In the wake of Caesar's assassination
Roman politics got even weirder than they were in the century beforehand
Which given the persistence and pervasiveness of the civil wars is really saying something. You can check out this video on
Octavian's early career here to get the full rundown
but the gist is that after all of the kingy stabby killing the assassins held onto nearly half of the Mediterranean,
while forces vaguely loyal to Caesar's corpse kept the western portion more or less under control. Some prominent caesareans including the young
Octavian Caesar
Marcus Antonius and one Marcus Lepidus buddied up to take on the assassins and defeated them at the Battle of Philippi in 42
BC, two years after Caesars death from there the triumvirate as it was called split the Empire up into thirds (halves)
between them and called it a day, as the collective Roman citizenry hoped really really hard that it wouldn't explode into another war for at
least a week or
two. Well bad news kiddos. The Roman Republic has been living on borrowed time for over a century by this point already
So realistically we're looking at four maybe five minutes tops before it all crashes down
Fun times, right?
let's do some history. The period of peace after the defeat of the
assassins and the gutting of the anti-cesarean members of the Senate in the notorious prescriptions was an uneasy one to say the least
memories of several different battles fought Italian fields burned and drenched in roman blood and family members killed were swirling in
everybody's minds so a lot of people were
unconvinced that they were looking at a long term solution.
In poetry this period is known as the great fear when everyone was really anxious about civil wars fearful
You would say and a hundred percent certain that there would absolutely be more of them
Rome's greatest poets at the time Horace and Virgil both acutely touch on the constant fear felt by the populace
And as it happens the poets were pretty much right about the big bad specter of civil war. In the east Antony had been
consolidating his power by striking up alliances with nearby monarchs in a bid to
accumulate money and military might for his planned campaign to Parthia.
But perhaps most importantly he pulled a Caesar and sauntered over to Egypt to schmooze with Cleopatra. In the West,
Octavian had a lot of problems. His land reforms got the sympathy of his legions
but proceeded to alienate the rest of Italy pretty handily because that's kind of what happens when you
confiscate people's land and give it to your army instead. In 40 BC
Antony's wife Fulvia led a revolt against Octavian and very briefly captured Rome. Octavian
then pushed them out to Gaul and quashed the rebellion,
after which he sacrificed 300 of the conspirators - not imprisoned, not even executed -
sacrificed.
Octavian performed human
sacrifices on fellow Romans on the altar of the deified Julius Caesar on the anniversary of his death. In the ancient world a
lot of animals got sacrificed
But when it comes to humans and especially fellow Romans, Romans did not do that.
So I'm just gonna put this one up next to mass murder of innocents on the list of stuff Octavian
does that makes me deeply distressed. Now the golden rule of late Republican Rome is that anyone named Pompey is
guaranteed to be a colossal pain in the butt for
anyone named Caesar, and that's definitely the case here. Sextus Pompey,
son of Pompey the headless had been tooling around in the Mediterranean for the better part of eight years following Caesar's assassination,
blockading ports and regularly cutting off Rome's food.
Octavian was understandably miffed about this but couldn't really do anything about it
Since Pompey had Senate sanctioned control of Rome's entire Navy.
Even though the triumvirate was able to defeat the assassins a few years beforehand in a land battle
They were practically powerless against the only real Navy in the Mediterranean
Technically Egypt had a pretty great Navy too, but they don't count because they're you know
Not Roman, and also Cleopatra was solidly in the Mark Antony camp and would not have helped out Octavian
anyway
After a treaty broke down and Pompey inflicted a humiliating defeat on Rome Octavian's general and all-around badass right-hand
Man, Marcus Agrippa proceeded to take matters into his own hands by holding up a navy of his own from scratch
The problem was that with Pompey controlling the Seas
Agrippa's forces couldn't train how to sail in open waters without threat of being immediately murderized
so the madman digs a lake in the middle of Italy and uses it as a makeshift naval base to train up a fleet which
proceeded to demolish Pompey's Navy because Agrippa is a
military God. My head canon is that Agrippa, equipped with nothing but a bucket, a shovel,
and a mission dug the whole lake himself in a night
But archaeological evidence has yet to corroborate my rock-solid bullet proof hypothesis
Still working on that one
After a grip of solo carry against Pompey Lepidus attempted to seize Sicily for himself after which Octavian said, whoa
whoa whoa, who let you leave the house and immediately ejected him from the triumvirate, confining him to the priesthood. Was this
You know legal? Ehh?
So then there were two. Moving on now on paper
They were cool because Antony had married Octavian sister Octavia after his wife Fulvia casually revolted against Rome
But in 32 BC he divorced her and officially married
Cleopatra confirming what everyone in Rome knew was happening for the better part of a decade.
Observant viewers will recall that this is at just about the same point in the story of Caesar and Pompey when hostilities started
Flaring up between them on account of them not being in-laws anymore
so, um
There's that. It's around here that things start going downhill really fast
The Mediterranean was shaping up to end in a violent showdown between the muscular military man Antony and the super scrawny
Strategist Octavian. 32 BC started off with the years two new Consuls delivering what was apparently a
devastating verbal smackdown against Octavian in the Senate. The next day Octavian showed up in the Senate with armed guards
This was a strong statement, not to mention a gross
violation of traditional rap battle protocol, after which part of the Senate bailed to go join up with Antony in the east.
