After years of proxy wars, political manoeuvring, and propaganda, the conflict between Octavian and
Antony finally would come to a head in 31 BC at Actium. But before fighting this possibly most
important battle of the ancient period, these two allies and enemies had to justify their
actions for their contemporaries. Thus, the two sides waged a political war, a cold war,
for years before the decisive battle. In this episode, we will talk about the 5-year period
during which Antony and Octavian fought a campaign of propaganda and slander.
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The end of 36 BC had seen Octavian build upon his position by completing the conquest of Sicily
from Sextus Pompey and then ousting Lepidus and absorbing many of his powers and Legions into his
own. Antony, meanwhile, had faired poorly in his Parthian Campaign and returned to Alexandria to
regroup. Both men were aware that with Lepidus out of the equation, a direct confrontation
was inevitable and began consolidating their positions. In the West, Octavian launched a series
of campaigns along the Adriatic coast against the Pannonians in 35 BC, whom Cassius Dio, an eventual
governor of the area, describes as “leading the most miserable existence of all mankind” but
also as “the bravest of all men of whom we have knowledge”. The details regarding the campaign
are rather minimal, and it seems to have been over rather quickly, with Octavian successfully taking
the city of Siscia and leaving a subordinate, Geminus, to govern the area. A year later,
Octavian and Agrippa would launch a similarly quick, yet successful campaign in Dalmatia.
While there is, again, little information about this conflict, the most important
detail is that in both instances, Octavian and Agrippa fought a campaign on both land and sea,
giving their army and navy crucial experience that would prove invaluable in the coming years.
Meanwhile, in the East, Antony set his plans in motion to avenge himself on the Armenian king,
Artavasdes, who had deserted him so early during the campaign in Atropatene. In the
following years, Antony made numerous attempts to lure the Armenian king out of his kingdom and
to Alexandria, but Artavasdes was a cautious man and refused the invitations. At last, in 34 BC,
after many bribes, envoys, and other means, Antony was able to convince Artavasdes to meet him. When
he did, Antony immediately had him seized and imprisoned and moved all his 16 Legions into
Armenia. The details for this campaign are, again, vague: there seems to have been some resistance
led by Artavasdes’ son, but there does not seem to have been any large-scale battles. Rather,
Antony’s intervention in Armenia seems to have been more like a raid intended to remind
the locals of Rome’s supremacy and the cost of going against her rather than a war of conquest.
Simultaneous to these military affairs, Antony and Octavian were both making moves politically. With
Lepidus out of the picture, Octavian targeted his formidable propaganda machine squarely at Antony
and Cleopatra. A crucial figure in this, and one often sidelined in discussions of the time period,
was Octavian’s sister, Octavia. She had already played an important role in Octavian’s career,
cementing the triumviral alliance in 40 BC by marrying Antony, and had been a crucial go-between
for the two triumvirs, helping to negotiate the treaty and promises of mutual support in 37 BC.
Moreover, Octavia was renowned in Roman society as a paragon of wife and motherhood. In 35 BC,
in the aftermath of the Atropatene Campaign, Octavia had headed East with gifts for Antony and,
according to some sources, 2,000 of the 20,0000 men that Octavian had promised to Antony. Rather
than meeting her in Greece, however, Antony sent her a letter telling her to stay in Athens while
he himself went to Alexandria. Octavian and his allies leapt upon the scandal,
arguing that it clearly showed Antony’s allegiances lay with a foreign queen
rather than the most ideal Roman wife. In the autumn of 34 BC, in Alexandria,
Antony carried out a kind of triumph to mark his success in Armenia, riding through the streets on
a chariot and parading the Armenian king in his procession. In the end, according to the sources,
Antony and Cleopatra sat upon ornate, oriental chairs with Antony dressed in Eastern garb
as Dionysus and Isis. It was here that Antony supposedly made his infamous Donations. In front
of a large crowd, Antony purportedly recognised Caesarion as the legitimate heir to Julius Caesar
and proclaimed King of Kings, while Cleopatra was proclaimed Queen of Kings and gifted the
lands of Egypt and Cyprus. Moreover, the children of Antony and Cleopatra were all also given land:
the yet-to-be-conquered Armenia, Media and Parthia to Alexander, Cyrenaica and Libya to
Selene and lastly, Syria, Phoenicia and Cilicia to Ptolemy. Antony apparently went so far as to send
dispatches to Rome to repeat the proclamation to the Senate and get their approval of it,
though the Consuls at the time, Gaius Sosius and Domitius Ahenobarbus, both loyal friends
of Antony, refused to allow the proclamation to be read knowing how damaging it would be,
