-crossed lovers were cornered. Their only recourse now was to negotiate and, assuming that failed, to prepare for a last, futile stand.

  The queen had plenty of money and still commanded the loyalty of her people. An army and a fleet were assembled. To cheer up the Alexandrians, a great ceremony—almost as splendid as the Donations of Alexandria—was held, at which the sixteen-year-old king of kings, Ptolemy XV Caesar, alias Caesarion, and Antony’s son by Fulvia, the fourteen-year-old Antyllus, officially came of age.

  Octavian received a succession of envoys from Alexandria who laid various proposals before him. He listened, but conceded nothing. Although he declined to make his own position clear, his policy was in fact straightforward: he wanted to win the great prize of Egypt, that rich, self-contained, and exotic realm which had attracted the greedy gaze of eminent Romans for more than a century—and he wanted to win it for himself, not simply for Rome.

  Octavian’s plan of attack was yet another pincer movement. Four Antonian legions that had switched loyalties would invade from Cyrenaica, which lay west of Egypt; in a signal mark of favor, Octavian appointed to command them the thirty-year-old Gaius Cornelius Gallus, although he was only an eques and previously best known as a fine lyric poet.

  Octavian marched through Syria at the head of a substantial army toward the Egyptian frontier. The campaign was unlikely to be problematic, so this time Agrippa’s services were not required. Octavian judged himself capable of managing on his own.

  At last Antony bestirred himself. Believing that there was a good chance of winning over his legions, he marched back, at the head of a strong force of infantry and a powerful fleet, to Paraetonium where Gallus had installed himself. But his attempt to win back the legionaries and take the town failed, and his ships were trapped in the harbor and either burned or sunk.

  The rest of Antony and Cleopatra’s forces were stationed at Pelusium, a port on the easternmost edge of the Nile delta. It straddled the coastal route that skirted the Sinai desert and, being the only means of entry by land into Egypt from the east, was strategically important. Pharaohs throughout the ages had always taken care to give it a strong garrison. However, Pelusium fell with little or no resistance, perhaps surrendered by Cleopatra or else quickly stormed. If the former, she was creating a distance between herself and Antony—as may well be, for her first loyalty was always to her kingdom and the preservation of her own power. This and other accounts of her behavior during this time may have been lifted from Octavian’s propaganda, which often stressed the queen’s eastern deviousness and Antony’s humiliating status as a dupe. However, it is perfectly possible that Cleopatra saw no advantage in going down with Antony and tried to save herself.

  Octavian seems to have encountered little or no resistance in his advance on Alexandria. He passed the fashionable suburb of Canopus and set up camp near the racecourse or hippodrome, just outside the city walls. When he received the news that Pelusium was lost, Antony rushed back to Alexandria and, on its outskirts, surprised and routed an advance guard of enemy cavalry. Elated by the victory, he returned to the palace and embraced Cleopatra while still in full armor. He then introduced to her a soldier who had displayed unusual valor in the engagement. As a reward, the queen gave him a golden helmet and breastplate. He took them, and that night deserted to Octavian.

  With hopeless bravado Antony challenged his onetime colleague to single combat, as if they were a pair of Homeric heroes. He can hardly have anticipated an acceptance. Octavian responded dismissively: “There are many different ways by which Antony can die.”

  On July 31, Antony decided to launch an all-out attack by land and sea on the following day. At dinner he ate and drank particularly well, telling the people around him that he did not expect to survive the battle. That evening, or so the story goes, about the hour of midnight, when all was hushed and a mood of dejection and fear of its impending fate brooded over the whole city, suddenly a marvellous sound of music was heard…as if a troop of revellers were leaving the city, shouting and singing as they went…. Those who tried to discover a meaning for this prodigy concluded that the god Dionysus, with whom Antony claimed kinship and whom he had sought above all to imitate, was now abandoning him.

  Gods were imagined to leave besieged cities before they fell—Troy, Athens, Jerusalem. If the story has a basis in fact, perhaps Alexandrians were hearing Octavian, supported by a soldiers’ chorus, conducting an evocatio; in this ceremony, a Roman general used to call on the gods of an enemy city to change sides and migrate to Rome.

