Who won the Battle of Actium?
Octavian won the Battle of Actium on 2 September 31 BC, when his fleet under Agrippa broke the combined force of Mark Antony and Cleopatra off the west coast of Greece. The victory ended the last war of the Roman Republic and cleared Octavian's path to rule alone as Augustus, the first Roman emperor.1
On 2 September 31 BC, off the western coast of Greece, the last war of the Roman Republic was decided at sea. The fleet of Octavian, commanded by his admiral Agrippa, broke the combined force of Mark Antony and Cleopatra of Egypt. Within a few years Octavian would rule alone as Augustus, the first Roman emperor.2
The last civil war
After the murder of Julius Caesar, the Roman world had been carved up between his heirs. Antony and Octavian fought side by side against the assassins at Philippi, but in the end it came down to a rivalry between two men: Octavian in the west, and Antony in the east, bound to Cleopatra and the wealth of Egypt. Rome was told it faced not a civil war but a foreign queen, and the propaganda did its work.3
The trap of the gulf
Agrippa outmaneuvered Antony at sea and cut his supply lines, penning his fleet inside the Ambracian Gulf (see the map below). Trapped through the summer, Antony's crews were thinned by hunger and disease, and desertion spread through his camp before a blow was struck.4
How Agrippa won the war of Actium before the battle
The war of Actium lasted months, not an afternoon. Antony had brought his fleet and army west to Greece and wintered there with his ships spread along the coast. By spring his crews, raised from many different peoples, had not trained together, and disease and desertion had thinned them. Octavian's admiral Marcus Agrippa struck first. He stormed Methone in the southwest Peloponnese, killing Bogud, a former Mauretanian king fighting for Antony, then preyed on the merchant ships bringing in supplies and raided the Greek coast.5
Octavian then carried his army across the Ionian Sea from Brundisium, took Corcyra and came south to the mouth of the Ambracian Gulf, where most of Antony's fleet lay at anchor. He fortified the high ground on the north side of the strait, where the city of Nicopolis would later stand, and ran walls down to the harbor below.6
Plutarch preserves Cleopatra's joke when news came that Octavian had seized a place called Toryne, which means "ladle": what was so dreadful, she asked, about Caesar sitting at a ladle? Antony's men camped on the low, broad ground beside the sanctuary of Apollo on the southern shore of the strait. Dio says it suited a battle better than a camp, and disease spread there all through the summer.7
Over the summer Agrippa tightened the ring. He seized Leucas and the ships there, beat Antony's admiral Quintus Nasidius at sea to take Patrae, and then took Corinth. On land Antony's cavalry was beaten. Then his allies began to slip away. Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus, consul the year before, crossed to Octavian in a small boat while sick with fever, and Antony sent his baggage, friends and servants after him. The client kings Amyntas of Galatia and Deiotarus went over too. Antony grew suspicious of everyone, had Iamblichus, an Arabian king, tortured and put to death, and feared that Quintus Dellius would desert as well, which he did.8
Who commanded at Actium?
Octavian was in overall command, but the battle at sea was run by his admiral, Marcus Agrippa. Antony led his own fleet in person from its right wing, while Cleopatra's sixty ships were posted behind his battle line. Taurus commanded Octavian's army ashore and Canidius commanded Antony's, and Plutarch says the armies stood along the shore and stayed quiet.9
Plutarch gives the line in detail. Antony and Publicola held the right, Coelius the left, and Marcus Octavius and Marcus Insteius the center; Octavian placed Agrippa on his left and kept the right for himself, and in the fighting Antony's center clashed with Arruntius. Velleius Paterculus tells it differently. In his account Lurius had Octavian's right and Arruntius the left, Agrippa directed the whole sea fight, and Antony's fleet was led by Publicola and Sosius. The two versions cannot be fully reconciled.10
How many ships fought at Actium?
