School of War - Ep 32: Barry S. Strauss on Actium

Episode Date: June 7, 2022

Barry Strauss, Bryce and Edith M. Bowmar Professor in Humanistic Studies at Cornell University, joins the show to talk about Octavian, Antony, and Cleopatra, and the battle of Actium, the clash that ���made the Roman Empire”. Times  • 02:04 Introduction • 02:36 Events Leading To Actium • 07:45 What Breaks The Second Triumvirate • 13:29 Strategy Is Not Sterile  • 15:04 Antony’s Will, Octavian’s Weapon • 20:24 Caesar’s Inheritance  • 22:42 Audacious Agrippa   • 25:26 Ancient Marines And War In The Mediterranean  • 31:18 Breakout Is Victory • 38:27 Antony In Defeat • 42:16 End Game

The assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BC, rather than defeating the threat to Rome's Republic, of course, merely initiated a bloody final phase of struggle that played out for years across the Mediterranean. This period of war and savage political violence culminated in a final struggle among the Caesarian faction, on one side, Octavian, the future Augustus, and his party in Rome, on the other, Mark Antony, his consort Cleopatra, and all the wealth and mysteries of the East. At stake was not just who would be Rome's first man or woman, but indeed whether Rome's orientation would fundamentally be to the West or to the East. This enormously consequential question, for all of us, really, was settled at a place on the West Coast of Greece called

Actium. It is a prescription for war, this Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infinite. The bloody experience of Vietnam. is to end in a stale. We continue to face a grave situation in Iran. The people who not see these buildings down. We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields and in the streets.

We shall never surrender. I'm Merri McLean. Thanks for joining the School of War. I'm delighted to welcome today. Barry Strauss, the Bryce and Edith M. Bomar Professor in Humanistic Studies at Cornell University. there's an enormously long biography in front of me here, and you'll forgive me if, I mean, there's a lot of just extraordinarily impressive stuff. It doesn't mention sleep, I suppose, on the grass that you don't get much. You are also the Corlis Page Dean Fellow at the Hoover

Institution, series editor of Princeton's Turning Points in Ancient History. You were the chair of history at Cornell. Just importantly, for the purposes of our discussion today, you were most recently the author of The War That Made the Roman Empire, Antony, Cleopatra, and Octavian at Actium. Very, thanks so much for joining the show. Thank you. It's great to be here. So let's zoom out for a bit. We're going to talk today about the Battle of Actium and the subject of your book, obviously. But this is, you know, sort of the climactic moment in the final stage of a long period of civil war that, you know, essentially ends the Roman Republic. So maybe you could

give a bit of a tour for listeners of how things get to this final war, you know, the assassination of Caesar plays a role here, events that are probably familiar in a general way to a lot of our listeners, but it would be interesting to hear you sort of explain how things reach the climax. I'll try to give a quick tour. The Roman Republic is facing civil strife and times war for for a century, really, since 133 BC by the time of the Battle of Actium in 31. And in the final stages, there had first been a civil war between Caesar and at first Pompey the Great and then various others. It's a civil war that lasted from the time Caesar crossed the Rubicon River into Italy in

49 BC to his victory at the Battle of Wanda in Spain in 45. And then Caesar became dictator in perpetuity and thought that he had a base to remake the Roman Republic, but he is, of course, assassinated on the Iads of March, March 15th, and 44 BC, and then All Heck breaks loose fairly shortly after that. The assassins are chased out of room by Caesar's supporters. Caesar's supporters are themselves divided. The two chief camps are the followers of Marcus Antonius, Mark Antony, to us, a Roman noble and one of Caesar's lieutenants.

and a young man who has started out life as Gaius Octavius, Caesar's grand nephew. He's adopted posthumously in Caesar's will, calls himself Gaius Julius Caesar within a month or so after the assassination. Historians tend to call him Octavian for the first part of his career. He and Antony are at odds. They fight each other, and then they turn around

and they make a bargain among thieves, if you will, and they join forces march on Rome and make war on some of their political enemies, including Cicero, who's assassinated on their order, I should say, executed really on their order. Eventually they turn eastward. They face the armies of Brutus and Cassius, the chief survivors among Caesar's assassins,

and they defeat them at two battles at Philippi in the fall of the Air Force. 42. And then Antony and Octavian pretty much divide the Roman world with Octavian taking Italy in the West and Anthony taking the east. You might think that Octavian is a better deal because he's got Italy, which is after all where the capital Rome is and it's the chief recruiting grounds for Roman soldiers. But he's also got a lot of headaches. He's got veterans who he's got to settle on land. and the only way he can get land in Italy is by evicting people already there, so he's going to have a lot of enemies. And he also has to deal with the fact that he doesn't have a navy, and the sea is dominated by the one surviving son of Pompey, a guy named Sextus Pompey, who has his own little empire concentrated in Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, and he can raid the Italian coast.

