Antony and Cleopatra (44 page)

An even more startling blow came shortly afterwards when Agrippa captured Patrae, then Corinth itself. More of Antony's ships and stores were taken, but as importantly the enemy now dominated the waters around the west coast of Greece. The supply route bringing grain from Egypt was effectively severed, destroying one of the main props for his strategy. Food ran short in Antony's camp at Actium, which in turn worsened the damage done by disease. Orders were sent out to confiscate food from the cities of Greece. Plutarch's great-grandfather recalled how his home city of Chaeronea was forced to provide grain. There were nowhere near enough animals to transport the heavy sacks and so the citizens were compelled to carry them on their backs, urged on by blows from Antony's men.
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By late summer the situation for Antony at Actium was only getting worse, and for a while he considered marching away from the coast and taking the war inland. Dellius and a Thracian nobleman were sent to Macedonia and Thrace to recruit new contingents of auxiliaries and also to explore this possibility. It would have meant abandoning the ships in the harbour, unless these could break out. Antony for a while also led a force inland. Encouragement came when Sosius managed to attack an isolated squadron of enemy ships and defeat them, but on the way back he was caught by Agrippa and badly beaten. The blockade remained in place. Antony returned to Actium, but was himself beaten in another cavalry action. Plutarch claims that at one point he narrowly avoided capture by an ambush set by Octavian's men.
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Morale plummeted in Antony's camp and a visible sign was the abandonment of the smaller camp. The entire army withdrew to the original, highly unhealthy site. The situation looked desperate and the troops despaired of his ability to do anything to change this. Domitius Ahenobarbus left in a small rowing boat and joined Octavian, but was already ill and died soon afterwards. Antony made the same gesture Caesar had done to Labienus, by sending Ahenobarbus' baggage after him. Dellius – who had in the past twice managed to quit a losing cause before the end came – also left. He claimed that Cleopatra was plotting against him, because he had joked about the poor quality of the wine served at a feast, compared to the ‘best Falernian' vintages drunk at the table of Sarmentus. The latter was a freed slave, famed for his good looks and willingness to exploit them, who had risen to the equestrian order and become an intimate of Maecenas, and through him of Octavian.
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As well as a number of senators, client monarchs also began to change sides. Octavian was joined by the rulers of Paphlagonia and Galatia, the latter bringing 2,000 cavalrymen with him. Increasingly distrustful and suspicious of his subordinates, Antony ordered the execution of a senator and an Arab king, as well as other unnamed men. By the end of August it was clear that nothing was to be gained by remaining where he was. His army and fleet were dwindling. There were now barely enough crew to man some 230-240 warships and many of the rowers were recent conscripts.
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The legions had also suffered, but remained a formidable force, and Canidius argued that it was best to abandon the fleet and move inland. Antony disagreed and decided to break out by sea, leaving Canidius to march the army to safety. Ancient sources saw this as part of his obsession for Cleopatra. Some of the ships were hers and, most importantly, her treasury was probably too bulky to carry away over land. Modern scholars tend to strain every nerve to justify Antony's decision, the most optimistic arguing that he still hoped to win a decisive battle at sea, while most simply see the breakout as the best option of continuing the war. A few realistically point out that he had already lost the campaign. For other Romans, there could be no doubt that Antony failed as a commander at Actium. A good Roman general never gave in and rallied as much of his force as possible, leading them away to renew the conflict at a later stage. This was the
virtus
expected of a Roman aristocrat. Abandoning his army, in the hope that a subordinate would lead them in an escape, was against all the values of his class.

Bad weather delayed the breakout for several days. All of the ships that could not be crewed were burnt. It was sensible to prevent them from falling into enemy hands, but was also a clear sign of desperation and despair. Cleopatra with some sixty or so ships remained in reserve, carrying her money and courtiers. The remainder were formed into three squadrons, with the left wing commanded by Sosius, the centre by Antony supported by Marcus Insteius and Marcus Octavius — a distant relative of Octavian who had also fought for Pompey against Julius Caesar — and the right by Gellius Publicola. Cleopatra's ships, and probably some or all of the others, carried sails on board. This was unusual, since oars were the only effective way of controlling a galley in battle and masts were usually left onshore because of their bulk and encumbrance. It is harder to know whether the crews knew that the aim was to break out and not to fight. This was certainly kept secret from the legions to be left onshore. Some of these men were put on board the ships to act as marines, but their comrades were to be abandoned.

By this time Octavian had around 400 ships, some of them captured during the last months. Antony had a number of very large galleys — ‘tens' and ‘eights', although the bulk of his fleet were ‘fives' and ‘sixes' — giving him a slight advantage, but nowhere near enough to offset the enemy's superiority in numbers. Even more importantly, many of Agrippa's crews had years of experience – as vital for teams of rowers to perform effectively as for captains to control their vessels. They deployed in a shallow arc facing the enemy, with Agrippa on the left, Lucius Arruntius in command of the centre and Marcus Lurius on the right. Octavian was also on the right and would share the danger with his men, but wisely left control of the battle to Agrippa.
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On 2 September 31
BC
Antony's fleet came out of the Gulf of Ambracia. They formed up, and then the two sides faced each other for several hours. Neither wanted to fight too close inshore. Agrippa wanted the enemy to come further out, so that his more numerous ships would be able to envelop the enemy line. He seems to have dissuaded Octavian from an unlikely plan of letting the enemy through and then hitting them from the rear. Antony faced the problem of getting past the island of Leucas. For this he needed to wait for the afternoon, when usually a wind picked up blowing north-north-west. To outpace the enemy, Antony's ships would need the wind behind them and enough room to clear Leucas. This meant that they needed to be some distance out to sea when the wind changed to the right direction.
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Halfway through the day the wind began to veer and Antony at last gave the signal for a general advance. Agrippa still wanted more sea room, so instructed his own ships to back water, rowing away from the enemy. Only once he was satisfied that there was space to threaten the enemy's flanks, did he give the signal to attack. The opposing fleets closed and then the fighting broke down into contests between one or two ships on either side. Ramming was rarely very effective against the bigger galleys used by both sides. More effective were missiles fired from the deck and from the raised towers carried in battle by most warships, and by boarding. Larger ships could be dealt with if attacked by more than one smaller vessels.