No one knows exactly, and the ancient figures disagree. Plutarch gives Antony at least 500 warships and Octavian 250. Florus reverses the balance, with more than 400 for Octavian and fewer than 200 for Antony. Orosius gives Octavian 230 ships with rams plus 30 without, against 170 for Antony. Antony also burned part of his own fleet before the battle.11
| Source | Octavian | Antony and Cleopatra |
|---|---|---|
| Plutarch, Life of Antony 61 | 250 warships | at least 500 warships (whole war) |
| Florus, Epitome 2.21 | more than 400 | fewer than 200, but far larger |
| Orosius, Histories 6.19 | 230 with rams, plus 30 without | 170 |
Figures as each source gives them; Plutarch's count covers the whole war, before Antony burned his surplus ships.12
Plutarch's figures cover the whole war. He gives Antony no fewer than 500 fighting ships, many of them huge vessels with eight or ten banks of oars, plus 100,000 infantry and 12,000 cavalry, with kings from Libya to Thrace and Pontus at his side. Octavian had 250 warships, 80,000 infantry and about as many horsemen as his enemy.13
Antony's big ships were short of rowers, and his captains pressed travelers, mule drivers and harvesters on the Greek roads into service. Before the battle he burned all the Egyptian ships except sixty and manned the largest and best, from triremes up to "tens," with 20,000 legionaries and 2,000 archers.14
Florus explains the gap in numbers by size: Antony's ships had six to nine banks of oars and towers that made them look like floating castles, while Octavian's had two to six and were far easier to handle. Orosius adds that Antony's ships rose ten feet out of the water, and that Octavian put eight legions and five praetorian cohorts aboard his fleet.15
How the battle was fought
For four days a strong wind kept the sea too rough for battle, and on the fifth it fell calm. At first Antony's ships lay so still in the narrows that Octavian thought they were at anchor and held his own line about eight furlongs away. Around the sixth hour a wind rose from the sea, Antony's left wing moved out, and Octavian ordered his right to back water to draw the enemy farther from the strait.16
The fighting did not look like a classic sea battle. Antony's heavy ships could not build up the speed to ram, and Octavian's lighter ships dared not strike their armored sides, so three or four of them closed on one big ship and fought it like soldiers storming a walled town. Dio adds that Octavian finally sent for fire from his camp and burned ships he had hoped to capture with their treasure. Antony's fleet held out until the tenth hour. His land army, nineteen legions and 12,000 horse, waited seven days for him to come back, then went over to Octavian after its general Canidius slipped away by night.17
Did Cleopatra flee or break out at Actium?
The ancient writers present it as panic, but their accounts show a plan. Plutarch says the sails were taken aboard and Dio that valuables were loaded in secret before the battle, so modern historians often read Actium as a planned breakout to Egypt. It saved Cleopatra, her treasury and about sixty ships, but cost Antony his fleet and army.18
Both main accounts are hostile to Cleopatra, which makes their details more telling. Plutarch says she was already thinking of flight and placed her squadron where it could most easily get away. He also says Antony made the ships' masters carry their sails on board, claiming he wanted to catch any enemy who ran. That order matters. Ships cleared for battle fought under oars, and Dio notes that Octavian's ships could not chase the fugitives because they had no sails with them.19
Dio goes further. At a council of war, he says, Cleopatra won the argument to leave garrisons in the key positions and take the rest back to Egypt, disguising the departure as preparation for a sea fight, and the most valuable possessions were put aboard secretly by night.20
Yet when Dio reaches the battle itself, he falls back on the old stereotype. Cleopatra, he writes, could not bear the suspense "as a woman and an Egyptian" and suddenly fled, and Antony followed because he thought her ships were running in defeat.21
In Plutarch her sixty ships hoist sail and cut through the battle line, making for the Peloponnese on the wind, while Antony jumps into a five-banked galley and goes after her. Plutarch also notes that a wind rose from the sea around midday, just what a fleet under sail needed. Whether the plan was to fight first and run only if the battle went badly, or to run from the start, the result was the same. The queen and her treasury got away. Antony's legions did not.22
How long did the Battle of Actium last?
Most of a day and into the night. Plutarch says the fleets began to close around the sixth hour, about midday, and that Antony's ships gave up the struggle at the tenth hour. Suetonius says the fighting went on so late that Octavian spent the night aboard ship, and Orosius that the victory was completed only at dawn.23
Orosius gives the fullest timetable. From the fifth to the seventh hour, he writes, the battle hung in the balance with heavy slaughter on both sides, and the rest of the day and the following night turned it in Octavian's favor.24
How many died at the Battle of Actium?
The figures are uncertain. Octavian himself wrote, as Plutarch reports, that no more than 5,000 men died and that 300 ships were captured. Orosius gives a heavier toll for the losing side: 12,000 killed and 6,000 wounded, of whom 1,000 died while their wounds were being treated. Neither figure can be checked.25
Velleius Paterculus praises the victor's mercy: by his account no one was executed, and only a handful of men went into exile.26
What happened after the Battle of Actium?