Meanwhile, in the east, Anthony is ruling by far the wealthiest and most populous. part of the Roman Empire. The East is where the money is, and Antonese got it. He's also got two challenges. One is he's got to organize a series of client states in the East. These are border states that are Roman allies, at least in theory, and he's got to make some order out of the chaos. And two, he has the challenge of picking up the banner that's been dropped by Caesar, the banner of making war on Parthia. Parthia, roughly Persia and the one standing empire in the Mediterranean world that can challenge Rome. If Anthony can pull this off, he will have established a base that will allow him to be the unchallenged leader of the Roman world. And he will be number one in Rome, relegating Octavian in number two position, which is what each of those men want that.

Each of them wants to be number one. If somehow Octavian can build up his base in Italy and the West, then he has the possibility of defeating Antony. But probably in the beginning, it's Anthony's game to lose. And that's where we are in the decade before Acton. I have an embarrassing confession to make, which is for all the period is important. I've read a little bit about it. And for all of those phenomenal portrayals of the period and art and literature, Shakespeare, obviously. But then even, you know, in the 20th century, we have these great movies with Richard.

I cannot for the life of me when we were talking about Anthony and Caesar and the rest of them, get the John Millius, HBO, BBC, Rome series out of my mind's eye. James Purfoy for me is, you say Mark Anthony, and I can't help but picture him. It's a phenomenal series for anyone who's interested. I think it takes seriously a lot of things about the late Republic that ought to be taken serious that the characters, you know, the writers have the characters very invested in religion. and they sort of portray how alien the place would have seen to us. That digression aside, what launches this final phase?

How do Anthony and Octavian fall out for the last time? Sure. I'll answer that. But first, I just have to put in a plug for Marlon Brando as Anthony in the 1953 movie. Of course. That's why it's embarrassing. I mean, in certain respects, it's not the most impressive portrayal, but it's very compelling for something. It's very good.

Yeah. And it's great. I've saved the best for last. Cleopatra, you know, Cleopatra, in some. some sense is the apple of discord. And it's not just because she's sexy, it she is very sexy. It's also because she is a great queen and a great strategist. Egypt is an enormous prize. It is the wealthiest single place in the Roman world. And the Roman senators have jealously prevented anyone Roman from annexing Egypt and thereby making it sort of his client state. That's how Egypt has managed to

hang on to its independence for over a century where Rome has threatened it, also through some very clever maneuvering and diplomacy by Egypt's rulers, especially Cleopatra's father, who did a great job of holding onto his throne. And Cleopatra is such a good strategist. She, in turn, gets two of the leading Romans to be her supporters and her lover. First, Julius Caesar, by whom she claims that she has a son, whom we know as Caesarian, and I think in all likelihood he was Caesar's son, and then Mark Antony, by whom she has three children, Du Bois and a girl. And Cleopatra gives Anthony the economic base and eventually the naval support to build up his stream. So in between, you know, Anthony and Octavian come together in a part several times.

Anthony actually marries Octavian's sister, Octavia. She's widowed and he's a widower at the time. And it looks as if there's going to be a reconciliation. This is kind of like a mafia marriage where you have two warring families and they make a marriage, try to hold them together, but it's not all that sincere. The marriage doesn't last or it's on a rocky road. Anthony had already begun his affair with Cleopatra, which would not have been a deal breaker in and of itself. except that he increasingly needs Cleopatra, Cleopatra's support.

So in terms of strategy, in the West, Octavian does very well against Sextus Pompey. He manages to build a new Navy with the help of his friend and military genius Agrippa, who's both a great general and a great admiral, and they defeat Sextus Pompey. He also manages to settle the veterans he needs to settle in Italy, defeating the opposition to him. and cutting off Anthony's ability to recruit new troops in Italy. Meanwhile, in the East, Anthony does one challenge really well. He manages to build up a series of dependable client states. It's so effective a settlement that it lasts for a century.

But with the other challenge, he fails. He invades the Parthian Empire, or rather he invades their ally, a state called Media Atropatine, roughly what is today northwestern Iran. and he fails and he fails big. It's a big loss and he is forced to engage in a fighting retreat, a heroic retreat, but nonetheless it's a failure and he loses perhaps as much as 25% of his manpower, which is huge to lose that much in a war. He's now more dependent on Cleopatra than ever.

