Military history

XVIII

PHILIPPI AND ACTIUM

Philippi, the modern Filippoi, was probably already several hundred years old when King Philip II of Macedon fortified the town in 356 B.C. to protect neighboring gold mines. The town lay about eight miles from the port of Neapolis, present-day Kavala, where Brutus and Cassius established their supply base in 43 B.C. The two renegade generals built separate camps for their legions two miles west of Philippi township, each on a hill about a mile apart. They had chosen their positions so they could straddle the Egnatian Way, the military highway from Thessalonika in the east to Durrës on the Albanian coast in the west, with their positions partly protected by marshland. Once the camps were completed, they built fortifications from hill to hill that linked the two. And there they waited for the triumvirs and their armies.

In the midsummer of 42 B.C., Antony and Octavian sent an advance force of eight legions across the Adriatic from Italy. Led by Generals Lucius Decidius Saxa and Gaius Norbanus Flaccus, this force skirted around Philippi and occupied the passes east of Brutus and Cassius, cutting them off from reinforcement and overland supply by their supporters in the East. Now, in the last days of summer, Antony and young Octavian chanced their arms against their opponents’ powerful fleet of 240 warships, and, driven by strong winds, successfully brought a second convoy to Greece’s shores and landed a further 20 legions.

Octavian, who would turn twenty-one on September 23, was frequently unwell in his youth, and during the voyage to Greece he fell seriously ill. So, leaving the feverish young man at Epidamnus to recover, Antony took control of their joint forces, including the 10th Legion, and advanced into Macedonia to confront their enemies. Finding the town of Amphipolis occupied by friendly local forces, Antony left one legion there with his heavy baggage, then continued to advance toward Philippi.

In mid-September, Antony came marching up to Philippi, and, to the surprise of his opponents, built a camp on unfavorable ground on the dusty plain not far from their position. The ailing Octavian joined his army ten days later, arriving on a litter, too weak to walk. In the meantime, the two armies had begun facing off, lining up daily to confront each other across the plain. Each day, both sides formed up nineteen legions and twenty thousand cavalry in battle order. Many of the legions confronting each other on the plain at Philippi had until recently fought on the same side. For Antony and Octavian, legions including the 4th, 5th, 7th, and 10th faced legions such as the 27th, 28th, 36th, and 37th fighting for Brutus and Cassius.

Brutus and Cassius were reluctant to join battle, hoping instead that their opponents would run out of supplies, so they kept their troops on higher ground and refused to let them come down onto the plain. For ten days this went on, and all the while Antony had a detachment secretly building a path through the tall reeds of the marsh toward Cassius’s fortifications.

Once the path was complete, Antony sent a unit along it on a commando raid that seized several opposition outposts, to the surprise of Brutus and Cassius. To counter and outflank this pathway they started building a line of entrenchments. Then, one day in early October, close to noon, as their troops were on the verge of cutting off the commando force with their creeping trench line, Antony unexpectedly led his legions forward in a charge at the defenses below the hill occupied by Cassius’s camp. Antony not only surprised the opposition; he also surprised Octavian’s legions, which were lined up in battle order in front of their camp at the time. They stood and gaped as their comrades of Antony’s nine legions charged the enemy.

Like Caesar, Antony would have valued his Spanish legionaries above all others. Almost certainly, Antony followed Caesar’s practice and put the 10th Legion on his right wing this day. The unit charging forward on the extreme left of Antony’s line was the Spanish 4th Legion, which had been given back to him by Octavian after the formation of the Triumvirate. Some of the 4th Legion’s men were former Pompeian legionaries who’d signed on for a new enlistment under Caesar after the legion’s defeat at Thapsus. Most were new recruits raised in Spain since 45 B.C.

In giving the left to the 4th Legion, Antony was paying it a high compliment. The legions on an army’s extreme wings were always considered its best. Appian was to describe the 4th Legion as being of the highest quality at this time, ironically in tribute to the unit’s performance against Antony in the Modena battles the previous year.

