by Will Durant
While Antony frolicked in Alexandria, his wife Fulvia and his brother Lucius were plotting to overthrow Octavian’s power in Rome. Octavian had found no happiness there: the Senate was a rump of adventurers and generals, labor was restless with unemployment, the populares were disorganized, Sextus Pompey was blocking the import of food, business was petrified with fear, taxation and spoliation had ruined nearly every fortune, and many men were living in a reckless and sensual riot on the ground that the morrow might in any case bring repudiation of the currency, or further spoliation, or death. Octavian himself was anything but an exemplar of chastity at this time. To perfect the confusion, Fulvia and Lucius raised an army and called upon Italy to oust him. Marcus Agrippa, Octavian’s general, besieged Lucius in Perusia and starved him out (March, 40). Fulvia died of illness, frustrated ambition, and grief over Antony’s neglect of her. Octavian pardoned Lucius in the hope of maintaining peace with Antony, but Antony crossed the sea and besieged Octavian’s troops in Brundisium. The armies, showing more sense than their leaders, refused to fight each other, and compelled them to a peaceable agreement (40). As a pledge of good behavior Antony married Octavian’s sister, the gentle and virtuous Octavia. Everybody was briefly happy; and Virgil, writing now his Fourth Eclogue, predicted the return of Saturn’s Utopian reign.
In 38 Octavian fell in love with Livia, the pregnant wife of Tiberius Claudius Nero. He divorced his first wife Scribonia, persuaded Nero to release Livia, married her, and found, in her persuasive counsel and her aristocratic connections as a member of the Claudian gens, a passage to reconciliation with the propertied classes. He reduced taxes, returned 30,000 runaway slaves to their masters, and set himself patiently to restoring order in Italy. With the help of Agrippa, and of 120 ships contributed by Antony, he destroyed the fleet of Sextus Pompey, secured Rome’s food supply, and ended the resistance of the Pompeians (36). The Senate by acclamation named him tribune for life.
After marrying Octavia in a state ceremony at Rome, Antony went with her to Athens. There for a time he enjoyed the novel experience of living with a good woman. He put aside politics and war and, with Octavia at his side, attended the lectures of philosophers. Meanwhile, however, he studied the plans that Caesar had left for conquering Parthia. Labienus, son of Caesar’s general, had entered the services of the Parthian king and had led Parthian armies victoriously into Cilicia and Syria—lucrative provinces of Rome (40). To meet this threat Antony needed soldiers; to pay soldiers he needed money; and of this Cleopatra had plenty. Suddenly tiring of virtue and peace, he sent Octavia back to Rome and asked Cleopatra to meet him at Antioch. She brought him a few troops, but she disapproved of his grandiose plans and apparently gave him little of her fabulous treasury. He invaded Parthia with 100,000 men (36), tried in vain to capture its citadels, and lost almost half his forces in a heroic retreat through 300 miles of hostile country. On the way he annexed Armenia to the Empire. He awarded himself a triumph and shocked Italy by celebrating it at Alexandria. He sent a letter of divorce to Octavia (32), married Cleopatra, confirmed her and Caesarion as joint rulers of Egypt and Cyprus, and bequeathed the Eastern provinces of the Empire to the son and daughter that Cleopatra had borne him. Knowing that he would soon have to square accounts with Octavian, he abandoned himself to a year of frolic and luxury. Cleopatra encouraged him to dare the last gamble for omnipotence, helped him to raise an army and a fleet, and chose as her favorite oath, “As surely as I shall one day give judgment in the Capitol.”13
III. ANTONY AND OCTAVIAN
Octavia bore her rejection silently, lived quietly in Antony’s house at Rome, and brought up faithfully his children by Fulvia and the two daughters that she herself had given him. The daily sight of her mute desolation inflamed Octavian’s conviction that both Italy and he were doomed if Antony’s plans succeeded. He saw to it that Italy should realize the situation: Antony had married the Queen of Egypt, had assigned to her and her illegitimate offspring the most tribute-yielding of Rome’s provinces, was seeking to make Alexandria the capital of the Empire, and would reduce Rome and Italy to subordinate roles. When Antony sent a message to the Senate (which he had for years ignored) proposing that he and Octavian should retire to private life, and that the institutions of the Republic should be restored, Octavian escaped a difficult situation by reading to the Senate what he claimed was Antony’s will, which he had taken by force from the Vestal Virgins. It named Antony’s children by Cleopatra his sole heirs, and directed that he should be buried beside the Queen in Alexandria.14 The last clause was as decisive for the Senate as it should have proved suspicious; instead of raising doubts that a will filed in Rome should have made such provisions, it convinced the Senate and Italy that Cleopatra was scheming to absorb the Empire through Antony. With characteristic subtlety Octavian declared war (32) against her rather than Antony, and made the conflict a holy war for the independence of Italy.