Antony and Cleopatra escaped to Egypt, but their cause collapsed within a year. Antony's army and allies went over to Octavian, and in August 30 BC Octavian took Alexandria. Antony and Cleopatra both took their own lives, Egypt became a Roman province, and Octavian was left master of the Roman world.27
Plutarch says Antony spent three days alone in the prow of his ship, too angry or too ashamed to face Cleopatra, before they put in at Taenarum. Cleopatra hurried on to Egypt ahead of the news. Dio says she sailed in with garlands on her prows and songs of triumph, as if she had won, for fear her subjects would revolt if they heard of the disaster first.28
From Actium to Alexandria: how Antony and Cleopatra died
Octavian did not go after the pair at once. He first had to settle Greece and calm a mutiny of veterans in Italy. When winter was over he closed on Egypt from two directions, marching through Syria while his generals came through Libya. At Alexandria, on 1 August 30 BC, Antony watched from the hills as his last fleet rowed out, saluted Octavian's crews with raised oars and changed sides. His cavalry deserted the same morning and his infantry was beaten.29
Cleopatra shut herself inside her tomb and sent word that she was dead. Antony believed it and stabbed himself in the belly. The wound was slow to kill. Told that she was alive after all, he had himself carried to the tomb, was hauled up to a window on ropes, and died there with her.31
Cleopatra was taken alive soon afterward, but she denied Octavian his chance to parade her in a triumph. Plutarch tells the famous story of an asp smuggled in with a basket of figs, then admits that "the truth of the matter no one knows": others spoke of poison hidden in a hollow comb. She was 39. Octavian had Caesarion, her son by Julius Caesar, caught and killed, but spared and raised her children by Antony, and he made Egypt a Roman province.32
How did Octavian become Augustus?
In stages. In August 29 BC he celebrated three triumphs on three successive days, for Dalmatia, for Actium and for Egypt. Then, in his sixth and seventh consulships, 28 and 27 BC, he formally handed the state back to the Senate and the Roman people, and the Senate in return voted him the name Augustus.33
Dio says he would have liked to be called Romulus but dropped the idea because it suggested kingship, and took instead a title that set him above ordinary men, since the most sacred things were called augusta. In Dio's judgment the people and the Senate kept no real power after this, and Rome had become a monarchy in all but name. For Actium's place in Rome's longer story, see our guide to the greatest battles of ancient Rome.34
Nicopolis and the poets: how Actium became a legend
Octavian made sure Actium would never be forgotten. Dio says the years of his sole rule were reckoned from the day of the battle, 2 September 31 BC. He dedicated a captured ship of every class, from a trireme up to a "ten," to Apollo of Actium, enlarged the god's temple and founded the Actian Games, held every four years. On the site of his camp he founded a new city, Nicopolis, "Victory City."35
Above the city, where his tent had stood, he laid a platform of squared stone, decorated it with the bronze rams of captured warships and set an open-air shrine on top. Its remains still stand on the hill above the ruins of Nicopolis.36
Some three dozen rams, decreasing in size, once lined the front of the podium beneath a Latin inscription about 48 meters long. It records that Imperator Caesar, son of the deified Julius, victorious in the war he waged for the republic in this region, "with peace won on land and sea," consecrated the camp to Mars and Neptune. Suetonius adds that he set up bronze statues there of a man and his donkey whom he had met on the morning of the battle, with names that meant "Lucky" and "Victor."37
The poets finished the work. On the shield that Vulcan forges for Aeneas in book 8 of the Aeneid, Virgil puts the "Actian war" at the center: Augustus leading the Italians with the senate and people, Agrippa with his fleet, Antony with the wealth of the East and, the shame of it, an Egyptian wife, while Apollo of Actium bends his bow over the scene.38
Horace greeted the news of Cleopatra's death with "Nunc est bibendum," "now is the time to drink," and called her a "fatale monstrum," a deadly portent, yet closed his ode with grudging praise for a queen too proud to be led in a triumph. That became the Actium Rome remembered: Italy's victory over an Eastern queen. For the commander who turned it into an empire, see our life of Augustus, and for Actium's place among the great sea fights, the greatest naval battles in history.39
Where was the Battle of Actium fought, and what is there today?
The battle was fought in the Ionian Sea off Actium, a promontory in the north of Acarnania on the west coast of Greece, at the narrow mouth of the Ambracian Gulf, now the Gulf of Arta. Nicopolis, the victory city Octavian founded on the opposite shore, lies in ruins about 6 km (4 miles) north of modern Preveza.40
Actium itself is now called Aktion. Nicopolis was settled with people from the cities of Epirus and Aetolia-Acarnania and with Italian colonists, had harbors on both the Ionian Sea and the gulf, and became the capital of the Roman province of Epirus. Its ruins are now an archaeological site of the Greek Ministry of Culture, and finds from the city are shown in the Archaeological Museum of Nikopolis at Preveza.41
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