War Drums Part Five

Octavian read through the document in private and made note of the parts least favorable to Antony. Then he read these out loud to the Senate. Octavian pointed out Antony's wish to be buried in Alexandria. Octavian's former fellow triumvir and former brother-in-law also left legacies to his children by Cleopatra and reasserted that Caesarion was Julius Caesar's child. Octavian's blatant interference with the sacred Vestal Virgins had a splitting effect. Many senators thought that his taking of Antony's will was "extraordinary and intolerable." However, to some the desired effect was created. The will seemed to this group of senators that the great Roman general had been subverted into becoming an easterner. Indeed, the mud stuck and even Antony's supporters in the Senate voted to deprive him of the consulship that had been planned for him the following year.

Now Octavian felt he was in a strong enough position to formally declare war. Another unique situation occurred after all of this maneuvering against Antony because the enemy had to be Cleopatra. There were two main reasons for this: Octavian didn't want to be accused of re-igniting a civil war that he claimed to have ended. Also, Octavian didn't want to make official enemies of Antony's Roman supporters, because some of them might want to switch sides in the future as Plancus had done.

A ceremony was conducted at the Temple of Bellona, goddess of war in the Campus Martius. After this ritual was complete Rome was officially at war with Egypt.

The promontory of Actium on the coast of western Greece, and the inland Ambracian Gulf it guards are almost unchanged by the passage of 2,000 years. The low, tongue of land which lies only a few feet above sea level stretches northward toward a larger and more elevated two-fingered peninsula. Between them, a half-mile wide strait shoulders its way from the open sea into the gulf, 25 miles wide and between 4 and 10 miles long. These days Actium is very busy in the summer. Tourists alight at the small airport and crowd the sea with yachts. Actium has three marinas; one of these is named the Cleopatra Marina.

This marina sits on a position on the strait from which if one had a time-travelling machine, one would be able to watch the powerful and seductive queen of Egypt in her magnificent galley sail by into her grim destiny and into history. Actium was a quieter place in the first century BC. It was a center for pearl fishing and a small village on the headland made a good jumping off location for travellers. Close by, on the shore where the strait was the slimmest there stood an old temple and a grove of trees sacred to Apollo, founded 500 years before.

Towards the end of 32 BC, the main part of Antony's fleet was based in the safety of the Ambracian Gulf. Where the strait narrowed to its smallest width as it led to the open sea, two towers were constructed (probably where the modern Venetian towers stand), from these catapults would lob missiles and fireballs at any passing galleys. The ships of Antony's fleet had been very busy during the summer and autumn transporting his army to Greece and then establishing a defensive line down its Adriatic Coast. A Squadron guarded Leucas, the Actium roads, and the islands in the south. It also protected the entry into the Corinthian Gulf and the port of Patrae (modern Patras, Greece), where Antony and Cleopatra had established their headquarters. A garrison guarded the Methone promontory. Yet another was placed on the headland at Taenarum. Added to these, Antony had troops on Crete and four legions policed the province of Cyrenaica slightly to the west ot Egypt. In the winter of 32-31 BC, Antony's army was spread out among these strongpoints on the western coast from Corcyra to Methone, with the largest portion gathered at Actium.

I hope to post to this blog again very soon. The images I had picked out for this post got kind of messed up. The bottom image is simply a map of modern Greece-it was supposed to show where Patras was located. The top image is a diagram of how the Battle of Actium was arrayed -but I don't think when I publish this the names will be readable due to size-the purple colors are Antony and Cleopatra's forces and the red is Octavian and Agrippa's forces. I will try to find some better maps for future posts. The middle image is simply of a Roman pinky ring. I have more information written -it just needs to be typed out. All the best to anyone stopping by!