Cleopatra and Antony (29 page)

It was now to Octavian’s advantage to defer mass combat while Antony’s troops sweltered in the summer heat and caught malaria from the mosquitoes infecting the marshes and dysentery from the unsanitary conditions likely to affect any confined military camp where there was insufficient tide to wash away the feces and other waste.

These trying conditions understandably began to sap the strength and unity of Antony’s multinational army and navy. Antony now had to bring in what supplies he could on the backs of local men press-ganged for the purpose. Lashed on with long whips by Antony’s overseers, they struggled over the rugged mountain tracks from the nearest supply point. Among the locals was an ancestor of Plutarch—a fact that cannot have raised Antony in the historian’s esteem. To try to break the deadlock, Antony ordered part of his army to march round the shores of the gulf to the northern side and, once encamped there, to launch probing attacks, partly to try to cut off Octavian’s water supplies and partly to provoke Octavian to battle. Antony may even have had the idea of attempting to cut off Octavian’s camp from the north and, in turn, to put him under siege if all went well. It did not.

Antony’s cavalry were defeated in a major skirmish in which Octavian’s troops were led by Titius, a man who had only recently deserted from Antony and been rewarded with a consulship. As a consequence of this new setback, two of Antony’s client kings defected to Octavian with their men. When one attempted to curry favor with Octavian by abusing Antony, Octavian told him curtly, “I like treason but I don’t like traitors.”

The desertions were more damaging to the morale of Antony’s army than they were in strategic terms; more seriously, Agrippa’s fleet was already capturing further ports in Antony’s rear, thus lengthening his overland supply routes. Agrippa’s greatest success was in capturing Patras and encouraging Eurycles, ruler of Sparta, one of Antony’s client states, to go over to Octavian—a decision he found easy since Antony had executed his father for piracy.

Reports of these amphibious actions in their rear, together with the worsening disease within the camp and the trickle of desertions, further eroded the morale of Antony’s men. However, worse were the continuing differences within the leadership of Antony’s forces between the remnants of the Roman republican faction led by Enobarbus and those who supported, or at least hoped to benefit from, the nebulous idea of an eastern Mediterranean empire being developed by Cleopatra and Antony. Even Antony’s client kings were not entirely happy. They had been affronted by the diminution of their status at the Donations of Alexandria, which had subjected them to the children of Cleopatra and Antony.

Soon, a sickly Enobarbus, “angered” by some new action of Cleopatra’s, decided that he stood no chance of weaning Antony from her to the republican virtues and had himself rowed in a small boat across the gulf to Octavian’s camp. Even though this “upset Antony a great deal,” he sent along after him all his equipment and retinue, despite Cleopatra’s protests, joking that Enobarbus clearly wanted to be in the arms of his mistress in Rome. He never reached them, dying almost immediately—probably not, as Plutarch claimed, “from the shame of his disloyalty and treachery” but more prosaically from dysentery or malaria, the fever from which he was suffering before he left Antony’s camp.

Even though Antony, “undermined in confidence and suspicious of everything,” made an example by executing two other would-be deserters, having one, a senator, torn apart by horses and subjecting the other, an Arab ruler, to torture, presumably to find out who else was wavering, Enobarbus’ was not the last defection. Antony needed quick, decisive and successful military action to prevent his forces—and with them his chances of victory—from dissipating through desertion and disease.

After an abortive attempt by the fleet to break out of the gulf, Canidius Crassus, Antony’s land commander, urged him to withdraw his army northeastward over the Pindos Mountains to Macedonia and Thrace, where he could recruit further troops and face Octavian with a good chance of success. Although previously a vocal advocate of Cleopatra’s presence in the camp, he now recommended to Antony that he send her home to Egypt.

