War Drums Part Eight

The defection of Amyntas was like a snowball rolling downhill, everywhere he looked Antony was losing client kings, Roman senators and others. The most stinging betrayal was the of Domitius Ahenobarbus. He was suffering from a fever that most likely had its source from whatever illness it was that had swept theough Actium earlier in the summer. Ahenobarbus sailed on a small boat to the bay of Comaros. Plutarch tells us: "Antony, although he was deeply grieved by his friend's desertion, sent not only his baggage but all his friends and servants after him, whereupon Domitius died almost immediately, as if he longed to repent as soon as his treachery and disloyalty became public knowledge."

This charitable side of Mark Antony was short-lived, however. He was a man who could be almost as cruel as Octavian when he became agitated. More than a few important defectors were executed in some harsh and imaginative ways after the defection of Ahenobarbus. One senator met his end by being tied to horses and pulled apart. Antony did very much understand, however, that some course of action must be decided on and made at haste. Things could not be allowed to fall apart much longer, so he withdrew his troops back to Actium and called a council of war.

One day Octavian noticed smoke coming from the area where Antony's fleet was based. He knew what was going on: Antony did not have enough oarsmen to man his whole fleet, so he was burning extra ships so they didn't come into his possession. From this it was easy to conclude that the final conflict was coming up fast. The man who had advised Cleopatra about the best method to attract Antony-Dellius-who was one of the defectors from Antony's camp-gave a full report to Octavian about Antony's intentions. He told Octavian that Antony was planning to try to break the blockade at sea.

This was the kind of decision an intelligent man in the matters of war would make under the circumstances. It would have been a very arduous task taking a demoralized army through the steep passes of the Pindos mountains, whereas it was reasonable to assume that a good portion of the fleet would escape manned with Antony's best legionaires. They could then meet up with the 11 or 12 legions in Egypt and Cyrenaica, and try to fight another day-at least that was the plan. The way Octavian's or more precisely Agrippa's response would be framed was the question now. In a very large sense, whatever type of battle was to come, for Octavian's camp-and many onlookers-this deluge of high level defections from Antony recently-the issue of who had won this conflict had already been decided.

To many important people, whether Antony and Cleopatra could break the blockade and escape mattered very little. If the pair could be caught and executed quickly it would simply abbreviate the coming war a great deal. Octavian and Agrippa had decided that if Antony tried to engage at or close to the mouth of the Actium Strait, they would hold back. This was for the obvious reason that they would lose the advantage of greater numbers if they fought in confined waters. Octavian and Agrippa did agree that they would not let Antony's fleet run through the blockade without a fight. If Antony made a clean break it would give him the initiative and also have a detrimental impact on opinion among the military and in Italy. But if Octavian's side waited on open seas, at some point Antony would be forced to emerge and fight on waters of their own choice.

If it happened that way they would try to outflank him in the north (the island that Agrippa had taken over-Leucas-would prevent that maneuver towards the south). Octavian's side would then encircle Antony's smaller fleet, or force him to lengthen his line of ships, which would make it easier for their ships to surround single ships and eliminate them one at a time. Due to the loss of manpower on Antony's side, the balance of naval force was in Octavian's favor. When Antony had first arrived at Ephesus, he had around 500 ships. Now he only had enough men to use 230-possibly less.

Octavian had about 400 ships available. Antony's ships were larger than Octavian's and had more oarsmen so at least this factor was in Antony's favor as they were just as maneuverable as Octavian's vessels. Stormy weather had forced Antony to delay his plans for four days-from 29 August to 2 September. The morning of 2 September was clear and sunny and the fleets headed out to confront each other. Octavian-definitely knowing who was best for the job ahead-smartly gave tactical command to Agrippa. Agrippa put about forty thousand men on the ships (approximately 90 per galley), and deployed them about one mile off the headlands Parginosuela and Scylla, marked the entry into the Actium narrows. With his fleet "parked" in this area, Agrippa waited to see what Antony would do. Mark Antony divided his fleet into four squadrons. On his galleys were about 20,000 legionaires and some archers.

One of the squadrons was Cleopatra's with sixty ships in all. Cleopatra herself was on her flaghip, the Antonias which carried enormous amounts of gold, silver coins, ingots and other items of great worth. Not only was the safety of the queen important, but it was absolutely essential that her war chest didn't fall into Octavian's hands or to the bottom of the sea. 50,000 men in Antony's army remained under the command of Publius Canidus Crassus, who was a long-time ally of Antony's. He had campaigned with great success in Armenia. If the fleet made its escape, he was to march to Macedonia, if possible, and then east.