much to Octavian’s frustration. These ‘Donations’ remain a topic of some
debate among historians to this day. It must be remembered, after all, that the surviving sources
for this period are largely pro-Octavian, with some of them being based directly on Octavian’s
own memoirs and thus presenting the narrative that Octavian wanted to present. Some, such
as Halfmann, argue that Antony was embracing his complicated mixed role of being both a Roman and a
kind of Hellenic dynast and perhaps articulating what his later vision for the East was. In this
interpretation, Antony was not actually promising to hand over land to Cleopatra or her children but
would have placed them as more symbolic rulers of the areas, while existing client kings would
be kept in power but subordinate to Cleopatra and Caesarion. Others say that the proclamation was
meant purely for a local audience, a declaration to the Alexandrians specifically that he would aim
to restore the Ptolemaic Empire to its previous glory and that the donations were simply a
rhetorical device. Finally, there are those, such as Patterson, who doubt how realistic the episode
is entirely: Antony was a talented politician and well aware of the importance of public opinion,
so is it really believable that Antony, in the midst of repairing his reputation
after his defeat in Parthia would make such an obviously disastrous and poorly judged move as
the Donations? After all, even if Antony did not intend to give over the land directly and intended
the titles to be more symbolic, it was still a slight to the famously anti-monarchist Romans
and other allied monarchs. Patterson instead argues that some aspects are likely true,
such as Antony proclaiming Caesarion to be Julius Caesar’s true heir and proclaiming Caesarion and
Cleopatra as king and queen of Egypt, both of which would be sensible and logical steps for
Antony to take. The other donations, particularly those to Antony and Cleopatra’s own children,
could very well be fabrications of Octavian’s propaganda. Almost all, however, agree that
Antony did confirm Cleopatra as queen of Egypt and Caesarion as Julius Caesar’s heir, thereby
establishing him as a direct rival to Octavian and further increasing tensions between the two.
News of these affairs, true or false, soon reached Rome and was quickly capitalised on by Octavian,
who attacked Antony as being bewitched by Cleopatra and scorning Roman values by his style
of dress and actions. It is something of an irony that the Octavian propaganda focused on Antony’s
style of dress and chair when these same arguments had been used against Octavian’s adopted father,
Caesar, to demonise him. In retaliation, Antony accused Octavian of being a tyrant,
removing Lepidus from the triumvirate without Antony's approval and taking all of Lepidus’
Legions and Sicily for himself rather than splitting them. Octavian, in turn, accused Antony
of retaining control over Egypt instead of giving it to the Senate to distribute, murdering Sextus,
and dishonourably tricking the Armenian king. Meanwhile, Octavia, who had returned from Athens
and was living in Antony’s home in Rome, was using her position to strengthen Octavian further. As
Antony’s wife, it was her responsibility to handle his affairs in his absence,
including dealing with Antony’s clients, many of whom she subtly moved into her brother’s pocket,
chipping away at Antony’s support structure in the city. Indeed, Octavia had been so useful to
Octavian’s political campaign that historian Barry Strauss credits her with having done “as much for
the house of Caesar as any military commander.” While Octavia was rather subtle and cunning in
turning people against Antony, other agents of Octavian were less so. Calvisius, for example,
spread still more rumours about Antony, that he had given hundreds of thousands of books to
Cleopatra, that he read love notes from her while dealing with foreign kings, that he once left
in the middle of a gripping lecture after seeing Cleopatra passing by and escorted her instead of
staying to hear the speech and, shockingly, gave Cleopatra a foot-rub at a banquet. Most of these
were dismissed as baseless slander, however, and though Octavian had eroded some of Antony’s base,
he still did not have enough cause to openly declare war against Antony. In
order for that to happen, he would need some far more serious and damaging information.
Fortunately for Octavian, such information soon presented itself. Among the numerous people who
defected to Octavian were two men in particular, Marcus Titius and Lucius Munatius Plancus. Both
men had fought under Antony, Plancus during the Perusine War and Titius during the Atropatene
campaign. Why exactly they now betrayed Antony is unclear: opportunism, bribes,
or fracturing of their relationship with Antony are all possibilities. Whatever the case was, they
brought with them information that was useful to Octavian, most importantly, some details regarding
Antony’s will. Encouraged by their words, Octavian determined to see the will himself and ordered his
men to seize it from the Vestal Virgins where it had been stored, a grossly blasphemous act.
