The beginning of Octavian's invasion of Sicily had been defined by misfortune.
Storms had wreaked havoc amongst his ships, and skirmishes with the Pompeian navy were mainly
detrimental to the Octavian's cause, resulting in numerous delays. However, Lepidus had successfully
established a foothold in the west of Sicily, and the appointment of Agrippa as overall commander of
the expedition had resulted in a turn of fortune for Octavian with the Caesarean forces securing
their first significant naval victory at Mylae. In this episode, we shall look at
how the Caesareans built on this success and ultimately managed to finally conquer Sicily
and crush the Pompeian faction once and for all. Caesar may be gone, but his legacy was clearly
making a big stir in the world, and that was to continue for a long time. If you want a
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Agrippa's victory had been well-earned, and he had managed to take advantage of the situation
by landing a portion of his forces in the North of Sicily around Tyndaris.
Though he had not been able to cripple the Pompeian navy,
most of the surviving vessels had managed to slip past Agrippa's force and rejoin Sextus.
Octavian, meanwhile, was attempting to capitalize on Agrippa's victory and lead his portion of the
army and fleet, totalling 3 legions and perhaps 150 ships, to the west of Sicily,
landing around Tauromenium in the early summer of 36 BC. He had underestimated Sextus. As his men
began to fortify their camp, they saw the Pompeian fleet closing in while the Pompeian army advanced
parallel along the coast. Seeing that Octavian's forces were distracted, fortifying their position,
Sextus ordered his cavalry to attack, harassing the Caesarean legions where they could.
Still, Octavian's men were able to fend off the attacks and complete their defences. Nevertheless,
Octavian was in a bad position with his land forces surrounded in their fort,
his navy blockaded, and his supply line to the Italian mainland cut off.
Recognizing that the situation would be unwinnable without a secure supply line, Octavian assigned
Cornificius, a man who had distinguished himself under Caesar, as commander of the land forces.
At the same time, Octavian took control of the ships. Having heard of Agrippa's victory over
the Pompeian fleet, he assumed that his larger fleet would be able to find similar success.
Still, the resulting battle once again proved to be a disaster for Octavian. The extant sources do
not give a detailed account of the battle itself, but they report that Octavian lost many ships,
many of the sailors who abandoned ships and made it to shore getting cut down by the Pompeian
cavalry. Octavian barely escaped with his life and, rather than retreating to his legions on
Sicily, was forced back to the Italian mainland. He desperately sent messages to Agrippa requesting
all his forces to move as quickly as possible to Cornificius' position and ordered another
three legions to cross the straits from Italy to Sicily, planning to follow shortly after.
Effectively abandoned in Sicily, Cornificius realised how dire his situation was. With the
supply line cut, it was only a matter of time before he and his men were starved out of their
position. He drew his men up for battle, but the Pompeians refused the engagement. With few other
options available, Octavian's general prepared his men to fight north toward Agrippa's men.
The legions marched in a hollow square, with the unarmed and wounded men in the centre,
and were constantly harassed by the missile and light cavalry troops, including some of
the renowned Numidian light cavalry that had sided with Sextus. Broken terrain and constant Pompeian
attacks made their march painfully slow. To make things worse, the army had also moved with very
few supplies and the combination of the summer heat and harassing tactics from Sextus' men made
it almost impossible for the men to find water. Cornificius was eventually forced to abandon his
wounded men to make a better pace. After five days of dehydration and constant harassment,
Cornficus' men were at their breaking point and in no fit shape to fight. Sextus' men began to
close in to deal the final blow, but suddenly 3 of Agrippa's legions, under the command of one of his
lieutenants, emerged. The Pompeian force retreated in the face of these reinforcements, and the
remnants of Cornficus' troops were finally able to ensure Agrippa's camp's safety around Mylae.
Agrippa successfully managed to take the stronghold of Tyndaris in the meantime,
and Octavian rejoined him here, bringing more legions from the Italian mainland.
In total, he now had a staggering 21 legions in Sicily, not including the forces under Lepidus.
In the face of such opposition, Sextus was forced to retreat to the Pelorus peninsula.
Lepidus' operations around Lilybaeum had been largely successful, but he had failed
to take the city itself, and a reinforcing force sent by Sextus made him give up the endeavour.
Rather than tying up his legions in a prolonged siege, he marched across the island to Octavian
and Agrippa. From this point, the Pompeian's fate was effectively sealed. The Caesareans
had an overwhelming numerical superiority on land and at sea. Sextus was effectively
pinned in the peninsula, with Messana as his last significant holdout on the island's East.