Before leaving, Antony gave his ships' captains an odd order that may have demoralized them further if they could see how little sense it made in one context and how much in another context. Antony told them to take their sails with them so that not a single enemy ship escaped capture. In this era, sails were seldom if ever used in battle. They took up too much room when stowed and curtailed maneuverability when used. These men were probably wise enough to see through Antony's proclaimed reason and that he wanted the sails stored because he anticipated defeat and flight.

The defector, Dellius had told Agrippa about Antony's plans and he even knew about the decision to load the sails. The men who were not on the ships were watching from the shoreline to see how the battle would go. Octavian's soldiers had such a good view of Antony's ships that they could see exactly what he was doing in the strait and may have been able to keep their commanders updated by using small boats or a type of signaling. There was no surprises when the ships emerged from the strait, and deployed in two lines that stretched between the headlands and stopped. Cleopatra's squadron stayed behind the lines, and did not appear as if it were going to take an active role in the battle. Antony moved first and sailed towards the opening of the strait, hoping Agrippa would take the bait and start fighting. This plan failed because Agrippa judiciously refused to move. Thus a very long wait ensued that lasted through the morning. The two fleets, maybe a mile apart rested on their oars.

The first image is a painting done by Lorenzo Castro in 1672 called The Battle of Actium. I am going to try to put a second image here of the Anbracian Gulf with the location of Octavian's camp and Antony's first and second camps marked on it. I hope it comes out clear. I scanned the page directly from Anthony Everitt's Augustus. The information in this particular post is from his book from pages 180 to 183. I will try to go backwards through all of my posts here and put -if I can locate it-exactly what source and page the data is from sometime soon.

This blog kind of had a "near-death experience". This is because I wasn't sure how many people-if any -at times were reading it and it is too much work to do if no one was reading it. I think I have gone 10 or more posts here without a comment. But recently Jon and other great readers have commented on posts here-so that makes it all worth it. I also put the "sitemeter" thing on to see how many-if any -other readers were stopping by. It has only been on here since the 24th of November so it is probably too early to say I have exact data on it yet-but I was pleasantly surprised to see that out of the first 100 visitors 3 of them spent between 8 minutes and an hour with the blog.

To many 3 out of a hundred may not seem like much-especially as the other 97 stopping by were here zero seconds and it was obviously a net search that didn't pan out for them. But 3 out of a hundred is enough for me to keep going with it-especially if great comments come in here and there. At my "main" blog-My Favorite Monsters-8 to 9 people out of 100 spend any kind of time there-averaging 8 and a half minutes per visit. This is by averaging-the 8 and a half minutes comes from averaging a great many visits-and most are 1 to 4 minutes of the ones that stay-but the eight and a half comes in from averaging the ones that stay 25 minutes and more-with the "record" haha being 72 minutes.

Sorry for the "nerdmania" about visit statistics-I don't know why stuff like that interests me-maybe I should have been a bean-counter when I was able to go to school and work! By the way-I don't look or care about seeing the IP addresses and trying to match or guess who the hometowns are of people commenting. I only know the hometown of an Arizona "blogpal" because she mentioned it in a post-much less the out of state and country visits. I do have to give a "shout-out" to whichever reader of My Favorite Monsters and Dev's Questions hails from the town of Gliwece, Poland in the Katowice area of that nation. Thank you for having been at both of these blogs from the start!

Actually I would like to work more on this blog and my writing blog than My Favorite Monsters for awhile. My writing attempts may be beyond help-but I am going to try. A wonderful woman who I consider more like a sister than a friend has helped with this by recently sending me a Christmas gift of a book that should be easy and interesting to use for posts at My Favorite Monsters while I try hard to work on this and the other blog. You know who you are and you are "on my list" along with your son and father should I win my case-thanks again! OK-sorry -sheesh my internal-well hopefully external too "dialogue" about things unrelated to history is almost longer than the post I just did probably. One last thing related to this blog is that either when I am done with the "Cleopatra/Antony" portion-or maybe all the way through Augustus' rule itself-I would like to add other historical topics in between the Roman history-because I want to go through all eleven other "Caesars" and do a bit about the history of the "5 Good Emperors"-and I don't want others to get bored with Rome or me myself get bored with it. I tried to do this already with the "KAL" posts and a few about the Gorbachev era back in August and September. Thanks again for the fantastic comments and peace and be well to anyone stopping by!