Princeton (2026) h/b 248 pp £30 (ISBN 978691257877)
As today we see an initially limited war spill over into wider regional conflict, it’s timely to look again at the international dimension to what we think of as Rome’s civil war. T. reminds us in this new study that the power struggles of the second triumvirate eventually embraced the whole of the Mediterranean, Spain, Gaul, the Adriatic, the Balkans and North Africa, as well as much of what we now know as the Middle East.
Rome was expanding anyway, of course, and had Caesar lived he would have undoubtedly consolidated its grip on the outer edges such as Spain and Britain and the North African littoral. Indeed, he was preparing his campaign, just days before his assassination, to avenge the Parthians’ defeat of Crassus at Carrhae (53 BC). It’s certainly worth recalling, before we get transfixed by the later stereotyping between Octavian in the West and Antony in the East, that Caesar had already been as far west as Cadiz and was mulling a return to Britain; that he had taken a large army to Egypt and the Nile, and that he was planning further campaigns in the Balkans against the Dacians. Already his opponents feared he might even be envisaging a new capital further east—in Alexandria or Troy.
T. recalls evidence (later disputed) that Caesar had commissioned a new geographical survey, appointing surveyors for each of his new world’s four ‘continents’ (Gaul, Pontus, Africa, Egypt). His was to be the ultimate geo-strategic campaign. After dealing with the Getae and the Parthians he planned to circle back to Rome via Northern Italy and Gaul. Already granted dictatura perpetua at home, outside the Republic he really would then be ‘world king’.
His assassination, of course, postponed all this, and resulted instead in ten years of brutal and continuous civil war. Though the major players were well known —Brutus and Cassius in the East, Sextus Pompey in the south, Antony and Lepidus in Gaul—T. brings a cast of important secondary figures to the fore: Arabio and King Bogos in north Africa, Dolabella in Syria and Cilicia, Artawazd in Armenia. Key battles were often won by generals on behalf of their principals: Agrippa for Octavian in the west, Ventidius for Antony in the east.
There were regional issues, too, that affected the course of the civil war, often the legacy of Caesar’s previous campaigns: many eastern cities objected to paying taxes and reparations to Antony, those in the west were being constantly destabilised by local warlords, and throughout there was unrest about land being allocated to veterans. Many of the future empire’s borderlands, too, including even cisalpine Gaul, remained to be fully ‘Romanized.
The second triumvirate, formalised in 43 BC, gave formal blessing to the hunting down of Caesar’s assassins. Unlike the first this was official: Antony, Octavian and Lepidus could appoint magistrates and governors, were given full control of their legions, and importantly with their imperium maius were unrestricted by territorial boundaries. The conspirators were listed, sentenced to death or exiled, and had their properties seized. The head of Cicero, no.1 on the list, ended up displayed on a table in Antony’s house.
Within a year Caesar was fully avenged with the final defeat of Cassius and Brutus at Philippi, and the triumvirs were back in Rome, resettling their legions and flexing their constitutional powers. But Crassus, of course, remained unavenged. Though not named as Caesar’s heir, it was Antony who was twenty years Octavian’s senior and had served in the east before, who seized the opportunity. He set off to secure the Balkans and the support of Athens. Here T. properly cautions us against later Augustan propaganda against Antony’s ‘orientalism’. Yes, he spoke Greek and was probably accompanied, on a long campaign, by various musicians and artists. But the alliance he successfully negotiated with Cleopatra, whatever its personal attraction, served his strategic interests in Cilicia and Egypt. With client kings squared across the region Antony was ready for his first tilt at the Parthians at Palmyra.
Back home Rome was suffering: there were serious food shortages as a result of of Sextus’ maritime blockade and of the rival armies’ needs. The last elements of Caesarism ended with the slaughter of several hundred senators and equestrians at Perugia (40 BC). Octavian and Antony began to collaborate to put an end to conflict on the Italian mainland and to try to lift the blockade.
Slowly the triumvirate began to formalise their centres of interest: Octavian in the west and Italy, Lepidus in Africa, and Antony everywhere to the east. Sextus was reined in: in return for lifting the blockade and letting grain through, he would retain control of Sicily, Sardinia and the Peloponnese. Agreements were sealed with marriages, veterans repatriated and legions re-allocated to build up Antony’s firepower for the coming campaign.
Had Antony succeeded in the east, he would of course have strengthened his position to challenge Octavian. But he didn’t: after manoeuvring around the Caucasus, he challenged the Parthians but withdrew from decisive battle, losing 20-30,000 men rather than risk outright defeat. Octavian, meantime, was winning everywhere: he incorporated cisalpine Gaul, recovered the standards lost in Dalmatia, and subdued Pannonia. At home his key lieutenant Agrippa was installing aqueducts and rebuilding Rome.
As the second term of the triumvirate ran out, Octavian’s supporters could highlight the contrast. Octavian doing his duty as Caesar’s heir in stabilising Italy, ending internal wars and reviving Rome’s economic prosperity; Antony behaving as a Hellenistic sovereign, adopting oriental dress and customs, sending Armenian booty back to Alexandria and allocating newly conquered lands to Cleopatra’s children. We cannot know, T. suggests, whether Caesar himself would not have been equally intoxicated by success in the east.
The final showdown between these two superpowers was of course the battle of Actium (31 BC), fought near modern day Preveza in western Greece. Agrippa had the larger fleet, and control of the key ports nearby. Cleopatra and Antony escaped to Egypt, pursued by Octavian. Their suicide marked the end of the republic, and the beginning of the principate, quickly celebrated by the Augustan propagandists as the triumph of Rome over the East. The Parthians, of course, were still there…
T.’s book is useful in illustrating the international dimension to what we shouldn’t any longer call just a civil war. That said, he has a very broad canvas to cover, there is little sense of an overarching thesis, and it’s easy to get lost as timelines and geographies sometimes ebb and flow between his chapters.
Sir Michael Fallon
Founder of the original UK All-Party Classics Group