Losers and winners

There is more to this story of the war between Octavian and Antony than meets the eye. What survives is the self-confident, self-justifying version written by the winners, Octavian and his friends. But the feasibility of suicide by snake bite is only one aspect of the history of this period that should raise suspicions. There is also a question mark over quite how extravagantly immoral, or anti-Roman, the lifestyle of Cleopatra and Antony really was. The accounts that have come down to us are not complete invention. One of the sources of Plutarch’s biography of Mark Antony, written 150 years after Antony’s death and full of some of the most lurid anecdotes of his life of luxury, was a descendant of a man who worked in Cleopatra’s kitchens – and may well have preserved a view of the culinary style of her court from below stairs. But it is absolutely clear that, both at the time and even more so in retrospect, Augustus (as he was soon known) exploited the idea of a clash between his own deep-rooted, Roman, Western traditions and the ‘oriental’ excess that Antony and Cleopatra represented. In the war of words, and in later justifications of Augustus’ rise to power, it became a struggle between the virtues of Rome and the dangers and decadence of the East.

The luxury of Cleopatra’s court was wildly exaggerated, and relatively innocent occasions in Alexandria were twisted out of all recognition. However Antony chose to celebrate his Armenian victory in Alexandria, for example, there is no evidence except Roman criticisms to suggest that it was anything resembling a Roman triumph (the scant descriptions that survive suggest that it was more likely based on some ritual of the god Dionysus). And those incriminating quotations from Antony’s will would certainly have been a prejudicial selection, even if not outright invention.

The Battle of Actium too played a key role in later representations. It was made out to be a much more impressive encounter than it really was, and built up to be the founding moment of the Augustan regime, which is still usually said to have begun in 31 BCE; one later historian went so far as to suggest that ‘the second of September’, the exact date of the encounter, is one of the few Roman dates worth remembering. A new town called Nicopolis (‘Victoryville’) was built near the battle site, as well as a vast monument overlooking the sea, decorated with rams from the captured ships and a frieze depicting the triumphal procession of 29 BCE. Rome was also filled with reminders of it, on everything from monumental sculpture to precious cameos (see plate 19), and many ordinary soldiers who had fought on the winning side proudly gave themselves the extra name Actiacus, or ‘Actium-man’. What is more, in the Roman imagination the battle was almost instantly turned into a clash between solid, disciplined Roman troops and wild hordes of orientals. Despite the fact that Antony had the staunch support of several hundred senators, all the emphasis was on the exotic rabble, with – as Virgil put it – ‘their barbarian wealth and weird weapons’, and Cleopatra issuing commands by shaking an Egyptian rattle.

Cleopatra was a crucial element in this whole picture. Whether or not she, like Fulvia, really played the leading part in the military command, as ancient writers claimed, is debatable. But she was a useful target. By focusing on her rather than on Antony, Octavian could present the war as one fought against a foreign rather than a Roman enemy – and led by a commander not only dangerous, regal and seductive but also unnatural, in Roman terms, in undertaking the male responsibilities of warfare and command. Antony might even seem to be her victim, enticed from the proper path of Roman duty by a foreign queen. When Virgil in his Aeneid, written just a few years after Octavian’s victory, imagines Queen Dido ‘burning with love’ in her African kingdom of Carthage and attempting to seduce Aeneas from his destiny of founding Rome, there is more than a faint echo of Cleopatra.

59. One fragment of the newly discovered victory monument at the site of the Battle of Actium shows Octavian’s triumphal chariot at his procession of 29 BCE. Two children, seen beneath Octavian’s arm, share the ride. They are most likely his own daughter Julia and Drusus, the son of his wife, Livia, by an earlier marriage, or possibly the children of Cleopatra and Mark Antony.

60. The tombstone of Marcus Billienus who served in the eleventh legion (‘legione XI’) in the Battle of Actium and took the name Actiacus (‘Actiumman’) to celebrate his own part in the victory. Although the bottom of the stone is missing, what does survive, combined with the find-spot, suggests that he ended up a local councillor (decurio) in a settlement of veterans in North Italy.

So is it possible to reconstruct an alternative version of the story? In detail, it is not. The problem is that in this case the victor’s perspective is so dominating that it is easier to be suspicious of the standard line than to replace it. There are, however, a few hints of different perspectives. It is not difficult to see what the image of Octavian would have been if Antony had won at Actium: a sadistic young thug with a dangerous tendency to self-aggrandisement. In fact, some of the worst anecdotes about his youth may go back to Antony’s negative propaganda, including the story of the fancy-dress banquet where Octavian impersonated the god Apollo; his biographer Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus (just ‘Suetonius’ from now on) explicitly states that this combination of sacrilege and extravagance was one of the accusations that Antony levelled at him.

Some people at the time were fatalistic, or realistic, enough to think that it would not make much difference whichever of them won. A curious anecdote about some talking ravens amusingly sums up that idea. Octavian, so the story goes, was returning to Rome after the Battle of Actium when he was met by an ordinary working man who had trained a pet raven to say, ‘Greetings, Caesar, our victorious commander’. He was so impressed with the trick that he gave the man a substantial cash reward. But it turned out that the trainer had a partner, who was not given his share of the money and to make his point went to Octavian and suggested that the man should be asked to produce his other raven. The pair of chancers had been sensibly hedging their bets. When this second bird was brought out, it squeaked, ‘Greetings, Antony, our victorious commander’. Happily, Octavian saw the funny side and simply insisted that the first man share the reward with his partner.

Part of the point of this story was to demonstrate Octavian’s human touch and his generous attitude towards a couple of harmless tricksters. But there was a political message too. The pair of identikit birds, with their almost identikit slogans, is meant to hint that there was much less to choose between Octavian and his rival than the usual partisan story suggests. The victory of one rather than the other required no more adjustment than swapping one talking bird for another.