by David Potter
Compelled by their men to make peace, Octavian, Antony and Lepidus settled their differences and promptly assumed control of the state through a triumvirate (often called the Second Triumvirate to distinguish it from that of Caesar, Pompey and Crassus). In this group Lepidus played the role of Crassus before him, as a counterbalance to the competing ambitions of his colleagues. At the end of 43 BC they made their position legally unassailable by passing a law proclaiming them triumviri rei publicae constituendae, or ‘board of three for putting the Republic back in order’ – a piece of political ‘spin’ of breathtaking temerity in any age. While claiming to be acting in the best interests of the Republic, they were in fact writing its obituary. Through this legislation the three men had, in effect, appointed themselves dictators.
The triumvirate tightens its grip
It was not long before the triumvirate faced its first crisis. Each man commanded his own army, making a total of some 100,000 men under arms. This was almost half as large a force as that later deployed by Rome’s first emperor to control his entire empire, and there was simply not enough money to pay the troops. The solution of the triumviri was, in the manner of Sulla, to spread a climate of fear by reinstating the dreaded proscriptions. History, subsequently manipulated by the victorious Octavian, apportions blame for this new spasm of bloodshed to Antony. Even so, the accusation may well be grounded in fact. Not only was Antony the senior partner in the triumvirate at this stage, but his immoral private life was also closely modelled on that of Sulla. Like him, Antony drank to excess and enjoyed the company of dissolute actors. He also followed his dictator predecessor in regarding the eastern part of the Roman world as his natural power base.
The Second Triumvirate’s proscriptions were responsible for one of the most brutal periods in the entire history of Rome. More than 3000 members of the upper classes were summarily executed, including one of the most notable Romans of all time, Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 BC). Cicero was the greatest orator of his age, a relatively principled and conservative politician and the most vociferous opponent of Antony in the confused months after Caesar’s death. His violent death and its gruesome sequel testified to the savagery that was meted out daily during this new reign of terror.
Meanwhile, Brutus and Cassius were rallying support in the east – sometimes using violent coercion – to mount a challenge to the rule of the triumvirate. The core of the army they assembled comprised legions that Pompey had once raised for the war with Caesar, and that Caesar had left in the east, hoping to win their loyalty in his forthcoming Parthian campaign. But the memory of Pompey had remained strong among these troops, making them willing recruits to the assassins’ cause.
In the late summer of 42 BC, Octavian and Antony defeated the party of the assassins in two battles near Philippi in northern Greece. During these engagements, Antony covered himself in glory, while Octavian disgraced himself by taking to his tent with an ‘illness’ shortly after the first action commenced, and only just making good his escape when Brutus’ soldiers overran the camp. Following his victory, Antony absorbed the army of the assassins into his forces and set about founding an Antonian empire in the east. Meanwhile, other Pompeians now emerged in the west. Pompey’s only surviving son, Sextus, joined together various fleets that had been assembled over time to fight the Caesarians and began a war off the coast of Italy that would last until the summer of 36 BC.
Key events in the period 42–36 BC included a civil war in Italy; two meetings of the triumviri in 40 and 37 BC to reconfirm their authority; and an ongoing see-saw struggle with Sextus Pompey. For Octavian, the greatest of these challenges was the civil war of 41 BC, which erupted when he tried to settle veterans from the Philippi campaign on land that had been confiscated from Italian towns. The rebellion was fomented and led by Antony’s younger brother Lucius, who was consul for that year, and Antony’s wife Fulvia. Victory for Octavian was only assured when armies led by allies of the elder Antony failed to pledge their support to his brother. The conflict ended with a siege of the city of Perusia (modern Perugia), which was eventually starved into submission. Lucius was exiled to Spain, and Fulvia to Greece, where she died.
An uneasy peace
When Antony returned in September 40 BC the two men patched up their differences. Antony sealed the reconciliation with Octavian by marrying his sister, Octavia, before returning east. In 37 BC, following military setbacks for both Octavian (fighting Sextus Pompey) and Antony (against the Parthians), they renewed the triumvirate once more. Antony’s invasion of the Parthian empire, which collapsed because of his own carelessness and lack of suitable logistical provision, was officially intended to avenge Crassus’ disaster and the Parthian invasion of Roman territory after Caesar’s assassination. It also, from Antony’s point of view, would have contrasted nicely with Octavian’s war against other Romans (or, as he put it, runaway slaves and pirates). In the end, it was Octavian who emerged as the stronger partner when he finally managed to defeat Sextus the following year, and summarily stripped the vacillating Lepidus of his authority as a triumvir without consulting Antony. Lepidus was banished to an undistinguished retirement within Italy.
