THE DECLINE OF ANTONY’S POWER.
The city of Ephesus was situated near the mouth of the river Caystrus
in the shadow of the Messogis mountains, not far south of Smyrna, and
overlooking the island of Samos. Standing on the coast of Asia Minor,
near the frontier which divided Lydia from Caria, it looked directly
across the sea to Athens, and was sheltered from the menacing coasts
of Italy by the intervening Greek peninsula. Ephesus, I need hardly
remind the reader, was famous for its temple, dedicated to Diana of the
Ephesians. The building was constructed of white marble and cypress-
and cedar-wood, and was richly ornamented with gold. Many statues
adorned its colonnades, and there were many celebrated paintings upon
its walls, including a fine picture of Alexander the Great. Diana was
here worshipped under the name Artemis, and was often identified with
Venus, with whom Cleopatra claimed identity. Here Antony and Cleopatra
collected their forces, and soon the ancient city came to be the
largest military and naval centre in the world. Cleopatra had brought
with her from Egypt a powerful fleet of two hundred ships of war,
and a host of soldiers, sailors, workmen, and slaves. She had drawn
20,000 talents (_i.e._, £4,000,000) from her treasury; and, besides
this, she had brought a vast amount of corn, foodstuffs, clothing,
arms, and munitions of war. From Syria, Armenia, and Pontus, vessels
were arriving daily with further supplies; and Antony’s own fleet of
many hundred battleships and vessels of burden was rapidly mobilising
at the mouth of the river. All day and all night the roads to the
city thundered with the tread of armed men, as the kings and rulers
of the East marched their armies to the rendezvous. Bocchus, King of
Mauritania; Tarcondimotus, ruler of Upper Cilicia; Archelaus, King of
Cappadocia; Philadelphus, King of Paphlagonia; Mithridates, King of
Commagene; Sadalas and Rhœmetalces, Kings of Thrace; Amyntas, King of
Galatia, and many other great rulers, responded to the call to arms,
and hastened to place their services at the disposal of Antony and his
Queen.
[Illustration: CLEOPATRA AND HER SON CÆSARION.
REPRESENTED CONVENTIONALLY UPON A WALL OF THE TEMPLE OF DENDERA]
One cannot help wondering whether these mighty men realised for what
they were about to fight. They were flocking to the standard of a man
who had held supreme power over their countries for many years, and
whose rule had been kindly and easy. They owed a great deal to him,--in
some cases their very thrones; and, were he now to be defeated by his
rival, they would probably fall with him. Success, however, seemed
certain in view of Antony’s enormous forces; and they therefore felt
that the assistance which they gave would undoubtedly bear abundant
fruit, and that their reward would be great. Antony, of course, told
them, perhaps with his tongue in his cheek, that he was fighting to
some extent on behalf of the Roman Republic, in order to free the
country from the oppression of an autocratic rule, and to restore the
old constitution. He was not such a fool as to admit that he was
aiming at a throne: Julius Cæsar had been assassinated on that very
account, and a declaration of this kind would likewise alienate a large
number of his supporters in Rome. He still had numerous friends in the
capital, men who disliked the forbidding personality of Octavian, and
who admired his own frank and open manners. Moreover, a considerable
body supported him in memory of the great Dictator, regarding Antony
as the guardian of young Cæsarion, whose rights they had at heart. A
story, of which we have already heard, had been circulated in regard
to Julius Cæsar’s will. It was said that the document which decreed
Octavian the heir was not the Dictator’s last testament, but that he
had made a later will in favour of Cleopatra’s son, Cæsarion, which
had been suppressed, probably by Calpurnia. Thus, to many of his Roman
friends, Antony was fighting to carry out the Dictator’s wishes, and to
overthrow the usurping Octavian. Was this, one asks, the justification
which he placed before the consideration of the vassal kings? At any
rate Dion Cassius states definitely that Antony’s recognition of
Cæsarion’s right to this great inheritance was the real cause of the
war.
It does not seem to me that this point is fully recognised by
historians; but it is very apparent that Antony’s position at Ephesus
would have been almost untenable without a justification such as that
of the championing of Cæsarion. It was plain to every eastern eye that
he was acting in conjunction with Egypt and with Cleopatra; and all men
now knew that the Queen was his legal wife. It was obvious that, if
successful, he would enter Rome with the Queen of Egypt by his side.
