The Battle of Actium

The Battle of Actium, fought on September 2, 31 BCE, was a decisive confrontation of the Final War of the Roman Republic. The naval battle took place near the city of Actium in Greece, where the fleet of Octavian (the future Emperor Augustus) clashed with the combined forces of Mark Antony and Cleopatra. Octavian’s victory led to the defeat of Antony and Cleopatra, marking the end of the Roman Republic and paving the way for Octavian to become Rome’s first emperor.

Great Battle of Actium

Introduction

As early as the 3rd millennium B.C., naval warfare occurred in the Mediterranean, and by the 2nd millennium B.C., the Egyptians were conducting large-scale amphibious warfare, transporting troops in ships from the Nile region and landing them in Palestine. The Battle of Actium is representative of the dominant style of naval combat used for most of history; it marks the end of the Roman Republic and the beginning of the Roman Empire, as well as the solidifying of Rome’s domination over the entire Mediterranean basin.

Ancient Naval Warfare

• (1) During a nearly 4,000-year stretch beginning in the 3rd millennium B.C., the main warship was the galley, a long, narrow vessel propelled by dozens or even hundreds of rowers. Such warships lacked the stability or the storage capacity to travel the open seas and typically hugged the coasts.
• (2) One battle technique was to equip these vessels with a ram at the bow, which they would try to crash into the hull of enemy ships. The Greeks of the 5th century B.C. emphasized seamanship, with the primary goal is to position a ship so as to ram the opponent broadside. A variant on this tactic was to sweep alongside an enemy vessel and break off its oars.
• (3) All these maneuvers demanded speed, nimbleness, and a high degree of skill from the rowers. The ship design that developed to optimize these qualities was the trireme. A classic trireme was about 115 feet long and only 20 feet wide, with some 200 rowers on three levels packed into the narrow hull. A triple-pointed bronze ram weighing 400 pounds was affixed to the bow of the ship, and a small number of marines, usually no more than 35, stood on the upper deck armed with bows.
• (4) The Roman preferred fighting on land. Accordingly, rather than using the ramming strategy, they tended to favor naval battle tactics that involved ships meeting in such a way that the soldiers they carried could fight each other.
• (5) Naval warfare had already been tending this way with the construction of larger warships; they could carry greater numbers of soldiers and were less maneuverable, but they often had collapsible wooden turrets from which several men could shoot bows or even throw down rocks on an enemy’s deck. They also began to carry catapults and ballistas that could hurl stones or oversize arrows at the crews of opposing ships.

Historical Background and Opponents

• (1) In the 150 years following Cynoscephalae, the Roman Republic swallowed up the remaining Hellenistic kingdoms and extended its boundaries around almost the entire coast of the Mediterranean Sea. Although Rome had achieved great success with its overseas conquests, these same successes had created severe internal strains in the fabric of the republican system of government.
• (2) What had been a ruling coalition of powerful families had devolved into a few strong men dominating through wealth, power, and prestige. During a violent five-decade stretch beginning around 100 B.C., a sequence of these men—Marius, Sulla, Pompey, and Julius Caesar—had fought a brutal series of what were essentially civil wars. Yet none was able to hold on to power permanently.
• (3) Even if the republic was no longer a political reality, many of its ideals remained powerful, and the strongest of these was a deepseated aversion to being ruled by a king or anyone who acted like a king. This sentiment led to the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 B.C., when his behavior became too monarchial.
• (4) Caesar’s death left two candidates vying for power in Rome:
  (a) The first was Caesar’s second in command, Marcus Antonius, who inherited most of Caesar’s wealth, prestige, and the loyalty of the majority of his legions. Mark Antony was direct and tough, a military man who got along well with the common soldier; he could hold the allegiance of his men by sharing their witticisms and living conditions, but he did not have the subtlety of mind for complex political machinations.
  (b) The second was Octavian, a boy just out of his teens, whom Caesar posthumously adopted as his son. Octavian possessed a brilliant, coldly calculating mind and a flair for manipulating affairs to give the appearance he desired them to have. He also had a gift for finding men who were talented where he was deficient, such as his childhood friend Agrippa, blunt and forthright, a natural military commander of considerable genius. With Octavian directing grand political strategy and Agrippa compensating for his deficiencies on the battlefield, they were a formidable pair.
• (5) Because neither Octavian nor Antony was quite ready for open conflict, they divided the Roman world between them while each continued to maneuver for dominance. Antony chose the eastern half of the empire, which had always been the richer portion. Octavian was left with west, but this included Italy and Rome itself.
• (6) Antony’s sphere also encompassed the last remaining independent state, Egypt, now ruled by the young Queen Cleopatra, a highly intelligent and assertive woman. Their relationship provided the wily Octavian with the ammunition for a war of propaganda against Antony, whom he portrayed as totally under Cleopatra’s control. Octavian’s rumor mill cleverly exploited traditional Roman phobias of domination by foreign monarchs.

