Antony and Octavian
The assassination of Caesar set the stage for another civil war. The assassins of Caesar fled to Greece (43 BC), where they set about raising an army. Caesar’s former lieutenants, Marcus Antonius (Mark Antony) and C. Octavianus (Octavian, Caesar’s grand nephew and adopted son), and Aemilius Lepidus, formed the Second Triumvirate (this time a formal one, with the specified aim of “Settling the Constitution”), and carried out a widespread purge of thousands of senators and knights in Rome and throughout Italy, distributing the confiscated lands amongst their followers. Antony and Octavian then took an army to Greece in pursuit of Caesar’s assassins, and defeated them at Philippi (42).
After Philippi, the triumvirs divided the Roman world between them: Octavian took Italy, Gaul and Spain, Lepidus took Africa, and Antony took all the eastern provinces.
The Triumvirate almost immediately began to break down. When Lepidus proved restive at his small share, Octavian crushed him and stripped him even of that. He then skilfully used Antony’s infatuation with Cleopatra, queen of Egypt, to present him as an enemy of Rome’s true interests, and prepared for war.
The Final Round
This finally came in 31 BC, when the fleets of the two opposing sides met at Actium, off the Greek coast. Octavian won (thanks mainly to the generalship of his lieutenant, Vipsanius Agrippa), leaving Antony and Cleopatra to sail away and commit suicide in Egypt.
Octavian followed up his victory by occupying Egypt, which now became a part of the Roman empire – became, in fact, Octavian’s private estate.
The First Emperor
Octavian was now sole master of the Roman world, and for a few years experimented with various ways of ruling in a manner that would be acceptable to all parties. Finally, in 27 BC he took the name Augustus, and remodelled the constitution in such a way that kept the traditional forms of the Republic (senate, historic magistracies and so on) but in fact concentrated effective power (especially overwhelming military force) in his own hands. This “Augustan Settlement”, as it has been called, provided the Roman world with a framework of government which lasted more than two hundred years. Octavian, or Augustus as we should now call him, was thus the first of the long line of Roman emperors who were to rule the Roman world until…well, until AD 1453.
Article © TimeMaps 2007.
Last updated: 13th August 2007