He recoupes, however, he manages to rebuild his army and with Cleopatra's financial and political support, he's coming back. He gets revenge on a Roman client state that he betrayed him, Armenia, and he adds it to the Roman Empire. He begins to build up a fleet with Cleopatra, a pretty impressive fleet, and he is poised to go back and reopen the war against Parthia. It's at that point that Octavian decides to declare war, and we get the war that goes to act in. Politically, it's really interesting when Octavian does are really shrewd, rather than declare war on Antony, which would not have

gone over well in Rome, because it would have been a civil war, and the civil war is supposed to be over. He declares war on Cleopatra. Also kind of phony, because she is a Roman ally, and Anthony is, after all, Rome's representative in the East, but Octavian says that

she is plotting against Rome. And so he calls his supporters to make war on Cleopatra, arguing that she has unmanned Antony, and that poor Anthony, who was once a noble Roman, is now her plaything. I'm struck by your description of Cleopatra as a strategist. And I, you know, reading your book, correct me if I'm wrong here, but it seems clear to me that, you know, an intended audience for the book would be military officers and defense professionals. Today, you want to learn something

who would benefit from a serious analysis of classical history. And it, you know, I think amongst those professionals, when they think of strategy, when we think of strategy, It tends to be in fairly walled off, almost slightly sterile terms. Strategy is something that a military does. Ultimately, it's in deference to politicians, you know, aims, and the two things are meant to sort of interact fairly cleanly. But the way you talk about this sort of shattered world of the first century, BC, shows the way in which politics and war interact extremely fluidly and complicatedly.

These individual players at the top of the struggle have their complex strategies with respect to one another that have often as their consequence the movement of armies in a way that is just bewilderingly complex and not sterile at all. No, that's a great point. Thanks. And yes, I do hope that defense professionals will read the book and benefit from it. And most of the male players in this period had some military experience. They were often commanders in their own right. For women, that was that was rare, but Cleopatra is the monarch. She is the ruler of Egypt and she has to be a strategy. She wants to survive. She doesn't have to be a warrior, though indeed she does lead the fleet. She does lead

the Egyptian fleet at Actium. She is there and she refuses to leave even though some of Antony supporters want her to leave. And I completely agree with you that there is no sterile separation between strategy and politics. They go together. Of course, politics can corrupt strategy. We won't want that to happen. But a realistic strategy has to take politics into account, don't you think? Of course.

Of course. So as Octavian gets things going here, there's this question of Antony's will. Talk to us a bit about that and about the vision of, you know, Eastern decadence that Octavian says Anthony's, you know, success with. threatened room with. Right. Yeah. So as so often in wars, there's there's a kinetic element, but there's also a communications element, a propaganda element, and both sides are using propaganda. We know more about Octavian's propaganda because he writes the history books. We don't get Antony and Cleopatra's version very clearly. Octavian, one of Antony's, one of Anthony's

lieutenants defects to Octavian, and he whispers in his ear that Anthony has a will with the Vestal virgins in Rome. And Octavian violates the law, he breaks the law by helping himself to this will, and he claims to read the contents of the will in the Senate. According to Octavian's version, the will kind of gives away the Roman store in the east to Antony and Cognopatra's sons. It recognizes Caesarian, excuse me, it recognizes Caesarian as, and it recognizes Cesarian as, and, as Caesar's son and legitimate heir, which is a big problem for Octavian, who calls himself Gaius Julius Caesar, the one and only son of Julius Caesar. And it claims that Antony wants to be buried next to Cleopatra in Alexandria, even if he

dies in Rome. He wants his body to be sent, or his bones to be sent to Alexandria. In other words, the version of the will that Octavian claims to have found makes it look because if Antony is really fighting for Egypt and not for Rome. And as you can tell from the way I'm telling the story, I don't trust what Octavian says is written in the will. Even if it is, I mean, just for purposes of conversation, even though there were some truth to it,

I mean, it's complicated, isn't it? Because on the one hand, you have this sort of portrayal of East, you know, the Roman Republic is going to descend into, you know, Eastern petty, hereditary, you know, control. But at the same time, as you point out, what's so offensive or among what is so offensive about the settlement in Antony's will is the question of succession to Caesar in the fact that Octavian is some, which is hardly a very Roman Republican kind of vision of how power ought to flow. No. And also, well, you're absolutely right. There's a bit of this hypocrisy in Octavian's position. While all this is going on, Octavian is building his dynastic tomb outside the walls of Rome. the mausoleum of Augustus. And this is nothing like Roman republican tomb. If anything, it recalls

the grandiosity of a pyramid in Egypt. It's clear that Octavian has accepted Caesar's vision that one family will dominate Rome. It will be the family of the Julie Kaiser is. And he is the representative of that. And that drives a lot of people crazy. The Senate does not support Octavian. Contrary to the image he wants to create. It does not support Octavian. We know that from a number of things. First of all, something like a third of the Senate flees Rome after this. They defect to Anthony. And secondly, when the war actually begins, an Octavian leaves Italy to cross the Adriatic and go to Greece to fight Antio and Cleopatra. He brings all the senators with him. That's not normal behavior in Rome. It means he doesn't trust them to leave them in his rear. So talk for a minute, if you

about the military geography of the Mediterranean. I guess we should zoom in on the west coast of Greece as a part of that. But if you're sitting in Rome or, for that matter, in Alexandria at the start of this, what are the physical challenges you're going to undertake if you're going to defeat the other guy? So occupying the west coast of Greece made good sense for Anthony and Cleopatra. So the west coast of Greece is the eastern side of the Adriatic and the Ionian Sea. it is the side with good harbors and favorable winds. It's the side you need for navigation.