Yet, at the same time, he was denying that he intended to establish a
monarchy in Rome on the lines proposed by the Dictator, and he was
talking a great deal of rubbish about reviving the Republic. There
is, surely, only one way in which these divergent interests could be
made to fit into a scheme capable of satisfying both his Roman and
his Oriental supporters, and would serve as a professed justification
for the war: he was going to establish the Dictator’s son, Cæsarion,
in his father’s seat, and to turn out the wrongful heir, Octavian. He
himself would be the boy’s guardian, and would act, at any rate in
Italy, on republican lines. Cleopatra, as his wife, would doff her
crown while in Italy, but would assume it once more within her own
dominions, just as Julius Cæsar had proposed to do in the last year of
his life.[110] Of course it must have been recognised that the throne
of Rome would ultimately be offered to him, and that he would hand it
on to Cæsarion in due course, thus founding a dynasty of the blood of
the divine Julius; but this fact was kept severely in the background.
If Cæsarion and his cause had not formed part of the _casus belli_,
it is unlikely that Antony would have been at all widely supported in
Rome; and what man would have tolerated the armed presence of Cleopatra
and her Egyptians, save in her capacity as mother of the claimant and
wife of the claimant’s guardian? Without Cæsarion, what was Antony’s
justification for the war? I can find very little. He would have been
fighting to turn out Octavian, who, in that case, would have been the
rightful and only heir; he would have been introducing Cleopatra into
Roman politics with the obvious intention of creating a throne for her,
the very step which had been Cæsar’s undoing; and he would have been
offering her royal view of life in exchange for Octavian’s republican
sentiments, not as something of which the best had to be made under
the circumstances, but as a habit of mind desirable in itself. His
apparent deference to Cleopatra, and the manner in which she shared
his supremacy, must have been liable to cause much offence in Rome and
in Ephesus, and would never have been tolerated had she not been put
forward as Julius Cæsar’s widow and the mother of his son.
The armies marching into the city comprised soldiers of almost every
nation. There were nineteen Roman legions; troops of Gauls and Germans;
contingents of Moorish, Egyptian, Sudanese, Arab, and Bedouin warriors;
the wild tribesmen from Media; hardy Armenians; barbaric fighting men
from the coast of the Black Sea; Greeks, Jews, and Syrians. The streets
of the city were packed with men in every kind of costume, bearing all
manner of arms, and talking a hundred languages. Never, probably, in
the world’s history had so many nationalities been gathered together;
and Cleopatra’s heart must have been nigh bursting with feminine pride
and gratification at the knowledge that in reality she had been the
cause of the great mobilisation. They had come together at Antony’s
bidding, it is true; but they had come to fight her battles. They
were here to vindicate her honour, to place her upon the throne of
the World. With their forests of swords and spears they were about
to justify those nights, nearly sixteen years ago, when, as the wild
little queen of little Egypt, she lay in the arms of Rome’s mighty
old reprobate. In those far-off days she was fighting to retain the
independence of her small country and her dynasty: now she was Queen
of dominions more extensive than any governed by the proudest of the
Pharaohs, and she would soon see her royal house raised to a height
never before attained by man. It was her custom at this time to use as
an oath the words, “As surely as I shall one day administer justice on
the Capitol”; and, proudly acting the part of hostess in Ephesus, she
must have felt that the great day was very near. Already the Ephesians
were hailing her as their Queen, and the deference paid to her by the
vassal kings was very marked.
In the spring of B.C. 32 some four hundred Roman senators arrived at
Antony’s headquarters. These men stated that Octavian, after denouncing
his rival in the Senate, had advised all who were on the enemy’s side
to quit the city, whereupon they had set sail for Ephesus, leaving
behind them some seven or eight hundred senators who either held with
Octavian or pursued a non-committal policy. War had not yet been
declared, but no declaration seemed now to be necessary.
[Illustration:
A Map
Illustrating the War between
Cleopatra and Octavian.
_William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh_ W. & A. K. Johnston,
Limited, Edinburgh & London.
]
With the arrival of the senators trouble began to brew in the camp.