  On August 1, as soon as it was light, Antony sent his fleet eastward to meet Octavian’s ships, and he drew up his remaining land forces on rising ground between the city walls and the hippodrome. The upshot was an almost comic fiasco. The ships raised their oars and surrendered without a fight; the fleets immediately combined and set a new course for the city. The cavalry deserted and the foot soldiers ran away.

  Antony made his way back inside the walls of Alexandria and fell into a rage. He is reported to have shouted out that Cleopatra had betrayed him to the very men whom he was fighting for her sake. Terrified, she had word sent that she was dead.

  There was only one thing now to be done. Antony went to his room and took off his armor. He asked his body servant to run him through, but the man suddenly turned away and fell on his sword instead. Antony then stabbed himself in the stomach and fell on the bed. The wound not only failed to kill him but soon stopped bleeding. Racked with pain, he begged bystanders to put him out of his misery, but they ran from the room.

  The queen heard what had happened and sent word for Antony to be brought to her. She was hiding in a large mausoleum she had commissioned, which stood half complete in the palace grounds near a temple of Isis. Fearful of being surprised, she refused to unseal the doors, and she and two woman servants laboriously pulled the dying man with ropes up to a high window. Plutarch writes of the queen “clinging with both hands to the rope and with the muscles of her face distorted by the strain.” Cleopatra beat and scratched her breasts in the traditional manner of a grieving widow, and smeared her face with blood from Antony’s wound. He did his best to calm her, and, true to character to the last, called for and drank a cup of wine before expiring.

  One of Antony’s bodyguards brought Octavian the dead man’s bloodstained sword, and it is said he withdrew into his tent and wept. Usually he kept his feelings under control, and we hear of him breaking down in tears on only one other occasion: when he received an account of Julius Caesar’s funeral. If he did weep now, it could have been the result of a snapping of tension after years of struggle rather than empathy. Octavian had never gotten on with Antony, and he is unlikely to have grieved for a man whom he had schemed to clear from his path for most of his public career. Alternatively, the incident was invented, and merely illustrated the victor’s highly developed skill at news management.

  Octavian may have been the ruler of the Roman world, but he had never seen a great Hellenistic megalopolis before. He was familiar with cities that, like Rome and Athens, had grown untidily and organically over many centuries—crowded, noisy, ugly conurbations devoid of wide avenues and splendid vistas. So Alexandria made a great impression on him.

  Founded in 331 B.C. by Alexander the Great, the twenty-five-year-old Macedonian king who conquered the Persian empire, the city was built on a narrow bar of land with the Mediterranean on one side and a shallow lake, called Maraeotis (today’s Lake Mariout, smaller and shallower than in ancient times), on the other. A little way offshore lay an island, Pharos, with its celebrated lighthouse, which wa
s three miles long and gave protection from storms.

  As in a modern American city, the street plan was based on a grid. A mile-long mole or dike was built between the shore and the island of Pharos, so creating two harbors, the Great harbor on the east side and the Eunostus (or Happy Return) harbor to the west. A canal from Lake Maraeotis in the south connected the city to the Nile and so to Egypt both as a production center and a market.

  The city was a runaway success. In the first century B.C., the total population may have been about the same size as that of Rome, up to one million. With its grand overall look, Alexandria, rather like Haussmann’s Paris in the nineteenth century, became a center for culture and fashion throughout the eastern Mediterranean. Strabo called it the “greatest emporium of the inhabited world.”

  Octavian was now free to enter the city, and on foot he led his men through the Gate of the Sun, not far from the hippodrome outside the walls, and along one of the city’s main streets, the Canopic Way. Nervous crowds had gathered. Octavian made a point of being accompanied by Areius, an Alexandrian citizen and a well-known philosopher and rhetorician. This friendly gesture was presumably calculated to allay the fears of the people, for it was an accepted custom of war that a captured city could be given over to pillage by the victors.

  Octavian and his party made their way to the Gymnasium, where the triumvir and the queen had probably held the ceremony of the Donations of Alexandria. The place was packed: when Octavian came in and mounted a speaker’s dais, the audience was beside itself with fear and all present fell on their faces. He announced that he had no intention of holding the city at fault for the conduct of its rulers. At Areius’ request, he granted a number of pardons.