The Italian side is distinctly unfavorable. So by taking this position, Anthony and Cleopatra are cutting Octavian off from the east and they're in effect challenging his control of Italy. But their strategy is to wait there, to wait for Octavian to attack and to defeat him. Personally, I think that was a mistake. I think they should have invaded Italy, which was a risky and audacious thing to do. It's what Caesar would have done. Caesar is Mr. Audacity.

He's Mr. Strategic Risk. He doesn't sit and wait for things to happen. He always takes the initiative. By waiting on the west coast of Greece, Antony and Claypatrick, they have a strong opposition, but they're seating the initiative to the enemy. And the question is, can Occascus? Octavian and Agrippa take advantage of this opportunity that they've been given. Why do you think Antony, and this sort of speaks to a broader question about just Antony

as a leader and commander, Anthony spends, what, decades, a long time as, you know, a mentee and ultimately second in command of sorts to Caesar. How is it that he does not inherit from that, you know, the same style of warfare? Yeah, great question. Well, for one thing, to be, to be fair to Anthony, it's not an easy thing to invade Italy. It's a difficult thing to invade Italy. You'd have to attack. You'd have to take a Walt City, either probably Brindesian but also possibly Tarentum.

And he knows them pretty well. He's fought there. So he knows it's not going to be easy. But I think there are two other factors. One is, you know, the guy's in his 50s now, and he's really suffered a big defeat in Parthia. And that might make him spear shy, gun shy, spear shy.

I always say, it might make him think twice about wanting to take such a big risk. And the other factor is Cleopatra. And that's a double issue. For one thing, it's from the term party view of communications, it's not a good position to invade Italy with the Queen of Egypt. That plays into Octavian's propaganda. And for another thing, Cleopatra, who does get a big vote, may not want to do it. because she's putting all her eggs in the basket of going west and leaving the road to Egypt open.

If they fell in Italy, then she's got no way. She's got no plan B. She's got her fleet with her. So she may play a role in this as well. As you can see, I'm speculating. Do you think there's a tension between Cleopatra's interests and Antoni's interests in a way that harms the prosecution of the war? I think it's quite possible, yes. I mean, one of the things that's striking is the leadership team on the two sides.

So on Octavian side, there's really no gap between him and Agrippa. This is one of the most successful one, two partnerships in history. Whereas on Anthony's side, yeah, I mean, he's got, he's running a coalition. He's running coalition warfare. Octavian basically isn't. So the good thing about coalition warfare, he's got a lot of allies. The bad thing is he's got a lot of allies and they have a say. And Cleopatra is the most important ally.

And she has the biggest say. And yeah, there is some light between the two of them. Yeah. Okay. So they settle on a defensive strategy. There they are in Greece. Yeah. Looking across the Adriatic at Italy.

What does Octavian in Agrippa decide to do? They decide to take a risk. They decide to take a big risk. And that is to divide their fleet and to take a portion of it. We don't know how much of it, but I think a fairly big risk. portion of it, cross the Ionian Sea at the beginning of the sailing season in March when conditions are still a little iffy, sailing conditions still little iffy, and go and attack Anthony's supply lines. They engage in a classic indirect approach, and they're attacking

Anthony's strategy, you might say, rather than his army. And they go for the most important of Anthony's supply base is a place called methoni, which is all the way, the way, in the southwest corner of the Peloponnesus. So it's far south of Actium and it's a longer distance from Italy. So it's going to take them a couple of days to get there, kind of a risk to do that. And they carry it out brilliantly. It's a base that's defended by someone who I'm not sure we'd say is in the A team, a man named Bogood, a very interesting guy. He is the deposed king of Mauritania, roughly Morocco. He is a war, so he's a North African.

He had fought for Caesar, for Julia Caesar in Spain, and played an important role as a cavalry commander in the final battle of the Civil War there. Now his charge is to defend this fortified supply base. He probably doesn't have many of any Roman legionaries. He's going to have light-armed troops. We don't know how many ships he has. And here comes Agrippa, you know, come and roaring at him. with a small armada, with Roman legionaries, with his best troops.