Brutus was preparing for battle when the unexpected charge came on his right. He’d placed the legion he considered his best on his right wing—we don’t know its identity—under the command of General Marcus Valerius Corvinus Messalla. Surviving the battle and the war, Messalla would later write of this day’s events in his memoirs. Reconciled with Octavian after Philippi, Messalla served under him at Actium, after which he was made a consul. His memoirs, consulted by classical authors including Plutarch, have not come down to us. According to Plutarch, Messalla noted that when Antony’s charge came, Brutus was busy organizing his cavalry and supporting infantry, while at the same time his orderly sergeants were still going about their legions handing out the tesserae, small wax sheets containing Brutus’s hastily revised watchword for the day. Many of Brutus’s men went into action even before the new watchword reached them.

No one could say that Mark Antony was a coward—he’d proven his courage time and again in numerous battles. Equally, he was to show in numerous battles that he was an inept if not appalling tactician. He could be assessed as a poor general served by excellent lieutenants. Now, in leading this unexpected charge, he certainly grabbed the initiative and had the element of surprise on his side. But in taking his line forward against Cassius’s position he exposed his left wing to Brutus’s troops—the men of the 4th Legion had to run past Brutus’s battle line, inviting the opposition to swing in on their rear.

Brutus’s eager troops on his right wing couldn’t believe their luck. Anticipating General Messalla’s orders, his legion launched an attack on the 4th Legion before he or Brutus even gave the word. They drove in around the 4th, attacking it from the flank and rear and cutting down its men in droves. As more of Antony’s troops came up in support of the 4th, more of Brutus’s legions joined Messalla’s unit and increased the pressure on Antony’s left.

The men of the 4th, conscious of their reputation, put up a ferocious fight, but their wing was eventually overwhelmed by superior numbers. General Messalla’s legion and another fighting beside it excitedly swept on to Octavian’s troops as they stood in their lines watching the battle, outflanked them, and cut their way through legion formations and those of Greek auxiliaries. They reached the camp of Antony’s and Octavian’s army and overran it, killing everyone they found, and looted it.

Appian tells us that Octavian was to write in his memoirs—which were never published but kept in the imperial archives at Rome, where only those with permission to do so could consult them, and where they and all other official records were destined to be destroyed when Rome was sacked by invaders in later centuries—that the night before the battle he’d had a dream that had warned him not to stay in camp. So he had himself removed to a safer place earlier in the day. Plutarch says that it was a friend of Octavian’s, Marcus Artorius, who’d had the cautionary dream. Either way, the fact that Octavian took heed of this dream enabled him to escape the bloody fate of others caught in his camp.

In the meantime Antony, unaware of the disaster on his left, had broken through Cassius’s line on his right. Probably with the 10th Legion in the vanguard of his attack, Antony personally led the assault on Cassius’s camp, driving through three legions in his path and smashing down the camp gates. According to Plutarch, Antony himself now withdrew, leaving his troops to an orgy of destruction and pillage in the camp.

All around him, Cassius’s troops fled in terror. As his cavalry dispersed and galloped off toward the sea to the east, his infantry began to give way as well. Grabbing a standard from a fleeing standard-bearer, Cassius planted it in the ground, determined to become the focal point for a stand. But he had difficulty rallying even the men of his personal bodyguard and in the end was forced to mount up and withdraw up the hill behind his camp.

Trying to observe the course of the battle from the hilltop with just a few remaining supporters, Cassius could see little because of a huge dust cloud roused by the feet of 160,000 combatants and 40,000 horses, in what was the largest battle of the era. All he could see with any clarity was Antony’s legions overrunning his camp below and killing everyone in it.

Cassius was no military novice. A little older than Brutus, he’d been quartermaster in Crassus’s army at the Carrhae debacle in 53 B.C., and had been primarily responsible for the fact that some ten thousand Roman troops had managed to survive that battle and escape back to Syria. He’d successfully commanded a fleet for Pompey in the early years of the last civil war. And over the past year he’d defeated two legions led by General Publius Dolabella on an abortive invasion of Syria on behalf of the triumvirs, then invaded and occupied the island of Rhodes in a series of sea and land battles. But now, for all his military experience, Cassius assumed the worst: Brutus was dead, his troops overrun, their mutual cause lost.

Seeing cavalry galloping toward his hill, he sent a staff officer named Titinius riding down to determine their identity. When Titinius reached the cavalry he found they were from Brutus’s forces. Recognizing him, the cavalrymen surrounded him, embracing him, and patting him on the back. But from his hilltop vantage point, it looked to Cassius as though his friend had been overwhelmed and made a prisoner.