In September, 32, the fleet of Antony and Cleopatra sailed into the Ionian Sea, 500 warships strong; no such armada had been seen before. Supporting it was an army of 100,000 infantry and 12,000 cavalry, mostly supplied by Eastern princes and kings in the hope of making this a war of liberation from Rome. Octavian crossed the Adriatic with 400 vessels, 80,000 foot, 12,000 horse. For almost a year the rival forces prepared and maneuvered; then, on September 2, 31, they fought at Actium, in the Ambracian Gulf, one of the decisive battles of history. Agrippa proved the better tactician, and his light ships more manageable than Antony’s heavy-towered leviathans. Many of these were consumed by fires set by burning brands cast upon them by Octavian’s crews. “Some sailors,” says Dio Cassius,
perished by the smoke before the flames could reach them; others were cooked in their armor, which became red hot; others were roasted in their vessels as though in ovens. Many leaped into the sea; of these some were mangled by sea monsters, some were shot by arrows, some were drowned. The only ones to obtain an endurable death were those who killed one another.15
Antony saw that he was losing, and signaled to Cleopatra to carry out their prearranged plan for retreat. She headed her squadron southward and waited for Antony; unable to extricate his flagship, he abandoned it and rowed out to hers. As they sailed for Alexandria he sat alone on the prow, his head between his hands, conscious that everything was lost, even honor.
From Actium Octavian went to Athens; thence to Italy to quell a mutiny among his troops, who clamored for the plunder of Egypt; then to Asia to depose and punish Antony’s adherents and raise new funds from long-suffering cities; then to Alexandria (30). Antony had left Cleopatra and was staying on an island near Pharos; thence he sent offers of peace, which Octavian ignored. Unknown to Antony, Cleopatra sent Octavian a golden scepter, crown, and throne as tokens of her submission; according to Dio he replied that he would leave her and Egypt untouched if she would kill Antony.16 The beaten Triumvir wrote to Octavian again, reminding him of their former friendship and of “all the wanton pranks in which they had shared as youths”; and agreed to kill himself if the victor would spare Cleopatra. Again Octavian made no reply. Cleopatra gathered all that she could of the Egyptian treasury into a palace tower and informed Octavian that she would destroy it all, and herself, unless he granted an honorable peace. Antony led what small forces remained to him in a last fight; his desperate courage won a temporary victory; but on the next day, seeing Cleopatra’s mercenaries surrender, and receiving a report that Cleopatra was dead, he stabbed himself. When he learned that the report was false he begged to be brought to the tower in whose upper chambers the Queen and her attendants had locked themselves; they drew him up through the window, and he died in her arms. Octavian allowed her to come forth and bury her lover; then he granted her an audience and, immune to what lure survived in a broken woman of thirty-nine, he gave her terms that made life seem worthless to one who had been a queen. Convinced that he intended to take her as captive to adorn a Roman triumph, she arrayed herself in her royal robes, put an asp to her breas
t, and died. Her handmaidens Charmion and Iris followed her in suicide.18
Octavian permitted her to be buried beside Antony. Caesarion, and Antony’s eldest son by Fulvia, he slew; the children of Antony and the Queen he spared and sent to Italy, where Octavia reared them as if they were her own. The victor found the Egyptian treasury intact and as abundant as he had dreamed. Egypt escaped the indignity of being named a Roman province; Octavian merely mounted the throne of the Ptolemies, succeeded to their possessions, and left a praefectus to administer the country in his name. Caesar’s heir had conquered those of Alexander, and absorbed Alexander’s realm; the West again, as at Marathon and Magnesia, had triumphed over the East. The battle of the giants was over, and an invalid had won.
The Republic died at Pharsalus; the revolution ended at Actium. Rome had completed the fatal cycle known to Plato and to us: monarchy, aristocracy, oligarchic exploitation, democracy, revolutionary chaos, dictatorship. Once more, in the great systole and diastole of history, an age of freedom ended and an age of discipline began.
* * *
I Cicero had said of Octavian: laudandum adolescentem, ornandum, tollendum—“the boy is to be praised, decorated, and exalted”; but tollendum also meant “to be killed.”6
BOOK III
THE PRINCIPATE
30 B.C.-A.D. 192
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE
B.C.
30:
Octavian receives tribunician power for life; Horace’s 2nd book of Satires
29:
Virgil’s Georgics; Horace’s Epodes
27:
Octavian becomes Augustus
27-A.D. 68:
JULIO-CLAUDIAN DYNASTY
27-A.D. 14:
Principate of Augustus
25:
Agrippa’s Pantheon; fl. Tibullus
23:
First 3 books of Horace’s Odes
20:
First book of Horace’s Epistles
19:
Death of Virgil; fl. Propertius
18:
Lex lulia de adulteriis
13:
Theater of Marcellus; fourth book of Horace’s Odes
12-9:
Campaigns of Drusus in Germany; Tiberius subjugates Pannonia
9:
Fl. Livy; Ara Pacis of Augustus
8:
Death of Maecenas and Horace
6:
Tiberius in Rhodes
2:
Banishment of Julia
A.D. 4:
Augustus adopts Tiberius
8:
Ovid banished to Tomi
9:
Defeat of Varus in Germany; lex Papia Poppaea and lex lulia de maritandis ordinibus
14:
Death of Augustus
14-37:
Principate of Tiberius
14-16:
Germanicus and Drusus in Germany
17-18:
Germanicus in the Near East
18:
Death of Ovid
19:
Death of Germanicus; trial of Piso
20:
Lex maiestatis; rise of informers
23-31:
Rule of Sejanus
27:
Tiberius settles at Capraea
29:
Death of Livia; banishment of Agrippina
30:
Fl. Celsus, encyclopedist
31:
Death of Sejanus
37-41:
Principate of Gaius (Caligula)
41-54:
Principate of Claudius
41-49:
Exile of Seneca
43:
Conquest of Britain
48:
Death of Messalina; Claudius marries Agrippina the Younger
49:
Seneca praetor, and tutor to Nero
54-68:
Principate of Nero
55:
Seneca dedicates De Clementia to Nero; Nero poisons Britannicus
59:
Nero orders death of his mother Agrippina
62:
Fall of Seneca; death of Persius; Nero kills Octavia and marries Poppaea
64:
Burning of Rome; first persecution of Christians in Rome
A.D.