You'll have to forgive me. It's a little bit hard to hear with this massive echo in the history
anyway
Unfortunately for the Senators, they found that Antony's half of the Republic was kind of suckish
so a few defected back to Octavian in the confusion Octavian sneakily got ahold of Antony's will which among other things
included the neat little fact that Antony wanted to be buried in Egypt with Cleopatra
And he'd bequeathed entire Roman provinces to his children with her. Not only was this distinctly kingly behavior on his part
it was kingly behavior in service to a foreign state at Rome's direct expense. Octavian
of course pounced on this like a cat on an expensive-looking vase and waged an intense
propaganda war against Antony, branding him as having been bewitched by scary foreigner Cleopatra and forgetting how to be properly Roman
Octavian by contrast painted himself as the pinnacle of
Roman-ness, as his family heritage traced back to the epic hero Aeneas and the settlement of Rome itself
Insofar as anyone could trace anything when it came to ancient genealogy
Coincidentally just as soon as Antony's will was exposed Octavian also began construction of a giant
mausoleum for himself right on the banks of the Tiber River in Rome
hem hem
cue symbolism fight
But perhaps the most important message that Octavian pushed was that Antony had become a slave to Cleopatra
By framing the problem as Antony was corrupted by this evil foreign Queen and her probably mind control boobs
He neatly avoided the touchy subject of Civil War
Control over the narrative was key and Octavian had it. When he entered into war with Antony in 32 all of Rome was
convinced that the prime antagonist was Cleopatra
And didn't think that Octavian was making a power play to seize the whole of Rome for himself
But no time to worry about the complex political implications of large-scale conflict because off to war we go
Octavian's controversial land redistribution scheme from a decade earlier paid dividends when he was able to take the loyalty of several entire
Legions to the bank all at once and once again Agrippa mahboy comes in clutch first
he prevented Antony from sailing from his base in Greece to Italy which would have been a very bad time for Octavian and friends because
Rome was not a long march away. After that Antony and Cleopatra's
armies set up camp at Actium in Northwest Greece. With his supply chain running down to the isthmus of Corinth and through to Egypt
Agrippa because awesome is his middle name
Proceeded to intercept and cut off Antony's supplies at Corinth and then blockaded him into the Bay of Actium,
forcing a battle. While dozens if not hundreds of poems have been written to commemorate Actium. I'm not sure there's ever been a bigger
Anticlimactic letdown in all of Roman history. Can I heartbreak Zama drama?
everything that Caesar did in Gaul
bad-ass
Actium meh. For how consequential of a battle it is. It's shockingly
uninteresting. All of the actual cool stuff happens before the battle. Agrippa laid on the moves to force the fight and then after that
Cleopatra and Mark Antony
decided that leaving and losing was better than being captured and probably killed because
honestly fair, so they broke the blockade and bailed. After the battle, everyone just went home.
Octavian went back to Rome to tidy up the state and deal with the bread famine and
Antony and Cleopatra went back to Egypt army-less but alive. The next year Octavian came to a defenseless
Alexandria. Sources are all over the place
But the general gist is Antony killed himself
Octavian tried to get Cleopatra to come to Rome to be a fixture in Octavian's triple triumph and
Cleopatra pulled a Dido by giving Rome the finger through a gratuitous suicide. Which, good for her, I think?
Girl power?
I'll have more to say about Cleopatra soon
but for now, she just got the really short end of the Civil War stick
In any case now that our boy
Octavian had cleaned up at Actium, annexed the Duat out of Egypt, and did who knows what with the bodies of Antonius and
Cleopatra the totally not a civil war civil war was won and Rome was finally at peace
Yay
given the straight century of world-spanning
Civil war that Rome had just gone through it should be no surprise that people were really glad about this in the years that followed
Octavian consolidated power under the guise of restoring the Republic even though most people knew and
honestly didn't care because they were either glad the civil wars were over in general or were among the two-thirds of the Senate that
Octavian himself installed also to mark his new position. He changed his name to Augustus meaning the increased one
He almost changed it to Romulus, and then he decided to not give historians everywhere a giant headache. So, thank you again
And that's the near immediate collapse of the triumvirate and the final war of the Roman Republic.
Bottom line is that while Mark Antony was a very dangerous adversary who could have won had he paid more attention to his wits instead of his
girlfriends, um
let's say eyes,
Octavian had the board tilted in his favor from day one
Not only was Octavian a superior strategist
but he got the most use possible out of his advisors, finding by far the best general of the day and badass extraordinaire Marcus
Agrippa, and winning a crucial propaganda war thanks to his friends Maecenas, Rome's biggest patron of poetry in the arts.
Octavian's victory goes to show that clever strategy on and off the battlefield
Means more than sheer numbers. Stick around for next time as we see what the reign of Augustus
Ended up actually looking like and how on earth he actually went about permanently reshaping Rome as an imperial monarchy.
But before we go, let's take a minute to appreciate the crisp clean shaven features of our boy Augustus, whose mind was
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