Most classical historians agree that there are two accounts of what followed, and none is sure which to credit as the truth. One account has the desolate Cassius ordering his servant Pindarus to kill him with his sword, while the other version says that Pindarus murdered him. Either way, Cassius died there on the hilltop on the day of the battle, which, coincidentally, was also his birthday.

Brutus was neither dead nor defeated. The end result of the battle was something of a stalemate, with both armies losing camps but remaining reasonably intact. According to both Appian and Plutarch, the latter quoting General Messalla, Brutus’s army had the better of the encounter, leaving only eight thousand dead on the field, while Octavian and Antony lost sixteen thousand men. Among the dead were a great many legionaries of the 4th Legion. In Appian’s narrative of the battle, Brutus was to boast to his troops the next day that they had “completely destroyed the famed 4th Legion.” Not quite, but the badly mauled 4th probably played little part in further operations against Brutus. As to the 10th, its casualties are not mentioned.

If anything, Antony and Octavian can be said to have suffered a reverse in the First Battle of Philippi. Not only did they lose twice as many men as their opponents on the battlefield, but also, out on the Adriatic that day, another convoy sailing from Brindisi to bring them reinforcements—the Martia Legion and one other, plus cohorts of the Praetorian Guard—was intercepted by 130 opposition warships, which swarmed all over the heavily laden transports. Many troopships were sunk and thousands of legionaries and Praetorians died, some consumed by flames in burning vessels, others drowning in the Adriatic, others still dying of thirst in succeeding days as they clung to wreckage. Weeks later, a number of survivors were found on deserted islands.

Yet, the republican cause took a body blow with the death of the well-respected Cassius. The morale of the troops opposing the Triumvirate had to be affected, not to mention that of Brutus. And three weeks later, at three o’clock in the afternoon of October 23, Brutus, likening himself to Pompey at Farsala, was dragged unwillingly into a second Battle of Philippi near the location of the first by his officers, who included his close friend and Pompey’s dedicated follower General Marcus Favonius.

This time Brutus’s dispirited forces were routed by Antony and Octavian. At first Brutus led his left wing in a successful charge, but his right wing quickly gave way, allowing Antony’s and Octavian’s legions to swing around into Brutus’s rear and steamroll his troops from behind, much as Brutus had devastated the 4th Legion a few weeks earlier. Among the fatalities were Brutus’s deputy, General Antistius Labeo, and Flavius, his chief of engineers, both of whom died before his eyes, and his cousin Marcus Cato, son of Cato the Younger.

When Brutus’s surviving four legions refused to continue the fight, he was forced to flee with just a handful of supporters. Shortly after, he took the honorable way out. His head was sent to Rome for display on the Gemonian Stairs, the traditional fate of traitors. His chief surviving followers, including Favonius, were led off in chains to an uncertain fate. With the death of Julius Caesar’s “son” and chief assassin, hostilities came to an end.

There was still work for the men of the 10th Legion in the coming years. First there would be soldiering against the Parthians with Antony, who was determined to carry through Caesar’s planned invasion of Parthian territory, and then the great confrontation between Octavian and Antony and Cleopatra that, in the summer of 31 B.C., would bring the 10th to a promontory on the west coast of Greece called Actium.

Details of the Battle of Actium are in part sketchy. The battle was a long time coming, but it was inevitable. Between 42 and 33 B.C., Antony and Octavian became increasingly at odds. By 36 B.C., Lepidus had been pushed out of the Triumvirate after foolishly trying to convince Octavian’s legions on Sicily to throw their support behind him. Lepidus played no further part in Rome’s government. By some accounts retaining just his post as pontifex maximus, according to Suetonius he lived out the rest of his days in exile on the coast of southwestern Italy, at Circeii, today’s village of San Felice Circeo, then an isolated summer resort popular with the Roman elite. This left Antony, in control in the East, and Octavian, in charge at Rome, to fight over who would eventually rule the empire.