Cleopatra’s power and authority were much resented by the new-comers,
to whom the existing situation was something of a revelation. They had
not realised that the Queen of Egypt was playing an active part in
the preparations, and many of them speedily recognised the fact that
Antony, as Autocrat of the East and husband of Cleopatra, was hardly
the man to restore a republican government to Rome. It was not long
before some of them began to show their dislike of the Queen and to
hint that she ought to retire into the background, at any rate for the
time being. There was one old soldier, Cnæus Domitius Ahenobarbus,
the representative of an ancient republican family, who would
never acknowledge Cleopatra’s right to the supremacy which she had
attained, nor, on any occasion, would he address her by her title,
but always called her simply by her name. This man at length told
Antony in the most direct manner that he ought to send Cleopatra back
to Egypt, there to await the conclusion of the war. He seems to have
pointed out that her presence with the army gave a false impression,
and would be liable to alienate the sympathies of many of his Roman
friends. He suggested, perhaps, that the Queen should vacate her place
in favour of Cæsarion, whose rights few denied. Antony, seeing the
wisdom of this advice, told Cleopatra to return to Alexandria; but
she, in great alarm, is said to have bribed Publius Canidius, one of
Antony’s most trusted councillors, to plead with him on her behalf--the
result being that the proposal of Domitius Ahenobarbus was discarded,
and the Queen remained with the army. Publius Canidius had pointed out
to Antony that the Egyptian fleet would fight much more willingly if
their Queen were with them, and Egyptian money would be more readily
obtained if she herself were felt to be in need of it. “And, besides,”
said he, “I do not see to which of the kings who have joined this
expedition Cleopatra is inferior in wisdom; for she has for a long time
governed by herself a vast kingdom, and has learnt in your company the
handling of great affairs.”[111]
The Queen’s continuance at Ephesus and her connection with the war was
the cause of great dissensions, and the Roman senators began to range
themselves into two distinct parties: those who fell in with Antony’s
schemes, and those who now favoured a reconciliation with Octavian as
a means of ridding Roman politics of Cleopatra’s disturbing influence.
When the efforts of the peacemakers came to her ears her annoyance
must have been intense. Were all her hopes to be dashed to the ground
just because a few stiff-backed senators disliked the idea of a foreign
sovereign concerning herself with republican politics? She no longer
trusted Antony, for it seemed apparent to her that he was, at heart,
striving only for his own aggrandisement, and was prepared to push her
into the background at the moment when her interests threatened to
injure his own. It was she who had incited him into warfare, who had
kept him up to the mark, aroused him to his duties, and financed to
a large extent his present operations; and yet he was, even at this
eleventh hour, half-minded to listen to those who urged him to make
peace. Only recently he had made some sort of offer to Octavian to lay
down his arms if the latter would do likewise. At the time Cleopatra
had probably thought this simply a diplomatic move designed to gain
popularity; but now she seems to have questioned seriously Antony’s
desire for war, and to have asked herself whether he would not much
prefer peace, quietness, and leisure wherein to drink and feast to
his jovial heart’s content. Yet war was essential to her ambitions,
and to the realisation of the rights of her son. If Octavian were not
overthrown, she would never have any sense of security; and with all
her heart she desired to come to a safe harbour after these years of
storm and stress.
It will be seen, then, that to her the need of preventing peace was
paramount. She therefore made one last effort in this direction;
and, bringing all her arts and devices to bear upon her husband, she
began to persuade him to issue a writ casting off Octavia and thereby
insulting Octavian beyond the limits of apology. As soon as the scheme
came to the ears of the peace party pressure was brought to bear on
Antony to effect a reconciliation with Octavia; and the unfortunate
man appears to have been badgered and pestered by both factions until
he must have been heartily sick of the subject. Cleopatra’s councils,
however, at last prevailed to this extent, that Antony decided to
make a forward movement and to cross the sea to Greece, thus bringing
hostilities a step nearer. At the end of April he sailed over from
Ephesus to the island of Samos, leaving a part of the army behind him.
Here he remained for two or three weeks, during which time, in reaction
after his worries, he indulged in a round of dissipations. He had told
his various vassals to bring with them to the rendezvous their leading
actors and comedians, so that the great gathering should not lack
amusement; and now these players were shipped across to Samos, there
to perform before this audience of kings and rulers. These sovereigns
competed with one another in the giving of superb banquets, but we
do not now hear of any such extravagances on the part of Cleopatra,
who was probably far too anxious, and too sobered, to give any
extraordinary attention to her duties as hostess. Splendid sacrifices
were offered to the gods in the island temples, each city contributing
an ox for this purpose; and the sacred buildings must have resounded
with invocations to almost every popular deity of the east and west.