And Agrippa pulls off what's a very difficult thing to do, an amphibious attack, attack from the sea. Frustratingly, we don't have any details of exactly how he pulls it off. And the book, I try to speculate on how he might have done it, because we do hear a bit about these amphibious attacks in other sources on ancient warfare. But it's tough.

It's a tough thing to do. And it's a huge feather in his cap that he pulls it off. He takes the place and he kills, he kills Bobbi's. good. The sources don't provide details, but they make it sound as he singles him out and kills him, which is a signal to other supporters of Antony. And once Agrippa takes the base, he is not dislodged from it. And he uses it to attack Antio and Cleopatra's supply ship. So their army in Greece cannot be fed by Greece because Greece is a poor country. The supplies have to come on a long

chain that stretches all the way back to Egypt. It's about a thousand miles. And they need, need to have these various supply bases along the way. And Mithoni is the most important of those bases. It's a great harbor. Excellent place. The Venetians later on make it one of their most important bases in the Mediterranean. Was there any kind of, this is a selfish question in a way, but as a Marine, I'm interested, was there any concept of dedicated naval infantry at the time?

I'm just, I'm just curious to know how the integration between, you know, the army and the Navy actually worked and what must have been. As you paint the picture, it's very clear that we need to think about the Mediterranean and the terrain there in a different way than we would in the 20th or 21st centuries because of the role of wind and the way in which you have to move and where you have to move. So this must have been a constant challenge fighting from and on ships. Yes, absolutely constant challenge. I think there must have been people who specialized on fighting on ships. I have to say must have been. There are, of course, no military academies in the ancient world.

And you learn from experience and the generals in a place like Rome are often chosen for political reasons. And you're lucky if they're good. There was one Roman general of whom he said, for instance, he was a better dancer than he was a commander. And I think there's a lot of that going on. But Agrippa really has a lot of experience. And in his war against Sextus Pompey, he had actually carried an amphibious operations there as well. So by the time he is attacking Methoni, so six months before Actium. He's got some experience. He knows what to do. But all these guys, they really depend on the pros, on the centurians, and on the naval professionals. I know about the winds, to know about the seas. They know how to take soundings where they are from birds. And there are all

sorts of things, all sorts of information we get about professionals who know this. And even in the Mediterranean today, if you go to a place like Italy or Greece, I'm always amazed by how many words for the different winds there are that are in common usage that the average person knows what a zephyr is or where we in america we just wouldn't know yeah so there's a supply crunch yeah anthony and cleopatra's troops start to get a little hungry yeah how do things ultimately coalesce at actium how do we how does the stage get set there yeah so it's almost as if anthony can do no right and octavian can do no wrong i mean he surely afterwards follows agrippa across the Ionian Sea and he sets up a base. So Actium itself is on a peninsula

south of the opening to the Gulf of Ambracia, which is sort of like an inland lake, an excellent place to have a harbor a fleet, and that's where Anthony and Cleopatra put their fleet. Octavian camp land there, so he goes to the northern side of this opening, and he sets his headquarters in the hills about five miles away. He doesn't have as good a harbor as Anthony. has and he doesn't have, so he doesn't have to go to harbor, but he is on the high ground, which is advantageous. Also, the longer they're there, the more mosquitoes become a problem, the more malaria becomes a problem. And because he's got the high ground, Octavian doesn't have to worry about that so much. Anthony crosses over the entrance to the Gulf and he attacks

Octavian's camp. He's trying to get Octavian to come out and fight. That's the strategy. that won the Battle of Philippi, where Antony and Octavian had, they were in the position of Octavian at Actium. They attack Cassius and Brutus are defending. Cassius and Brutus have lots of supplies. Anthony and Octavian there are shirt of supplies. The difference here, though, is that Agrippa keeps defeating squadrons of Antony's fleet, and he's cutting off all the supplies that are coming in. so that eventually, after a few months have passed, Anthony and Cleopatra have no choice but to realize that they have been cut off, that Octavian and Agrippa have won the chess match, and they've got to get out of actium. This is a real problem because they've got an army and a navy. They could march overland, but marching overland is rarely your first choice in the ancient world when you can go by sea. Overland travel is. harder, it's more difficult, it's slower, it's more dangerous. The sea's not entirely friendly, but all things considered, it's safer. And particularly an issue for them, because Cleopatra

has her treasury with her. And this is the greatest treasury in the Mediterranean world you need it if you want to pay troops. And Octavian really wants this treasury. He wants to get it. And then and Cleopatra want to escape with it. But they've got to break out of which is not necessarily going to be an easy thing. They've got to fight a breakout battle in short, although they leap open the possibility of actually fighting a real battle, because in spite of all the pressure that Octavian and Agrippa have put on them, Anthony and Cleopatra have a pretty good fleet.