Agrippa struggled to envelop the enemy right and Antony's squadron commander Publicola moved away from the centre to prevent this. The Antonian ships eventually formed a rough line at an angle to the rest of their fleet as they tried to fend off Agrippa. In the centre, large gaps had opened as these manoeuvres took place. At this point, Cleopatra's squadron hoisted sail and headed for this space. Once they were far enough out to take advantage of the wind, they began to move too fast to ram or board, for at these speeds ships did not manoeuvre quickly. However, more importantly they were moving too fast for the enemy to have much chance of intercepting them.

Antony saw them go and left his flagship – one of the great ‘tens'-and transferred by rowing boat to a smaller ‘five', which presumably had not yet been engaged or was otherwise in better shape. This, too, hoisted sail and followed the queen. Some of his other warships were able to go with him. Agrippa's ships were not carrying masts and sails so had little chance of catching them, apart from the need to keep fighting the remaining enemy vessels. Only two ships were intercepted and taken, and perhaps some seventy to eighty galleys managed to escape with Antony and Cleopatra. At least two-thirds of the fleet was left behind. Fighting continued for some time, although the scale and intensity of the combat is hotly debated.
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Octavian's propaganda exaggerated the ferocity of the struggle to overcome Antony's larger ships. There certainly was some fighting and the stories of Agrippa's crews using burning projectiles to set fire to the enemy vessels appear in several sources and are probably true. Plutarch says that there were 5,000 casualties, but is not explicit as to whether these were combined losses for both sides, or only those suffered by Antony's fleet. Most scholars, as usual inclined to be bloodthirsty, see this as a low figure, and this convinces them that the fighting was limited. That is possible, although it is equally possible that in a battle fought not far from the shore many crews of sunken ships were saved from drowning — we read, for instance, that Sextus Pompey had an organised rescue service using small boats.
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Some of Antony's warships were sunk or burnt. Others eventually surrendered. A significant number backed water and re-entered the Gulf of Ambracia. Agrippa's men may have let them go, feeling it was not worth taking casualties to destroy ships that were still under a blockade, which they were incapable of breaking. Canidius led the army inland, but supplies would soon run short and there was nowhere for them to go. Even if they had reached the coast somewhere away from the enemy, there were no ships to evacuate them. These were Antony's legions. They did not fight for a cause, but for a general who had rewarded them generously in the past and promised more in the future. Now, that commander had abandoned them and there was no reason for them to suffer and die on his behalf. In spite of Canidius, army officers began to negotiate with Octavian, who was generous. Several legions were preserved, the soldiers from the remainder were either posted to serve in one of his legions or, if they were due for discharge, were to be given land as part of his veteran settlement. Canidius fled.
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Antony had abandoned the bulk of his fleet at Actium. The army he left behind had changed sides within a week. All that remained was a third of his fleet, and the legionaries serving on board as marines. These were only a small minority of his legionaries and the number may have been less if Cleopatra's vessels had not been reinforced in this way. The queen's treasure had been saved, but neither this nor all the revenue she might extract from her kingdom in future would be able to replace the legions and fleet he had lost.

It may well have made sense to get the queen and her money away from the blockade at Actium. Yet there was no need for Antony to follow her if that was the sole aim of the battle. It is unlikely that even his presence could have allowed his outnumbered warships to defeat the enemy. Yet the remainder of the fleet might have withdrawn to the harbour in better order, saving more of the crews and the embarked legionaries. If Antony in person had led the army away from the coast then the soldiers were far more likely to have remained loyal. There was even the remote possibility that he could have fought and won a decisive battle to turn the campaign around, just as Caesar had done at Pharsalus. If not, then he might just have managed to withdraw. At the very least he would have put up a struggle, refusing to admit defeat in a properly Roman way.

Instead, Antony fled, having sacrificed the lives of some of his men to make his escape and leaving the rest to their fate. Worse still, he had run to be with his mistress. Some sources later blamed her for treachery, claiming that the cowardly eastern woman had been willing to abandon even her own lover to escape herself. This was mere propaganda, for it is clear – not least from the fact that the ships were carrying masts and sails – that the manoeuvre was premeditated. What is less clear is whether the intention was for the entire fleet to escape, or whether they were simply to create a path for Cleopatra and her squadron. The former seems more likely. If the latter was consciously planned, then Mark Antony had already effectively conceded defeat in the struggle with Octavian.

Cleopatra, or whoever actually led the squadron, in fact displayed considerable coolness rather than panic in waiting for the right moment and then finding the gap in the battle lines. This required some courage, but it remains true that in every respect Antony and Cleopatra's plan was self-centred. They saved their own skins — and her treasure — without apparently giving any thought to the men they left behind, the soldiers and sailors enlisted to fight and perhaps die on their behalf.
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