In the 30s B.C., Antony’s legions had success against the Parthians in Armenia. Although most of the credit was due to his deputy, General Ventidius, that didn’t stop Antony from riding in a pseudo Triumph through the streets of Alexandria. At the same time, Antony developed an amorous relationship with Queen Cleopatra of Egypt that scandalized Roman society. Already married, and at a time when Romans could not legally marry foreigners anyway, he treated Cleopatra as his consort and partner, his wife in all but name. His stocks in Rome fell even lower when he gifted Roman territories in the East to her. The latest power-sharing agreement between Antony and Octavian was not renewed when it expired in late 33 B.C. Hostilities were just a matter of time.

Antony wasn’t without his supporters in Rome. As the war clouds gathered in 32 B.C., judging the mere slip of a boy Octavian unfit to lead them, both consuls for the year and more than two hundred senators departed Rome and fled to the fifty-year-old Antony in Egypt. But Octavian retained the loyalty of the legions in the West, who saw him as the legitimate heir of Julius Caesar, the commander they’d come to venerate. With an army the equal of Antony’s and an organizational ability and tactical sense that Antony never possessed, Octavian had the tools to win this contest.

Both sides prepared for war, but in different ways. Many of Octavian’s legions had been raised by Caesar in Italy at the outbreak of the civil war in 49 B.C. and were due to undergo their sixteen-year discharge this year, 33 B.C. But rather than lose these experienced veteran troops Octavian kept them in service, promising them big rewards once the conflict with Antony was settled.

In the East, a number of Antony’s legions were also due for discharge, but he let most of his veterans retire, replacing them with recruits drafted in the territories under his control, being effectively cut off from the recruiting grounds of some of his legions such as the 3rd, a unit that had been recruited in Cisalpine Gaul for the last few enlistments, and the 4th, a Spanish legion. He raised new recruits for several of his legions, including the 3rd, in Syria, which had been made a Roman province by Pompey thirty-one years before. Meanwhile, letting those surviving Spanish legionaries of the 4th who wished to retire do so—he had no desire to bring on a repeat of the mutiny of Spanish legions under Caesar that had damaged his own reputation—Antony filled their places with new recruits from Macedonia. The 10th Legion had more than three years of its current enlistment to run, so Antony still had the Spanish veterans of his best legion marching with him.

In 31 B.C., to bring their conflict to a head, the two opponents began issuing each other challenges. Octavian offered Antony a beachhead in Italy, with space for a camp, where their two armies could fight it out. Antony replied with a challenge of his own—single combat, just the two of them, like the heroes of Greek legend. When Octavian turned down that flamboyant invitation, Antony issued another, this time for a pitched battle between their armies at Farsala, site of Caesar’s victory over Pompey. Octavian declined this challenge, too.

Antony and Cleopatra established a major naval base at Actium on the Ambracian Gulf in the west of Greece. In the summer, Octavian surprised his adversaries by arriving there out of the blue with a troop convoy and a vast fleet of 400 warships, almost all of them light, fast frigates, dropping anchor just up the coast from Antony’s position.

As Octavian’s admiral, Marcus Agrippa, seized strategic points around the Gulf of Corinth to cut Antony’s supply lines, Octavian himself landed with forty thousand legionaries and set up camp. With Cleopatra’s Egyptian flotilla of 60 battleships, Antony retained a naval force here of 230 warships and 50 transports. Although, overall, Antony’s land forces outnumbered Octavian’s—one hundred thousand men in 19 legions to Octavian’s eighty thousand—Antony’s units were spread throughout the East, from Greece to Egypt, and it seems he had only a third of his legions here at Actium. What was worse, according to Cassius Dio, these men had been camped in an unsuitable location for some time, so that in both winter and summer they were seriously affected by disease, almost certainly dysentery and malaria, reducing their effectiveness.

Outnumbered here on land, and no doubt now regretting that he’d permitted his best troops to go into retirement, Antony allowed Cleopatra to talk him into engaging Octavian in a sea battle, to break out of Agrippa’s blockade and withdraw to Egypt, where Antony had another seven legions encamped.

Antony’s and Cleopatra’s warships were mostly battleships and cruisers. These huge craft could accommodate numerous marines, who would be used to board opposition ships. In addition, says Dio, Antony had high turrets built on the decks of the warships and embarked a large number of men from his legions “who could fight as it were from battlements.” Plutarch put the number at twenty thousand marines and legionaries and two thousand archers aboard Antony’s and Cleopatra’s ships. This left about twenty thousand of Antony’s legionaries and an unknown number of his total complement of twelve thousand cavalry on shore, cheering on the maritime contestants.