This fleet was absolutely state of the art. It had the best technology of warships in this period. It had reinforced prows, which allowed them to have the upper hand and prowess. Waterprow ramming. They also had a series of very big ships, the so-called tens, which they could have used to invade Italy had they chosen to do that because they could have broken through harbor defenses. So if a battle is going to happen, Octavian and Agrippa are now in the stronger position, but it's not an absolute slam dunk. Octavian and Agrippa are still going to have to play the game really well when the battle happens. And so we come to.

the Battle Act in itself. And if the objective is breakout for Antony and Cleopatra, in the best case scenario, what do they actually hope to break out with? You know, they realistically expect to get out with the bulk of their army and Navy, plus, of course, the Treasury and the two of them, which presumably are at the top of any list of priorities. Yeah. Or, you know, what realistically do they expect to achieve here?

Good question. So they can't realistically expect to get out with their army. They've lost the army. realistically, how many of their ships they can break out with? Well, first of all, before the battle, they burn some of their ships because they don't have the manpower to man those ships anymore. I should point out that quite a few of Anthony and Cleopatra's allies have defected to Octavian while the battle goes on because the balance is clearly swinging in their direction.

If you look at break-out battles in history, I don't think, I think it's very rare that you could break out with a majority of your ships. So they've got 230 ships going into the battle. Maybe if they think if they're lucky, they can break out with half of them. So 115 ships, that would be a very good day for them and themselves and the treasure. Anthony has to make a decision. As a Roman, he really should go down with a ship. He should go fighting, keep on fighting with his men.

But as someone who wants to live again to fight another day, he's going to leave, which is really going to hurt him. So, yeah, realistically, I don't think they can possibly expect to leave with most of their ships. So the morning of the battle, this is early September 31, correct? Yeah, September 2nd. In the book, you have this sort of vivid portrayal of Antony floating around his various ships, exhorting his troops. What does he have to tell them as he goes ship to ship? Well, he has to tell them that, you know, we've got the best technology.

we have the we have the best ships and you know he might remind them that cleopatra is a goddess that may or may not play play very well with them and he's a god he is he is dionysus on earth and for the ancient dionysus is not just the god of of wine but he's also the god who conquered Asia he can point out to them his long string of victories and how much they they they can win if he If they win the battle, they still have a chance to defeat Octavian and Agrippa, even though things haven't gone entirely their way. But everything depends on this day. And if they can somehow pull off a victory this day, then the war can still be won.

I think that's what I would say if I were Anthony. Well, how's it, how, how, how's it go? Talk us, talk us. We've arrived at the main event. Talk us. Yeah, it does through the morning. So, you know, Anthony and knows. that he's got to wait for a favorable win.

So what he and Cleopatra have done is they've put their sails on their ships, their sails in their mass, which is normally not what you do in a battle. You want to have your ships light and lean so they can go fast and ram. These are heavier ships. They're harder to row. It's going to take more effort to row these ships. But what he wants to do, he lines his fleet up about three and a half miles along the shore,

maybe half mile out from the shore. And he's hoping that the end. enemy fleet will come close enough that it's not a long distance for them to ram. But unfortunately for him, Octavian and Agrippa are skilled enough and experienced enough that they don't give them in battle they want. They are staying about a mile, a nautical mile away from Antony's fleet. So when the battle actually begins, Anthony's men have to row a long way. They've got these heavy ships with these mass and these sails.

And their effort peters out. It doesn't actually, they're not able. able to do serious ramming of the enemy. Two things, a couple of things. First of all, it's worth pointing out that Octavian didn't want to fight a battle. Octavian wanted to let the enemy go and for them to chase them away. And Agrippa is the one who says, you know, pal, we actually have to fight. And it's greatly to Octavian's credit that he lets the story be told. It tells us one of the reasons for his success is that he's the number one who knows how to listen today is number two. But Agrippas says we're going to fight this battle. We're going to make it

hard for them to attack us. Anthony's waiting for the wind to pick up in the afternoon because in the afternoon at Actium, the wind starts blowing in from the northwest. And that is perfect if you want to sail to the south and escape. Now, he's got his ships in a line as you would for an ancient battle, but he holds 60 ships in reserve. That's Cleopatra and her Egyptian ships. And the plan seems to be that unless they get lucky and are able to break up the enemy's line, that when the wind reaches a certain point in the afternoon, they're going to turn south and flee. So the version that we get in the hostile ancient sources, and that's repeated in Shakespeare, is that Cleopatra loses her nerve.

She betrays Antony and, you know, just when the going battle starts going, she turns, tail, and flees, leaving her lover in the lurch, and all he can, do is turn, lead his flagship, and go onto her ship and join her. I don't think that's the plan at all. I think the plan is unless they get very lucky and defeat the enemy when the wind starts picking up, Cleopatra will lead the retreat, and then Anthony will join her, taking as many of his ships as with him as he can. He is counting on the fact that the Romans are going to be nonplussed by Cleopatra's move or wrong-footed, if you will, because they don't expect. They don't expect it from the Egyptian fleet and they don't expect it from a woman.