The contrast was striking between the brilliancy and festivity at Samos
and the anxiety and dejection of the cities of the rest of the world,
which had been bereft of their soldiers and their money, and were about
to be plunged into all the horrors of internecine warfare. “While
pretty nearly the whole world,” says Plutarch, “was filled with groans
and lamentations, this one island for some days resounded with piping
and harping, theatres filling, and choruses playing; so that men began
to ask themselves what would be done to celebrate victory when they
went to such an expense of festivity at the opening of the war.”
Towards the end of May the great assemblage crossed over the sea to
Athens, and here Antony and Cleopatra held their court. The Queen’s
mind was now, I fancy, in a very disturbed condition, owing to the
ominous dissensions arising from her presence with the army, and to the
lack of confidence which she was feeling in her husband’s sincerity.
I think it very probable that they were not on the best of terms with
one another at this time, and, although Antony was perhaps a good deal
more devoted to the Queen than he had been before, there may have been
some bickering and actual quarrelling. Cleopatra desired the divorce
of Octavia and immediate war, but Antony on his part was seemingly
disinclined to take any decisive steps. He was, in fact, in a very
great dilemma. He had, apparently, promised the Queen that if he were
victorious he would at once aim for the monarchy proposed by Julius
Cæsar, and would arrange for Cæsarion to succeed in due course to the
throne; but now it had been pointed out to him by the majority of the
senators who were with him that he was earnestly expected to restore
the republic, and to celebrate his victory by becoming once more an
ordinary citizen. In early life he would have faced these difficulties
with a light heart, and devised some means of turning the situation
to his own advantage. Now, however, the power of his will had been
undermined by excessive drinking; and, moreover, he had come to be
extremely dependent upon Cleopatra in all things. He was very fond of
her, and was becoming daily more maudlin in his affections. He was now
nearly fifty years old; and, with the decrease of his vitality, he had
ceased to be so promiscuous in affairs of the heart, centering his
interest more wholly upon the Queen, though she herself was no longer
very youthful, being at this time some thirty-eight years of age. His
quarrels with her seemed to have distressed him very much, and in
his weakened condition, her growing disrespect for him caused him to
be more devotedly her slave. He seems to have watched with a sort of
bibulous admiration her masterly and energetic handling of affairs, and
he was anxious to do his best to retain her affection for him, which
he could see, was on the wane. To the dauntless heart of a woman like
Cleopatra, however, no appeal could be made save by manly strength and
powerful determination; and one seems to observe the growth in the
Queen’s mind of a kind of horror at the rapid degeneration of the man
whom she had loved and trusted.
To make matters worse, there arrived at Athens Antony’s
fourteen-year-old son, Antyllus, whom we have already met at
Alexandria. He had recently been in Rome, where he had been kindly
treated by the dutiful Octavia, whose attitude to all her husband’s
children was invariably generous and noble. Antony regarded this
boy, it would seem, with great affection, and had caused him to be
proclaimed an hereditary prince. The lad became something of a rival to
Cæsarion, to whom Cleopatra was devotedly attached; and one may perhaps
see in his presence at Athens a further cause for dissension.
At length, however, early in June the Queen persuaded Antony to take
the final step, and to divorce Octavia. Having placed the matter
before his senators, by whom the question was angrily discussed, he
sent messengers to Rome to serve Octavia with the order of ejection
from his house; and at the same time he issued a command to the troops
still at Ephesus to cross at once to Greece. This was tantamount to
a declaration of war, and Cleopatra’s mind must have been extremely
relieved thereby. No sooner, however, had this step been taken than
many of Antony’s Roman friends appear to have come to him in the
greatest alarm, pointing out that the brutal treatment of Octavia, who
had won all men’s sympathy by her quiet and dutiful behaviour, would
turn from him a great number of his supporters in Italy, and would
be received as a clear indication of his subserviency to Cleopatra.
They implored him to correct this impression; and Antony, harassed and
confused, thereupon made a speech to his Roman legions promising them
that within two months of their final victory he would re-establish the
republic.