Initially, Octavian and Agrippa planned to starve Sextus into submission.
Still, Lepidus had become an increasing problem, consistently arguing with Octavian
and insisting that he should have just as much command as Octavian. He was not wrong;
politically, Octavian was in a dangerous position. Lepidus so far had reasonable success in Sicily,
while Octavian's forces had suffered numerous setbacks. As a result, there was a real
threat that Lepidus would be able to supplant Octavian as the joint most powerful man in Rome.
Rumours had even circulated that Lepidus was in secret communication with Sextus. Octavian
no longer had the time to defeat Sextus at his leisure; he needed a decisive victory
to crush Sextus and establish himself as the undisputed victor over Lepidus.
In order to achieve this, Octavian and Agrippa began increasing the amount of pressure on Sextus'
position, Octavian taking any towns that continued to supply the Pompeians while Agrippa maintained
a blockade at sea. With time running out, Sextus had no choice but to draw his navy out for battle,
hoping to break Agrippa's fleet and open up a route for supplies and retreat. The two fleets,
roughly equal in size to approximately 300 ships, met just off the coast of Naulochus.
Sextus had learnt much from his navy's previous engagement at Mylae, increasing the
size of ships to match the larger Caesarean ones. Agrippa, however, had made his own adaptations,
inventing a new kind of weapon, the harpax. Roman ships had previously used the corvus,
a bridge with a large nail at one end, to pin enemy ships for boarding. The harpax, on the
other hand, was a large grappling hook fired from a ballista-like device. It could be fired
from a distance and then used a winch to drag the enemy ship close for boarding and was fitted with
a long metal sheath near the hook to prevent the ropes from being cut; it was an ingenious device.
The battle began, and it quickly became apparent that Agrippa's new invention was
as formidable as it was creative. Sextus' men had never fought against such a device and thus
had no means of defence against it. Some that were caught by the harpax tried to backpaddle,
but this only tired the men and made their ships slower and more sluggish.
Many were caught and dragged toward Agrippa's forces and boarded. Sextus' men, to their credit,
fought bravely on the decks, each ship becoming its own miniature battlefield.
From the shoreline, the armies of both sides watched helplessly, unable to distinguish
between them, urging their allies on with shouts of encouragement. However, it soon became apparent
to all that Agrippa had the decisive advantage. Sextus' fleet attempted to withdraw through the
straits, but many ships were caught and forced onto the beaches, the vessels burnt, and the
sailors captured. The precise number of ships lost on each side is hard to gauge though Appian claims
that only 17 of Sextus' ships escaped, Sextus among them, with Agrippa's men successfully
capturing or burning the vast majority of the Pompeian fleet, thanks mainly to the harpax.
Whether this figure is accurate or not is hard to say, but it certainly seems that Sextus' navy
lost most of its ships, while Agrippa's losses were comparatively light. It had
been Agrippa's finest hour so far and had given Octavian the clear victory he so badly needed.
In the immediate aftermath, Sextus fled to Messana, abandoning his army in the area.
Leaderless, they quickly surrendered to Octavian. Sextus recalled the eight legions
around Lilybaeum, seemingly intending to make a stand with them around Messana.
However, before they arrived, more and more of Sextus' inner circle began to defect, and Sextus
abandoned the island of Sicily with his family, sailing in secrecy to Antony, hoping that he would
find safety there in recompense for Sextus having given sanctuary to Antony's mother in the past.
The Pompeian legions that arrived in Messana found themselves leaderless and were quickly
besieged by the Caesarean armies under the command of Lepidus and Agrippa.
The Pompeians quickly sent peace envoys to negotiate,
Agrippa being ordered not to concede anything until Octavian arrived on the scene.
Lepidus, however, had other plans and agreed to allow the Pompeian legions to join him,
granting them the right to sack Messana in return. Lepidus and Pompey's men thus plundered the
city throughout the night, Agrippa's legions maintaining their position outside the city.
Combined with his forces from Africa, Lepidus now had a total of 21 legions under his personal
command, roughly equal to those under Octavian and Agrippa. He now chose to make his move.
Declaring himself as the conqueror of Sicily, Lepidus sent word to towns in
Sicily to reject any envoys sent from Octavian and listen only to those sent by himself.