The Battle

• (1) In 32 B.C. Antony moved his and Cleopatra’s main army and fleets to the western coast of Greece. Most of the fleet was put into the Gulf of Ambracia, where it would be safe from storms, and the bulk of the army was encamped nearby. Expecting Octavian to attack from the north, Antony also occupied a number of key towns along the coastline and fortified others to the south, guarding his supply lines to Egypt.
• (2) Agrippa, in charge of Octavian’s campaign, demonstrated his cleverness with his first move. Rather than attempting to land in Epirus in the north, as Antony expected, he led a naval assault against the city of Methone far to the south, threatening Antony’s vital supply line, and began raiding other points on the southern coast of Greece.
• (3) Falling into Agrippa’s trap, Antony diverted many of his ships from the northern coast to the south. Octavian now brought the main body of his army across from Italy and landed them at Panormus in the north, just as Antony had expected, and they marched down the coast to the Gulf of Ambracia. A stalemate developed, with Antony’s army encamped on the southern side of the gulf and Octavian’s on the northern.
• (4) Meanwhile, Agrippa continued his raids along the coast, capturing one strategic position after another. This string of victories not only raised the morale of Octavian’s troops while eroding that of Antony’s, but they also put a stranglehold on Antony’s supply lines. Compounding his problems, Antony’s camp was on low-lying ground, and his men were wracked by malaria and dysentery; as a result, Antony’s army began to suffer deaths and desertions.
• (5) Antony now had to act before he lost his whole force, and he chose to fight Octavian at sea with about 230 ships, 20,000 legionaries, and 2,000 archers. It is uncertain whether Antony’s plan was to attempt to defeat Octavian’s fleet or merely to break through and escape with as much of his force as possible.
• (6) Antony deployed his ships in four groups—a right wing, a left wing, a center, and a reserve—each consisting of about 60 galleys, with himself in command of the right wing. Octavian’s forces of nearly 400 ships and about 40,000 soldiers took up position in a broad arc, with Agrippa on the left side, facing Antony, and Octavian on the right.
• (7) Antony had hoped that Octavian would rush forward to attack him in the shallows, where Octavian’s greater number of ships could not all fit. Agrippa refused to be drawn in and waited for Antony to come out to him, even backing up slightly to ensure that Antony would have to fight in open water, where Agrippa could envelop his flanks. The two forces came together all along the line, and the battle devolved into a series of individual combats among small groups of ships. Two or three of Octavian’s smaller ships clustered around one of Antony’s first exchanging arrow and ballista fire, then closing to board.
• (8) As the battle wore on and as Octavian’s ships sought to outflank Antony’s, a gap opened up in the center of Octavian’s line. Immediately, Cleopatra’s reserve squadron raised their sails and lunged through. Making no attempt to engage Octavian, they set course for Egypt. Antony, seeing Cleopatra escaping, transferred from his flagship to a small, fast craft and set off after her.
• (9) Antony’s forces continued to fight bravely for a considerable time but were overwhelmed. Estimates are that around 150 of Antony’s ships were taken or destroyed, added to the approximately 150 already defeated during the campaign leading up to the final battle. Antony’s fleet was annihilated, along with most of the best troops of his army.

Outcomes

• (1) Antony may have believed he could recover and rebuild his forces after the Battle of Actium, but his reputation was irretrievably damaged. Although he caught up with Cleopatra and both reached Egypt safely, in terms of opposing Octavian after Actium, they were finished; within a year, both committed suicide.
• (2) Octavian was now the sole ruler of the Roman world. Drawing on his skill at manipulating images, he cloaked his power in innocuous-seeming titles and accrued to himself the powers of the main offices of the Roman state while cleverly refusing to hold the offices themselves, lulling Romans into a false belief that the republic lived on. In reality, it was dead, and Octavian, under the new name of Augustus, became the first Roman emperor.
• (3) Augustus’s settlement of the Roman state and his establishment of the position of emperor would form the system of government for the next 500 years. He and the empire would continue to exert powerful influence as role models for a long line of future leaders, from Charlemagne to Napoleon to Mussolini.

Conclusion

Overall, the Battle of Actium was a turning point in Roman history, leading to the establishment of the Roman Empire and ushering in a new era of Roman dominance in the Mediterranean world. The battle marked the end of the Roman Republic and the rise of the Roman Empire under Augustus.

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