The announcement must have come as a shock to Cleopatra, and must have
shown her clearly that Antony was playing a double game. She realised,
no doubt, that the promise did not necessitate the abandonment of their
designs in regard to the monarchy; for, after establishing the old
constitution, Antony would have plenty of time in which to build the
foundations of a throne. Yet the declaration unnerved her, and caused
her to recognise with more clarity the great divergence between her
autocratic sentiments and the democratic principles of the country
she was attempting to bring under her sway. She saw that, little by
little, the basis upon which the project of the war was founded was
being changed. At first the great justification for hostilities had
been the ousting of Octavian from the estate belonging by right to her
son, Cæsarion. Now the talk was all of liberty, of democracy, and of
the restoration of republican institutions.
Her overwrought feelings, however, were somewhat soothed by Antony’s
personal behaviour, which at this time was anything but democratic.
He was allowing himself to be recognised as a divine personage by
the Athenians, and he insisted on the payment of the most royal
and celestial honours to Cleopatra, of whom he was at this time
inordinately proud. The Queen was, indeed, in these days supreme, and
the early authors are all agreed that Antony was to a large extent
under her thumb. The Athenians, recognising her as their fellow-Greek,
were eager to admit her omnipotence. They caused her statue to be set
up in the Acropolis near that already erected to Antony; they hailed
her as Aphrodite; they voted her all manner of municipal honours,
and, to announce the fact, sent a deputation to her which was headed
by Antony in his _rôle_ as a freeman of the city. Octavia, it will be
remembered, had resided at Athens some years previously, and had been
much liked by the citizens; but the memory of her quiet and pathetic
figure was quickly obliterated by the presence of the splendid little
Queen of Egypt who sat by Antony’s side at the head of a gathering of
kings and princes. Already she seemed to be Queen of the Earth; for,
acting as hostess to all these monarchs, speaking to each in his own
language, and entertaining them with her brilliant wit, she appeared
to be the leading spirit both in their festivities and in their
councils.
Antony, meanwhile, having quieted the dissensions amongst his
supporters, gave himself up to merry-making in his habitual manner;
and presently he caused the Athenians to recognise him formally as
Dionysos, or Bacchus, come down to earth. In anticipation of a certain
Bacchic day of festival he set all the carpenters in the city to make a
huge skeleton roof over the big theatre, this being then covered with
green branches and vines, as in the caves sacred to this god; and from
these branches hundreds of drums, faun-skins, and other Bacchic toys
and symbols were suspended. On the festal day Antony sat himself, with
his friends around him, in the middle of the theatre, the afternoon sun
splashing down upon them through the interlaced greenery; and thus, in
the guise of Bacchus, he presided at a wild drinking-bout, hundreds
of astonished Athenians watching him from around the theatre. When
darkness had fallen the city was illuminated, and, in the light of a
thousand torches and lanterns, Antony rollicked up to the Acropolis,
where he was proclaimed as the god himself.
Many were the banquets given at this time both by Antony and
Cleopatra, and the behaviour of the former was often uproarious and
undignified. On one state occasion he caused much excitement by going
across to Cleopatra in the middle of the meal and rubbing her feet, a
ministration always performed by a slave, and now undertaken by him, it
is said, to fulfil a wager. He was always heedless of public opinion,
and at this period of his life the habit of indifference to comment
had grown upon him to a startling extent. Frequently he would rudely
interrupt an audience which he was giving to one of the vassal kings by
receiving and openly reading some message from Cleopatra written upon
a tablet of onyx or crystal; and once when Furnius, a famous orator,
was pleading a case before him, he brought the eloquent speech to an
abrupt end by hurrying off to join the Queen outside, having entirely
forgotten, it would seem, that the orator’s arguments were being
addressed to himself.
An event now occurred which threw the whole of the Antonian party into
a state of the utmost anxiety. Two of the leading men at that time in
Athens deserted and went over to Octavian. One of these, Titius, has
already been noticed in connection with the arrest and execution of
Sextus Pompeius; the other, Plancus, was the man who made so great a
fool of himself at Alexandria when he painted himself blue and danced
naked about the room, as has been described already.[112] Velleius
speaks of him as “the meanest flatterer of the Queen, a man more
obsequious than any slave”; and one need not be surprised, therefore,
that Cleopatra was rude to him, which was the cause, so he said, of his
desertion. These two men had both been witnesses to Antony’s will, a
copy of which had been deposited with the Vestal Virgins; and as soon
as they were come to Rome they informed Octavian of its contents, who
promptly went to the temple of Vesta, seized the document, and, a few
days later, read it out to the Senate. Many senators were scandalised
at the proceedings; but they were, nevertheless, curious to hear what
the will set forth, and therefore did not oppose the reading. The only
clause, however, out of which Octavian was able to make much capital
was that wherein Antony stated that if he were to die in Rome he
desired his body, after being carried in state through the Forum, to be
sent to Alexandria, there to be buried beside Cleopatra.