The identities of individual legions involved at Actium haven’t come down to us, so we can only speculate on which units were actually there, and where. It would be surprising if the men of the 10th Legion weren’t present for Antony, with their experience, their fame, and their display of loyalty to him at the Var. They would either have been on his warships or lined up on the shore, where the two land armies faced each other while the sea battle took place, with Antony’s land forces commanded by Lieutenant General Publius Canidius Crassus, and Octavian’s by Lieutenant General Titus Taurus Statilius.

According to Dio, when Antony addressed his troops prior to the battle and informed them of his plans, he told them, “You yourselves are the kind of soldiers who can conquer even without a good leader, and I am the kind of leader who can win even with inferior soldiers.” History shows he was half right.

Plutarch tells of a battle-scarred centurion of one of Antony’s legions, perhaps the 10th, who had fought for Antony for many years. With orders to board a ship for the coming battle, he asked his commander in chief to let his legionaries do service on land, where they knew how to fight. But Anthony waved away all objections; he had made up his mind, or Cleopatra had made it up for him—Actium would be decided on water, not on land.

During the morning of September 2, 31 B.C., the two navies lined up, each in two main lines, with Octavian’s fleet to the west, blocking Antony’s path. Accounts vary as to the identity and location of the commanders. Plutarch doesn’t mention Octavian’s subordinates apart from Agrippa, but from other sources we know they included Admiral Marcus Lollius and General Valerius Messalla. Plutarch puts Octavian on his own right wing, with Agrippa controlling his left, and he says that Antony himself commanded his right, supported by Admiral Publicola. Admiral Marcus Insteius and Admiral Marcus Octavius had command in his center, and Admiral Coelius his left. In the center, Cleopatra formed up her squadron of sixty ships, including vessels carrying their joint treasury, to the rear of Antony’s line. Although some authors, like Plutarch, have characterized what followed as flight, it seems that Antony’s intent all along was to break out of the encirclement rather than achieve a decisive victory on the day, and then regroup in Egypt. That was certainly the impression of several classical authors, including Dio.

At about noon, with sails stowed so they couldn’t be set alight by enemy artillery, and relying only on his oarsmen, Antony advanced his left wing, hoping that Admiral Coelius would draw Octavian into action and open a break in his line. But Octavian’s frigates backed water, and drew Antony’s ships out into open water. Antony’s left wing engaged, and soon, all along the line, ships of both sides were locked in battle.

Octavian’s Admiral Agrippa had issued tactical orders to the frigates of his fleet to avoid single close contact with Antony’s much larger vessels, whose marines and legionaries would overwhelm their small crews if they managed to board. Instead, two and three frigates at a time were to surround a single battleship or cruiser. These tactics proved highly successful, but even so, a gap opened up in the center of Octavian’s line.

Seizing her opportunity, Cleopatra ordered the ships of her squadron to make for the opening. With Cleopatra’s flagship, the battleship Antonias, leading the way, the Egyptian ships powered through the gap with flashing oars and turned south for Egypt. Raising their sails and with a strong northwesterly behind them, they sped away from the scene of the battle.

Transferring from his beleaguered battleship to a fast cruiser in a small boat, Antony hurried after her. As many of his ships as possible tried to break off action and do the same, and up to eighty of them made their escape with Antony. But the rest of his warships, about a hundred of them, were hemmed in.

Now, with three and four frigates surrounding each stranded larger ship, like ants around a crippled beetle, every one of Antony’s remaining craft was either captured or surrendered, although, says Dio, Antony’s marines and legionaries continued fierce hand-to-hand fighting with Octavian’s boarding parties long after their commander’s departure. Plutarch says bitter fighting lasted until about 4:00 P.M., while Suetonius says it was well into the night before the battle was finally terminated—so late, in fact, that Octavian spent the rest of the night at sea.

Many of Antony’s surrendered warships would be burned, but some, those of sound Egyptian construction—the Egyptians were far better shipbuilders than the Romans—would still be serving in Rome’s navy fifty years later. Five thousand of Antony’s men died in the battle. The surviving legionaries, marines, and crewmen taken from the ships all swore allegiance to Octavian.