Octavian must have known how sacrilegious this would be but considered this a price worth
paying for the information. Gathering the Senate together, Octavian read the will aloud in which
Antony had supposedly reaffirmed the legitimacy of Caesarion, promised yet more lands to Cleopatra
and their children and, worst of all, requested to be buried in Alexandria rather than Rome.
Once again, it is hard not to think that Octavian fabricated many of the details. Antony’s will was
very likely entrusted to the Vestal Virgins, but it is incredibly unlikely that he had committed to
writing such politically damaging ideas if he ever actually had them. As Aeschylus had written before
though, “In war, truth is the first casualty.” It did not matter if the contents were true or not,
what mattered was that they were believed. To many, the will seemed to legitimise many of
the worst accusations made against Antony and Cleopatra, namely that Antony intended to rule
Rome as a Hellenic-style monarch with Cleopatra at his side. It was a significant blow to Antony’s
reputation, and it was enough for Octavian to weaponize the Senate against him. Declaring that
Antony’s actions were all the result of Cleopatra, Octavian had the Senate declare war against
Cleopatra. This was an important detail. By declaring war on Cleopatra, Octavian could avoid
calling it another Civil War, he could portray himself as a Roman fighting a threatening foreign
power, and he forced Antony into a position where he would need to actively align himself
with Cleopatra and against Rome. As Octavian knew he would, Antony announced his support for
Cleopatra and was subsequently labeled a traitor and stripped of all his powers and authority,
leaving Octavian as the only man with full, legitimate triumviral powers. While many Senators
sided with Octavian, a good many, including the two consuls for the year, Ahenobarbus and Sosius,
viewed Octavian as a tyrant and threw their lot in with Antony, fleeing to his side.
The last war of the Roman Republic had begun. While the propaganda war had been raging, Antony
and Cleopatra had moved to Ephesus near the end of 33 BC, where they began mustering their forces.
Pulling together all their resources in the East, they had put together a colossal force of 500
warships, 300 supply ships and 120,000 soldiers. The navy was mostly triremes and quinqueremes,
also called ‘threes’ and ‘fives,’ respectively, but they also had a few heavier ships ranging from
sixes to tens. These ships, thanks to their large size, were somewhat ineffective in naval battles
and were instead designed to smash the defences of fortified harbours, such as those at Brundisium
and Tarentum. Though no source confirms it directly, the inclusion of these kinds of ships,
as well as the size of the army, strongly implies what Antony and Cleopatra had planned:
a full-scale invasion of Italy. With this kind of force, such a feat was certainly possible
but would be a huge logistical challenge. After all, alongside the 120,000 soldiers,
their navy would have consisted of a further 200,000 men. The key to their success would
be maintaining a strong supply line from Egypt to their frontlines in Greece and then on to Italy.
Already though, some cracks were starting to emerge. Ahenobarbus and Sosius both implored
Antony to send Cleopatra back to Egypt. Both were respected men, and Ahenobarbus, in particular,
had proved himself as a talented admiral, having commanded fleets in the Adriatic for
the Liberators against the Triumvirate decades earlier. Both men considered the reputational
damage of Cleopatra to be too much, especially if they were to invade Italy: it would all seem
to confirm Octavian’s propaganda if the invading force landed with a foreign queen at their head.
Nevertheless, Antony had good reason for keeping Cleopatra with him. She was providing the vast
majority of the funding for the campaign, as well as 60 of the warships, all of which Antony
desperately needed to keep on hand. Moreover, sending Cleopatra away may have potentially
alienated other allied monarchs. Cleopatra also had her own reasons for wanting to stay. Not
only had she already invested heavily into the expedition, but there was always the threat that
Octavian would offer to repair the marriage of Octavia and Antony, leaving her isolated. In the
end, Cleopatra, with the help of some well-placed bribes to other officers close to Antony, was able
to convince him of her usefulness, and the force sailed for Greece in the late Summer of 32 BC.
Their army and navy were large and well-supplied, and they had far more funds than Octavian did,
all of which tipped the scales in their favor. However, rather than invading Italy
immediately, Antony delayed. This was a rather uncharacteristically cautious move and perhaps
reflects that either the force was not completely organised yet, or that Antony was trying to avoid
his previous mistake of rushing the invasion of Atropatene before Winter. Either way,
he decided to bide his time, stationing garrisons along the supply lines in key places like Corcyra,
Leucas, and Methone, while the majority of the fleet put in at the Gulf of Ambracia,
and Antony and Cleopatra themselves made for Patrae where they planned to spend the Winter
months. It would prove to be a costly decision. In the next episode, we will talk about the battle
of Actium, so make sure you are subscribed and pressed the bell button. Please, consider liking,
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