The two deserters now began to spread throughout Italy all manner
of stories derogatory to Antony, and to heap abuse upon the Queen,
whom they described as having complete ascendancy over her husband,
due, they were sure, to the magical love-potions which she secretly
administered to him. When we consider that the accusations made by
disreputable tattlers, such as Plancus, were all concerned with
Antony’s devotion to her, we may realise how little there really was to
be brought against her. Antony, they said, was under her magical spell;
he had allowed the Ephesians to hail her as Queen; she had forced
him to present to her the library of Pergamum (a city not far from
Ephesus), consisting of 200,000 volumes; he was wont to become drunken
while she, of course by magic, remained sober; he had become her slave
and even rubbed her feet always for her, and so on. Such rubbishy tales
as these were the basis upon which the fabulous story of Cleopatra’s
terrible wickedness was founded, and presently we hear her spoken of as
“the harlot queen of incestuous Canopus, who aspired to set up against
Jupiter the barking Anubis, and to drown the Roman trumpet with her
jangling systrum.”[113]
The friends of Antony in Rome, alarmed by the hostile attitude of the
majority of the public, sent a certain Geminius to Athens to warn their
leader that he would soon be proclaimed an enemy of the State. On his
arrival at the headquarters, he was thought to be an agent of Octavia,
and both Cleopatra and Antony treated him with considerable coldness,
assigning to him the least important place at their banquets, and
making him a continual butt for their most biting remarks. For some
time he bore this treatment patiently; but at length one night, when
both he and Antony were somewhat intoxicated, the latter asked him
point-blank what was his business at Athens, and Geminius, springing to
his feet, replied that he would keep that until a soberer hour, but one
thing he would say here and now, drunk or sober, that if only the Queen
would go back to Egypt all would be well with their cause. At this
Antony was furious, but Cleopatra, keeping her temper, said in her most
scathing manner: “You have done well, Geminius, to tell your secret
without being put to torture.” A day or two later he slipped away from
Athens and hurried back to Rome.
The next man to desert was Marcus Silanus, formerly an officer of
Julius Cæsar in Gaul, who also carried to Rome stories of Cleopatra’s
power and Antony’s weakness. Shortly after this Octavian issued a
formal declaration of war, not, however, against Antony but against
Cleopatra. The decree deprived Antony of his offices and his authority,
because, it declared, he had allowed a woman to exercise it in
his place. Octavian added that Antony had evidently drunk potions
which had bereft him of his senses, and that the generals against
whom the Romans would fight would be the Egyptian court-eunuchs,
Mardion and Potheinos;[114] Cleopatra’s hair-dressing girl, Iras,
and her attendant, Charmion; for these nowadays were Antony’s chief
state-councillors. The Queen was thus made to realise that her
husband’s cause in Rome was suffering very seriously from her presence
with the army; but, at the same time, were she now to return to Egypt
she knew that Antony might play her false, and the fact that war
had not been declared upon him but upon her would give him an easy
loophole for escape. To counteract the prevailing impression in Italy
Antony despatched a large number of agents who were to attempt to turn
popular opinion in his favour, and meanwhile he disposed his army for
the final struggle. He had decided to wait for Octavian to attack him,
partly because he felt confident in the ability of his great fleet to
destroy the enemy before ever it could land on the shores of Greece,
and partly because he believed that Octavian’s forces would become
disaffected long before they could be brought across the sea. The state
of war would be felt in Italy very soon, whereas in Greece and Asia
Minor it would hardly make any difference to the price of provisions.