Now the power struggle was free to develop unimpeded between the two main players. Antony’s problems continued to grow after 36 BC. Although he and Octavia had two daughters, their relationship was strained. Even before he married Octavia, Antony had become besotted with Queen Cleopatra of Egypt. Cleopatra encouraged this infatuation, and in the years that followed, Antony’s passion for her, and for life in her capital of Alexandria, became a scandal, just as it had once been for Julius Caesar. Antony dressed and partied as a Greek, and martial, virile Rome had always regarded Greece as the home of lewdness and effeminacy. Not even the most lurid propaganda that Octavian spread about Antony’s conduct came close to conveying the real state of affairs. A contemporary dedication to ‘Antony the Great’ from a local drinking club that archaeologists found carved on a stone at Alexandria provides eloquent proof of his debauchery. Antony’s overindulgence had long been infamous; one of Cicero’s most memorable attacks on his character includes a description of the hung-over Antony vomiting while attempting to attend to public business in the Forum.
Even more damagingly, Antony’s opponents now began to accuse him of infecting other Romans with his vices. Stories spread of wild parties, including one at which a senior officer stripped naked, painted himself blue, and flopped around on the floor wearing a fish tail in imitation of a sea god. Antony even tried to respond in a self-justifying essay, On his Own Drunkenness, sadly now lost. But his conduct only fuelled Roman distrust of the licentious East and gave credence to Octavian’s image of him as a wilful despot who would, given the chance, rule Rome like a foreign potentate.
Octavian, in the meantime, managed to bring a semblance of order to the government of Italy. He stopped settling veterans on confiscated land and made sure that the people had enough to eat. In one particularly striking display of public service, Marcus Agrippa (c. 64–12 BC), Octavian’s chief lieutenant and the architect of the victory over Sextus, accepted a reduction in rank – having already been consul – to serve as an aedile. During his term of office, Agrippa made great improvements to the city’s water and sewerage systems, including rebuilding the main drain, the Cloaca Maxima. Octavian now tried to project an image of himself that was in accord with the traditional Roman ideals of frugality and self-reliance. Although it is hard to imagine that anyone seriously believed his claim to have given up sex in his late teens for the good of his health, or his contradictory claim that he had only indulged in adulterous relationships with the wives of his enemies to learn their secrets, he had settled into a stable marriage with a woman of impeccable aristocratic heritage named Livia. They had become a model couple, and Romans favourably compared their life of uncomplicated domesticity to the licentious behaviour of Antony and Cleopatra.
Octavian makes his move
The legal authority of the triu
mviri was due to expire on December 31, 33 BC. When several Italian towns pledged their allegiance to him in 32 BC and urgently petitioned him to lead a campaign against Antony and Cleopatra, Octavian made a decisive move to seize power. In February of 32 BC, after one of the consuls attempted to read a letter from Antony to the senate, he entered Rome at the head of an armed guard, marched into the senate house, seated himself between the consuls and proclaimed his continuing authority as head of state. Shortly thereafter he produced what he claimed to be a copy of Antony’s will, in which Antony made clear his intention to move the capital to Alexandria. The consuls fled to Egypt, and Octavian took advantage of the crisis that he had engineered to obtain a further grant of supreme authority in the war that he now declared against Antony.
Antony anticipated Octavian’s actions and in the late summer of 31 BC assembled a huge force with the intention of invading Italy. Cleopatra joined him on this campaign. Octavian now showed consummate skill in directing his commanders’ response. They cut Antony’s supply lines and blockaded his force in the Bay of Actium on the east coast of Greece. Octavian’s army, led by Statilius Taurus, won an initial skirmish, while his fleet, under Marcus Agrippa, dominated the sea-lanes. As food ran out and disease became rife, on 2 September, 31 BC, Antony made a desperate bid to break out. Although historical accounts of Actium are sketchy and confused, with some hinting that the outcome was something of a foregone conclusion, while others speak of a fierce fight, there exists one compelling piece of evidence suggesting that a full-scale naval engagement did indeed take place. Shortly after his triumph, Octavian founded the settlement of Nicopolis (literally ‘Victory City’) on a peninsula jutting into the Ionian Sea (in what is now Greece). Here, a monument commemorating the victory was discovered by archaeologists. It was decorated with the prows of ships taken in the battle, indicating that Antony’s losses were heavy. Combining this information with some from our written accounts, it appears Antony tried to break through the centre of his opponents, and that, as he did so, Cleopatra’s squadron hoisted its sails and fled. Antony first followed in his own massive flagship, which he later abandoned for a faster vessel. The remainder of his fleet that survived the battle retreated into the bay, where it later surrendered. As was the case with his Parthian adventure, Antony was undone by his love of grandiose plans unsupported by basic logistics.
Augustus’ victory was sealed a year later when his armies entered Alexandria as Antony committed suicide in Cleopatra’s arms. The queen also later took her own life by clutching a venomous snake to her breast.
Foundations of the Empire: The House of Augustus
(29 BC–AD 14)
Octavian came back to Rome in 28 BC; many in the city feared that his return would herald a consolidation of his position as dictator, backed as he was by a huge army. However, on the Ides of January, 27 BC, he convened a meeting of the senate at which he renounced the extraordinary dictatorial powers granted him to command the armies of Rome in the war against Antony. But at this same session, the senate, alarmed that he was about to relinquish his wise guardianship of the state, urged him to carry on as consul. As an additional honour for his service to Rome, the grateful senators bestowed on him the name Augustus, or ‘revered personage’.