Octavian reacted quickly, confronting Lepidus, who offered Octavian control of Sicily and North
Africa in return for Gaul, Hispania and Illyricum. Effectively, it was an offer to restore the
separation initially agreed upon in 43 BC by the Second Triumvirate. Octavian, of course, refused.
The soldiers began to worry that after just having proved victorious in the Sicilian campaign against
Sextus, they would be swept into another war between Lepidus and Octavian. The latter got
wind of these misgivings and initially sent agents into Lepidus' camp to gauge the loyalties of the
Legions before entering himself, leaving a significant cavalry bodyguard at the gates.
Many of the previously Pompeian Legions were worried that the peace treaty would not be valid
unless Octavian endorsed it. Many of Lepidus' men were embittered that they had to share the spoils
of looting Messana with men they had only recently been fighting against. Octavian proclaimed that he
would accept all who wanted to join him, and many pledged their loyalty there and then.
In his tent, Lepidus heard that his army was dissolving and stormed out. A fight of
some kind broke out, one of Octavian's entourage getting killed and Octavian himself almost getting
wounded. Octavian retreated to his cavalry, and what happened next is not entirely clear.
Appian paints a picture of Octavian with only his cavalry engaging in some kind of fighting
with Lepidus' men that remained loyal, but that eventually, more and more of his men defected,
a trickle becoming a flood. Cassius Dio's version differs. According to his account, after entering
Lepidus' camp, Octavian was soundly rebuffed by the men and resorted to besieging the camp,
Lepidus' men defecting throughout the course of the siege as the only practical option, despite
having high respect for Lepidus. Effectively, one version has Octavian's power of personality
convincing droves of men to his side, with an incompetent Lepidus being unaware of what was
going on and losing almost all his Legions after a short scuffle with Octavian, while the other has
Octavian needing to effectively force Lepidus' men to join him through the threat of siege. Octavian,
a master propagandist, managed to heavily control the narrative following the end of the Civil War.
Such discrepancies are relatively common, and there is often bias in favour of Octavian and
against his enemies. The consensus of modern historians is that the most likely course of
events was somewhere in the middle. Octavian marched into the camp with his bodyguard,
managing to win over some men, but the majority stayed loyal to Lepidus. As a result,
Octavian used force to threaten the loyalists to join his side. The end result, however,
is clear. The entirety of Lepidus' army, all 21 legions, passed over to Octavian's command.
This was, in effect, the end of Lepidus' career. In the aftermath, he was stripped
of the powers of a triumvir, and Octavian and Antony stood alone as the rulers of the Republic.
Lepidus has gone down in history as incompetent and a bit of a fool,
largely thanks to pro-Octavian and anti-Lepidus, biased sources. It is a rather damning evaluation.
Lepidus had played the game well, but the decks were, arguably, stacked against him.
Antony and Octavian both had the benefit of being much more apparent heirs to Caesar's legacy,
and both benefited from the resources left by Caesar after he died. His final gambit in Sicily
was possibly the best move he could make given the circumstances: he had a strong army in the area,
and the offer he made to Octavian was not as unfair as it may initially seem.
Africa and Sicily, now that they had been reigned in under Caesarean control, had long been two of
the Republics' most productive areas, and Lepidus did not try to cut Octavian out of the Triumvirate
entirely. Unfortunately for him, however, he was matched against one of the greatest political
titans of history, Octavian. One point regarding Lepidus that perhaps is too easily overlooked is
that he survived despite losing his triumvir powers. He would later die at the ripe old age
of 76. Though his career was admittedly rather lacklustre after the Sicilian Campaign, few men
could claim to have supported Julius Caesar, survived the aftermath of his assassination,
and challenged Octavian but nonetheless lived to tell the tale. He was shrewd often to avoid the
frequent conflicts between Octavian and Antony. Though we should not get ahead of ourselves and
laud him as a political genius, dismissing him as an incompetent fool seems inaccurate and unjust.
With Sextus having fled the island and his Legions deserted to the Caesarean side,
Octavian's invasion of Sicily was over. Disasters had plagued it at the beginning, but a combination
of sheer tenacity on his behalf and the talented generalship of Agrippa, had assured victory.
With the taking of Sicily, the last Pompeian holdout, the faction was effectively crushed.
However, Sextus survived the ordeal and successfully made it to Asia Minor.
There, he hoped to find mercy under the protection of the only man now powerful enough to challenge
Octavian, Antony. Antony, however, was currently in the middle of his own military expedition:
the Roman invasion of Parthia. Thanks again to Blinkist for
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