Egypt alone would supply enough corn to feed the whole army, while
Italy would soon starve; and Egypt would provide money for the regular
payment of the troops, while Octavian did not know where to turn for
cash. Indeed, so great was the distress in Italy, and so great the
likelihood of mutinies in the enemy’s army, that Antony did not expect
to have to fight a big battle on land. For this reason he had felt
it safe to leave four of his legions at Cyrene, four in Egypt, and
three in Syria; and he linked up the whole of the sea-coast around the
eastern Mediterranean with small garrisons. The army which he kept with
him in Greece consisted of some 100,000 foot and 12,000 horse, a force
which must certainly have seemed adequate, since it was greater than
that of the enemy. Octavian had at least 250 ships of war, 80,000 foot,
and 12,000 horse.
When winter approached Cleopatra and Antony advanced with the whole
army from Athens to Patrae, and there went into winter quarters. Patrae
stood near the mouth of the Gulf of Corinth, on the Achaian side, not
much more than 200 miles from the Italian coast. The fleet, meanwhile,
was sent farther north to the Gulf of Ambracia, which formed a huge
natural harbour with a narrow entrance; and outposts were placed at
Corcyra, the modern Corfu, some 70 miles from the Italian coast. In
the period of waiting which followed, when the storms of winter made
warfare almost out of the question, Antony and Octavian exchanged
several pugnacious messages. Octavian, constrained by the restlessness
of his men and the difficulty of providing for them during the winter,
is said to have written to Antony asking him not to protract the war,
but to come over to Italy and fight him at once. He even promised not
to oppose his disembarkation, but to offer him battle only when he was
quite prepared to meet him with his full forces. Antony replied by
challenging Octavian to a single combat, although, as he stated, he
was already an elderly man. This challenge Octavian refused to accept,
and thereupon Antony invited him to bring his army over to the plains
to Pharsalia and to fight him there, where Julius Cæsar and Pompey had
fought nearly seventeen years before. This offer was likewise refused;
and thereafter the two huge armies settled down once more to glare at
one another across the Ionian Sea.
Octavian now sent a message to Greece inviting the Roman senators
who were still with Antony to return to Rome where they would be well
received; and this offer must have found many ready ears, though none
yet dared to act upon it. Several of these senators felt disgust at
their leader’s intemperate habits, and were deeply jealous of the power
of Cleopatra, whose influence did not seem likely to serve the cause of
the Republic. The declaring of war against the Queen and not against
themselves had touched them sharply, and to add to their discomfort
in this regard news now came across the sea that Octavian, in making
his official sacrifices to the gods at the opening of hostilities, had
employed the ritual observed before a campaign against a _foreign_
enemy. He had stood, as the ancient rites of Rome prescribed, before
the temple of Bellona in the Campus Martius, and, clad in the robes of
a Fetial priest, had thrown the javelin, as a declaration that war was
undertaken against an alien enemy.
Now came disconcerting rumours from the Gulf of Ambracia which could
not be kept secret. During the winter the supplies had run out, and
all manner of diseases had attacked the rowing-slaves and sailors, the
result being that nearly a third of their number had perished. To fill
their places Antony had ordered his officers to press into service
every man on whom they could lay their hands. Peasants, farm hands,
harvesters, ploughboys, donkey-drivers, and even common travellers had
been seized upon and thrust into the ships, but still their complements
were incomplete, and many of them were unfit for action. The news
caused the greatest anxiety in the camp, and when, in March B.C. 31,
the cessation of the storms of winter brought the opening of actual
hostilities close at hand, there was many a man at Patrae who wished
with all his heart that he were safe in his own country.
The first blow was struck by Octavian, who sent a flying squadron
across the open sea to the south coast of Greece, under the command of
his great friend Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa. This force seized Methone,
and appeared to be seeking a landing-place for the main army; and
Antony at once prepared to march down and hold the coast against the
expected attack. But while his eyes were turned in this direction
Octavian slipped across with his army from Brindisi and Tarentum to
Corcyra, and thence to the mainland, marching down through Epirus
towards the Gulf of Ambracia, thus menacing the ill-manned fleet
lying in those waters. Antony thereupon hastened northwards with all
possible speed, and arrived at the promontory of Actium, which formed
the southern side of the mouth of the Gulf, almost at the same moment
at which Octavian reached the opposite, or northern, promontory.
Realising that an attack was about to be made upon the fleet, Antony
drew his ships up in battle array, manning them where necessary with
legionaries; and thereupon Octavian gave up the project of immediate
battle. Antony then settled himself down on his southern promontory
where he formed an enormous camp, and a few days later he was joined
there by Cleopatra.