I think when they see it happen, they just kind of go, huh? And they think she gets away with it. She's someone who has succeeded in life and partly by being underestimated and flying below the radar. And this is one of her supreme examples of it. So she sails out with yeah, with how many ships? 60 ships. 60 ships.

Yeah. And then Anthony walk us, walk us through what happens next. So Anthony gets. the signal and he is on his flagship, which is presumably one of the big ships. And he transfers to a smaller ship and joins Cleopatra on her flagship. And then with a small number of his ships, maybe a dozen, we really don't know he leaves the battle. He's chased by a small contingent of the enemy ships, but they really can't catch him because his ships have their sails up. And they They're catching the wind.

The other ships have to row. So if we, if we understand the objectives of the battle to be saving Anthony Cleopatra and the treasury. Yeah. Well, then, then it was a success. But, but, I mean, obviously they don't have much time left. Why are they unable to reconstitute, you know, an effective fighting force to, you know, survive in the East? Great question. I think there are, there are a couple of things.

Well, first of all, the troops that they have in the East defect. You know, Anthony still has some legions in the East, but they feel that after this, the game is up, and they defect to the other side. So what Anthony and Cleopatra are thinking of at this point is escape. Cleopatra tries to build a new fleet to take her to, of all places, India. Egypt has trade relations with India. and she thinks I'm not going to last in Egypt because Octavian's going to come and get me,

so I will go to India. But a rival power in the east, the Nabatian Arabs, roughly Jordan nowadays, they burn the fleet. They want to ingratiate themselves with Octavian, and they don't, they have, they've quarreled with Cleopatra. So that option is out. Another option is to go to Spain and fight from there. but they never do that. It's probably just too difficult logistically to get there. There's also the possibility.

There are a couple of aces in the hole that they have. For one thing, so the good news for Octavian is that he inherits Anthony's army, about 50,000 men in Greece. The bad news is he's now got to pay them. And shortly after the Battle of Actium, his troops in Italy mutiny, Anthony's gone to the east. He's gone to the Greek island of Samos. to make that as his base in the east.

And in the winter of 30 BC, so let's say January of 30 BC, the guy's got to turn around and go to Italy and put down this mutiny. If I didn't know better, I would say, I'd like to believe that Cleopatra and her diplomats have a hand in stirring up this mutiny. It's the kind of thing I see her doing. And interestingly enough, you know, sailing in the winter in the Mediterranean antiquity in particular is no picnic. Octavians almost killed. His ships run into a storm and the guy almost dies. Now imagine if he had died. That would have been a different story because Cleopatra says,

Hello, I've got Julius Caesar's son here. Would you like him in Rome? But it doesn't work out. He actually survives. He goes to Italy. He's in such a Russian Italy that he does not go to Rome. He lands at Brindisium. He's in the South.

He deals with the mutiny. He doesn't go to Rome. He can't afford to. He's got to turn back to the East, which tells me that Anthony and Cleopatra still have some friends in the East. probably not too many. After that, it's going to be tough for Anthony and Conapachia to actually pull off some sort of a, some sort of a victory. And it's clear that is, so Anthony gets King Herod in Judea on his side. Herod is quite the survivor. And excuse me, Anthony, pardon me, Octavian

gets Herod on his side. And now there had been a relationship between Antony and Herod before. Yes, Anthony and Herod been a testament to Herod's skill. Yes, Anthony had saved Herod's throne for him. Anthony had been involved in fighting in Judea. And it's, yes, testimony to Herod's skill, or, if you will, to his unreliability, unfaithfulness that he now becomes the greatest friend of Augustus. And in fact, Octavian becomes Augustus and his descendants become great buddies of the dynasty. That's a later story.

Any Octavian marches on Egypt. Egypt's eminently defensible. You can't invade Egypt by land. if the fortresses on either side are held. And both of those fortresses betray Anthony and Cleopatra. The one in the East, maybe because Cleopatra tells them to betray, let Octavian pass through. It really looks like in the end game that Cleopatra has decided to ditch Anthony. We have to remember that Cleopatra is a dynast.

She's the Atolemy. She cares about her dynasty and she has four children and she's a mother. And she, you know, her goal, ultimate goal is not safe. antony, but saving her dynasty. She hopes to somehow make a deal with Octavian and she is willing to sacrifice Anthony and she's even willing to sacrifice herself if only her children can survive. Yeah. Unfortunately, the survival of her children is a threat to Octavian's control of Rome. It's strange to think that she would think that was a realistic possibility. I'm sorry, it is a realistic possibility. Caesarian, no. Cesarian, no.