65:
Execution of Seneca and Lucan
66:
Death of Petronius and Thrasea Paetus
68-69:
Principate of Galba
69 (Jan.-Apr.):
Principate of Otho
69 (July-Dec):
Principate of Vitellius
69-96:
FLAVIAN DYNASTY
69-79:
Principate of Vespasian
70:
The Colosseum; Quintilian fills first state professorship
71:
Vespasian banishes philosophers
72:
Suicide of Helvidius Priscus
79-81:
Principate of Titus
79:
Eruption of Vesuvius; death of the elder Pliny
81:
Arch of Titus
81-96:
Principate of Domitian; fl. Martial and Statius
81-84:
Campaigns of Agricola in Britain
93:
Persecution of Jews, Christians, and philosophers
96-98:
Principate of Nerva
98:
Tacitus consul
98-117:
Principate of Trajan
101-2:
Trajan’s first war against the Dacians
105:
Tacitus’ Histories
105-7:
Trajan’s second war against the Dacians
111:
Pliny the Younger curator of Bithynia
113:
Forum and column of Trajan
114-6:
Trajan’s campaigns against Parthia
116:
Tacitus’ Annals; Juvenal’s Satires
117-38:
Principate of Hadrian
119:
Suetonius’ Lives of the Caesars
121-34:
Hadrian’s tour of the Empire
134:
Fl. Salvius Julianus, jurist
138-61:
Principate of Antoninus Pius
139:
Mausoleum of Hadrian
161-80:
Principate of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
161-9:
Co-reign of Lucius Verus
161:
Institutiones of Gaius
162-5:
War against Parthia
166-7:
Plague spreads through the Empire
166-80:
War with the Marcomanni
174 (?):
Marcus writes the Meditations
175:
Rebellion of Avidius Cassius
180:
Death of Marcus Aurelius
180-92:
Principate of Commodus
183:
Conspiracy of Lucilla
185:
Execution of Perennis
189:
Famine; execution of Cleander
190:
Pertinax, prefect
193
(Jan. 1): Murder of Commodus
CHAPTER XI
Augustan Statesmanship
30 B.C..-A.D. 14
I. THE ROAD TO MONARCHY
FROM Alexandria Octavian passed to Asia and continued the reallotment of kingdoms and provinces. Not till the summer of 29 did he reach Italy. There almost all classes welcomed and feted him as a savior and joined in a triumph that lasted three days. The Temple of Janus was closed as a sign that for a moment Mars had had his fill. The lusty peninsula was worn out with twenty years of civil war. Its farms had been neglected, its towns had been sacked or besieged, much of its wealth had been stolen or destroyed. Administration and protection had broken
down; robbers made every street unsafe at night; highwaymen roamed the roads, kidnaped travelers, and sold them into slavery. Trade diminished, investment stood still, interest rates soared, property values fell. Morals, which had been loosened by riches and luxury, had not been improved by destitution and chaos, for few conditions are more demoralizing than poverty that comes after wealth. Rome was full of men who had lost their economic footing and then their moral stability: soldiers who had tasted adventure and had learned to kill; citizens who had seen their savings consumed in the taxes and inflation of war and waited vacuously for some returning tide to lift them back to affluence; women dizzy with freedom, multiplying divorces, abortions, and adulteries. Childlessness was spreading as the ideal of a declining vitality; and a shallow sophistication prided itself upon its pessimism and cynicism. This was not a full picture of Rome, but a dangerous disease burning in its blood. On the sea piracy had returned, rejoicing in the suicide of states. Cities and provinces licked their wounds after the successive exactions of Sulla, Lucullus, Pompey, Gabinius, Caesar, Brutus, Cassius, Antony, and Octavian. Greece, which had been the battlefield, was ruined; Egypt was despoiled; the Near East had fed a hundred armies and bribed a thousand generals; their peoples hated Rome as a master who had destroyed their freedom without giving them security or peace. What if some leader should arise among them, discover the exhaustion of Italy, and unite them in another war of liberation against Rome?
