Mark Antony’s defeat at Actium
You’d be forgiven for thinking civil war was genetically hardwired into the Romans by this stage. After all, their foundation myth story, Romulus and Remus, was built around an inexplicable act of fratricide, and in the hundred or so years that spanned the days of the Gracchi to the Battle of Actium in 31 BC, very little time went by in which senators, allies, or legionaries weren’t violently battling amongst themselves.
While the defeat of Brutus and Cassius in 42 BC gave the Roman world some space to breathe after almost 20 years of continuous civil war, it also set in motion the final contest between the two men left standing: Octavian and Mark (the third triumvir, Lepidus, was something of a non-entity by this stage). The prize was clear; with the Senate now largely impotent, the winner would become the Roman Empire’s first sole ruler in over 500 years.
In Egypt, Antony took up with Egypt’s last pharaoh Cleopatra, renouncing his wife Octavia, Octavian’s sister. This gave Octavian all the ammunition he needed to attack his rival. He waged a war of propaganda against the drunk, orientalized, anti-Roman Antony, turning public opinion firmly against Caesar’s old wingman. Antony didn’t help himself either; Rome relied on Egypt for its grain supply, precisely what Antony threatened to withhold.
Things finally came to a head at the Battle of Actium, just off the Greek coast, on September 31 BC. Octavian’s forces came up against Antony and Cleopatra in one of the ancient world’s most significant (yet most underwhelming) naval battles. Despite everything being evenly matched, Cleopatra inexplicably withdrew her ships towards the end of the day. Antony followed, leaving his troops leaderless. Those who couldn’t escape surrendered. Victory for Octavian followed shortly after; realizing they’d lost the war and had no future other than (at best) as Octavian’s prisoners, Antony and Cleopatra committed suicide in Alexandria the next year.
Sick of the civil wars and bloodshed that had consumed the empire for nearly a century, Rome was ready for peace, whatever the cost. If that had to mean sacrificing republican government for one-man rule under Octavian (or Augustus, as he would later rename himself), that was a price worth paying. Presiding over a sham Senate, Octavian gradually took up all offices and amassed all powers to make himself sole ruler of the Roman world.
To his credit, Rome’s first emperor played his role well. While in reality holding all the power, he never made a display of doing so. Refusing to be treated as any senator’s superior, he referred to himself as princeps inter pares, “first amongst equals”. It was a legacy of modesty that some of his more notorious successors—Caligula, Nero, Commodus—would have done well to learn from.