In naming him Augustus, the senate completed a process of transformation in Octavian that had begun several years before; in 42 BC, when Julius Caesar had been declared a god, his adopted son Octavian had taken the names ‘Gaius Julius, son of the divinity Caesar’. Six years later he had changed his first name, or praenomen, from Gaius to imperator, or ‘victorious general’, in celebration of his victory over Sextus Pompey. Now his new name, Caesar Augustus, while acknowledging a debt to the older Caesar, also proclaimed to the entire world that Octavian was a new man whose virtus outstripped that of any other mortal. Unlike his adoptive father, however, he was not divine. He kept his feet very firmly planted in the world of mortals, despite the fact that people throughout the Roman world now offered sacrifices to him in gratitude for his defeat of Mark Antony. He attended dinner parties with his friends, was scrupulous in consulting the senate and was generally accessible to the average Roman. His unofficial title of princeps (‘first citizen’) had been bestowed on prominent citizens before him (such as Pompey), and he made it clear that he could wish for no higher accolade. In accordance with this, he also modestly referred to the various duties that the senate delegated to him, and the people confirmed, as his statio, or allotted station in life.
The making of Augustus
Yet, by any measure, Augustus’ accomplishments in the years after Actium had been truly impressive. Not the least of these was to bring the long period of civil war to a definitive close. This was a signal success, and may have stemmed from the fact that Augustus had not followed the pattern of Sulla and Caesar. They had imposed their authority on Rome only after first having established their power base in the provinces, and in so doing had never really been able to impose their will throughout the empire. Augustus, on the other hand, had made Rome his constituency from the outset. The fact that he defeated Antony as the legitimate head of a functioning government enabled him to integrate the former supporters of his rival into the state.
At the same time, his difficult early years had taught him a valuable lesson about the thorny problem of disbanding and resettling a large force of armed men. First, he was careful to ensure that those demobilized soldiers who still retained connections to the Italian homeland were resettled at his own expense, and not by confiscating land from Italian towns. In addition, since many of the soldiers, especially those who had served under Antony, had no real roots in Italy any more, Augustus met little resistance in resettling them in far-flung military colonies abroad. In this way, hundreds of thousands of men were successfully discharged, thereby reducing the army by more than half its strength to a permanent force of 28 legions – roughly 150,000 men. The remainder of Rome’s armed forces were made up of supporting ‘auxiliary’ units recruited from the provinces, whose numbers were roughly equal to the legionary force.
When the senate conferred his new station on Augustus, they also endowed him with a variety of different powers as he sought a framework within which he could run the state without resorting to assuming a position evocative of Caesar’s dictatorship (the office had been formally abolished shortly after the Ides of March, 44 BC). The two most important of these were his imperium as one of the two consuls every year (a reversion to Marius’ way of doing things at the end of the second century BC), and tribunicia potestas, the powers of a tribune of the plebs. These latter powers included the right to summon assemblies of the people to vote on laws, and the right of intercession or the right to veto any action taken by another magistrate. They also rendered him sacrosanct, so that anyone who dared to raise a hand against him would be committing a crime against the gods (though, given that more than a few tribunes from Tiberius Gracchus onwards had been murdered, the protection this offered was more symbolic than real). Finally, the senate made him titular governor of several provinces, including Spain, Gaul, Syria and Egypt. Since these provinces were also the ones that had garrisons, the upshot was that Augustus now commanded 26 legions, the vast bulk of the Roman army.
Augustus consolidates his rule
The legal powers vested in him in 27 BC effectively made Augustus the head of state, but he did not dare govern the empire on his own. In the course of the civil wars he had come to depend heavily upon two close friends, Agrippa and Maecenas (70–8 BC), to help him. These two men were a study in opposites. Maecenas, who never held public office, was a wealthy patron of the arts and something of a party animal. Agrippa, a masterful soldier, had been consul in 37 BC and shared the consulship with Augustus when the structure of government was reformed in 28 and 27 BC. It was common knowledge that Agrippa and Maecenas disliked each other, but the very fact that the emergent Augustan regime could accommodate two such contrasting figures attested to its collective nature, further dis
pelling fears that Augustus was imposing monarchical rule.
In addition to Maecenas and Agrippa, there were a number of other men who retained very powerful positions within the senate. These included Asinius Pollio (76 BC–AD 5), who had secured Augustus’ friendship by refusing to support the younger Antony in 41; Messalla Corvinus (64 BC –AD 8), who had served both Cassius and Antony before declaring his undying support for Augustus in the early 30s; Statilius Taurus (c. 60 BC–c. AD 10) who had commanded the land army in the Battle of Actium; and Munatius Plancus (87 BC–AD 15), the man who had once humiliated himself by performing the drunken fish dance for Antony but had judiciously switched sides just before Actium. Augustus’ pardoning of men such as Munatius Plancus was reminiscent of Caesar’s clemency, but unlike Caesar, he ensured that those he spared would stay loyal by giving them prestigious and useful roles within Roman society.