No, she knows that's not going to happen. And she sends Caesarean South to make his way to India. But he's betrayed. His tutor, his pedagogue, convinces him to go back to Alexander, which is a bad move. Because, yes, he is a threat to Caesar. And as a threat to Octavian is, Octavian's advisor says, too many Caesar's is a bad thing. And he has killed. But the other three children survive.

They're brought to Rome. The boys never make it to adulthood, although they're raised on the Palatine by Octavian's sister and Anthony's former wife, Octavia. The daughter is married off to the king of Mauritania, and she creates a new court in what's now Algeria. It's a glittering court. It's clearly the answer to Alexandria. She is her mother's daughter, and she does really well. A couple of big picture questions for you, which may have. obvious answers, but they have to me. I suppose I'm a bit confused by why Anthony and Cleopatra

would adopt what is a defensive strategy, but then choose to mount it, you know, essentially on the frontier with the western part of, you know, what is becoming the empire, where they are then exposed, where they have long supply lines. If you're going to be defensive, why not just be defensive enforce Octavian and Agrippa to come east where they will face some of the same logistical problem? They may be good at answers to that, but it seems odd to me. I don't think there's such, I mean, it's a great question. And I think that at the end of the day, we have to give Anthony an F for as a general. I mean, he had a lot going for him.

I think actually he should have won this war. I think this is a war that he could have won. And I have no doubt that if Caesar had been running the show, he would have won this war, nor he had a really good chance of winning the war. But yeah, it's strategically incoherent. if you're going to go to the West, the thing that you want to do is adopt an aggressive strategy, in my opinion, and invade Italy. Staying in the East on the defense, that might have been a better defensive strategy.

There's only one, a couple of problems with that, though. For one thing, by doing it, the message that they're giving and the reality that they're accepting is they're going to lose everything to the West of that. And Greece will now belong to Octavian and Agrippa. And then they will go eastward. and every place they go is going to join them. So it's not going to be a strong position for Anthony and Cleopatra to be in. They would have had surrendered a lot.

And the momentum would be on the side of the enemy. So in a way, even if they want to have a defensive strategy, I think they do have to go to the West, but I do think they would have been better off than a offensive strategy. One more big picture question for you. Yeah. You know, obviously considering the way things worked out, considering that the winners have a bigger influence on

historical records than the losers. You know, there's a sort of easy takeaway from all of this that's, even though, you know, Rome becomes an empire, you know, Octavian, as you know, skillfully maintain some of the Republican norms and forms, but the reality is now imperial. Nevertheless, there's something, speaking in broad stereotypes, distinctively Western about it, and had Antony and Cleopatra triumphed, you know, as, you know, Octavian makes great hay out of at the start of this last phase of the war. it would have been something distinctively eastern about Rome and thus about, you know, the future of the

west, the future of Europe, the future which we live now, would have been, you know, a very different world. That anyway, it seems like the sort of easy takeaway based on the sources or just a sort of superficial understanding of the time. And so my question for you is, you know, how much is there of truth to that and how much of it is, is fantasy? I think there's a lot of truth to it, actually. I think if Anthony and Cleopatra had won, the center of gravity of the Roman Empire would have moved eastward. I mean, moving east is always a temptation for the Romans. As I said, the east is where the money is, the people, and the culture. What we call the Roman Empire was always really a Greco-Roman empire.

And the Romans were greatly influenced by Greek culture. And as the centuries progress, it becomes more of a Greco-Roman empire. If Anthony and Cleopatra had won, Alexandria would have been, in effect a second capital. It would have been what Constantinople becomes centuries later. I think what we would have seen is that Rome would have been a lot more like the Byzantine Empire, much more Eastern. Whatever religion develop, let's say Christianity develops, I think, rather than Western Christianity, would have seen Eastern Christianity. We've seen Orthodox Christianity. If Anthony and Cleopatra had won, the first Ina Montanthony's agenda would have been war with Parthia.

And the Romans would have been much less interested in Germany and Britain or finishing the job of conquering Spain or conquering Switzerland, none of which they had done yet. It would have been the East. And you would have seen the Romans saying, we want to get Mesopotamia, Iraq. And they might well have done it. So it would have been a very different world, an eastern looking world, a Byzantine world, to some extent the world of the Muslim empires. I think Rome would have gone in that direction. very Strauss author of The War That Made the Roman Empire. I've learned a lot from this conversation.

It was fascinating. I think folks with an interest in war, perhaps a professional interest, would learn a lot about the messy interactions of war on politics. From reading your book, thank you so much for joining. Thank you. It's been a pleasure. This is a nebulous media production. Find us wherever you get your podcasts.