Antony’s legions on shore held out for days, staying in their camp, until, after a week, their general, Canidius Crassus, fled in the night. The disillusioned legionaries he left behind all now went over to Octavian, and he assimilated their units into his army.

Not counting the Battle of Dyrrhachium, which the men of the 10th would have assured you was nothing more than a strategic withdrawal, this was the first defeat that the 10th Legion had ever been involved in. It was certainly the first time the 10th surrendered. And the last.

At an assembly of his army following the battle, as Octavian stood before his troops to congratulate and reward them, the men of the numerous legions who were well past their discharge date clamored to be released from service, to be paid the bonuses they were owed, and to be given the land grants they’d been promised. Upward of twenty legions in Octavian’s army had been raised or reenlisted in 49 and 48 B.C. and were between one and two years past their due discharge by this time.

Octavian silenced them with a single look, so says Tacitus. He then discharged the men of legions raised in Italy who were due for it, and assured them their bonuses would be paid and their promised land grants handed over in due course. Suetonius says that in abolishing several legions that were demanding their overdue discharges at this time Octavian failed to pay them their promised bounties. Technically this was true—his treasury was almost bare, and he simply didn’t have the capacity to pay his discharged troops at the time.

But Octavian knew that if he didn’t pay them eventually, they could rise up in revolt and march behind anyone who promised them enough to take up arms again. To provide some men with land immediately, he set in motion a series of confiscations, taking over the land of communities in Italy that had previously supported Antony, for redistribution among his retiring troops. As for his legionaries’ bonuses, there was only one way Octavian could find that sort of money: It would have to come from the fabulous horde of gold, silver, and jewels that Cleopatra was reputed to keep in Alexandria.

Octavian gave orders for his remaining legions, now including the 10th and other Antonian units, to prepare to march on Egypt. Octavian’s future now depended on his not only eliminating Antony but also getting his hands on Cleopatra’s treasure, if it did indeed exist. If he failed in either objective, the youthful leader was doomed.

Following the Battle of Actium, Octavian rapidly marched across Greece, giving chase to several of Antony’s legions pulling out of the north of the country and trying to reach their commander in Egypt. He overtook them in Macedonia, where they, too, came over to him, without a fight.

Octavian’s army spent the winter in Greece. He himself returned briefly to Italy, landing at Brindisi in January 30 B.C. to personally administer the distribution of confiscated land to retired legion veterans. Retirees had lost patience with his promises and had been on the verge of an uprising as they agitated for their just rewards. Octavian even offered to sell his own property and that of his friends and put the proceeds toward the veterans’ bounties. The offer placated the former legionaries, especially when he assured them that the treasure of Egypt would soon be in his hands and every legionary would be more than well rewarded if they continued to be patient a little longer.

Come the spring, Octavian rejoined the troops in Greece. Once he’d performed the rituals of the Lustration Exercise, he led his army, consisting now mostly of Antony’s former legions such as the 10th, to the Dardanelles, shipped them across to Asia, and marched down into Syria, where local rulers such as King Herod of Judea sent him vows of loyalty, and thousands of their own troops in support of their vows.

With the arrival of summer, Octavian marched into Egypt. Antony was prepared to do battle with his seven legions, outnumbered more than two to one by Octavian. But in the end Antony’s last legions refused to fight their comrades and to a man deserted to Octavian.

In August 30 B.C., as Octavian arrived outside Alexandria, Mark Antony committed suicide. Shortly after, in the best tragic tradition, Cleopatra followed suit. In Cleopatra’s treasury at Alexandria, Octavian found a treasure so vast even he was astonished. From the proceeds, he was able to pay all his troops their outstanding pay and the war bonuses he’d promised them. Tens of thousands of retired troops in Italy ultimately went on such a spending spree that there was a shortage of goods of all kinds, and moneylenders had to reduce their interest rates from 12 percent to 4 percent to attract business. Octavian was also able to personally pay the salaries of the legionaries of his postwar army for the next several decades.

As Cleopatra was laid to rest by Octavian, side-by-side with Antony in the same tomb at the Egyptian capital, the civil war was at last at an end. It was with the prospects of bulging purses that the men of the 10th Legion now began thinking about their retirement in the new year when their 29 B.C. discharge fell due.

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