The surviving accounts of the campaign (by Dio Cassius and Plutarch) record almost nothing of Cleopatra until this time. Two of the most significant glimpses of her are in the form of jokes. In the first, when Octavian’s forces, in their initial advance from the Greek coast, captured a place called Toryne, whose name can mean “ladle” or “stirring spoon,” she punned, “What is so terrible in Octavian sitting on a ladle?”—a joke that in translation at least says more for her courage than for her fabled wit. (In Cleopatra’s defense, some scholars suggest that
toryne
was also a slang word for “penis,” investing the joke with a cruder but more effective humor.) In the second incident, she was the target of a joke, or rather jibe, by Dellius, who upbraided her after they had been besieged that the wine they were now obliged to drink was sour, whereas even Sarmentus, a page at Octavian’s court, whom gossip alleged was also Octavian’s catamite, quaffed the best Italian vintages.

It is hard to comprehend the strength of character Cleopatra must have needed during her time at Actium, both as a woman and as the ruler of Egypt. As far as is known, none of the other leaders had their wives or mistresses with them as Antony had. There would have been no noblewomen other than those in her own retinue with whom she could discuss events. She had to be constantly alert to Antony’s moods, which were probably exacerbated by drink and the paranoia and depression it induced, not to mention the inactivity he so hated and a real consciousness of his declining fortunes.

Also, Cleopatra cannot but have been aware that she was a divisive force in the testosterone-charged camp, disliked and distrusted not only by the republicans but also by her fellow eastern rulers for her privileged status. At least as important as protecting her personal position, she had to protect the interests of her Egyptian kingdom, whose treasury was funding much of the war and much of whose treasure, in the form of gold and silver, was with her in the camp. Her fate and that of her family and her kingdom were inextricably linked to Antony’s. She could never succeed without him. Yet without her, Antony’s position, though weakened financially, would be enhanced politically.

There was, she knew, a valid alternative to Canidius’ strategy of abandoning the fleet and marching over the mountains to Macedonia. This was to load the ships with the best of the legionaries and all the treasure and head south toward Egypt, Syria and Libya, where there were at least seven legions to be added to the hardened core that got away with the fleet. Egypt was, as previous centuries had shown, easy to defend, and there they could recoup their strength. Those of Antony’s legions left ashore at Actium could march back overland as best they could, since if the fleet successfully broke out, Octavian and Agrippa’s best forces would be bound to follow it. Such a strategy had considerable advantages over the whole army marching to Macedonia. The latter would be risky in itself, and any victory, unless a complete rout, would be difficult to follow up because if Antony abandoned his ships in the gulf, Octavian would have absolute dominance of the sea.

Historical accounts don’t reveal whether Cleopatra made these arguments privately to Antony. However, they do record that she attended an army council where, presumably the only woman and surrounded by hostile, uniformed Romans, she put these arguments and succeeded in convincing Antony, who in turn carried most of his supporters with him. But Dellius, so adept at switching horses at the right time that one ancient writer called him “the circus rider of the civil wars,” went over to Octavian and disclosed Antony’s plans.

At around this time, Octavian ordered a commando squad to infiltrate Antony’s camp and attempt to capture or kill him as he walked down beside the palisades to the harbor accompanied by only a single member of his staff. However, they leapt from concealment too soon and, mistaking the staff officer for Antony, carried him off while Antony made his escape with less than dignified haste.

Before Antony and his commanders could attempt a breakout, they had to review the number of ships and rowers available to them. According to Plutarch, Antony had been reduced to “press-ganging from long-suffering Greece, travellers, mule drivers, reapers and boys not yet of military age” to man his vessels. Yet even so, disease, deprivation and desertion meant that there were more ships than rowers to man them. The ships had been lying at anchor for months and some were likely to have become unseaworthy through worm infestation or slow through the accumulation of barnacles and other marine life. Antony no doubt had as many of the best ships careened and rewaxed as he could in the time available and burned the worst. Then began the process of selecting which legions were to embark. Plutarch described how those chosen were reluctant: “an infantry centurion, covered with scars from very many battles for Antony, burst into tears as Antony was passing and said, ‘Imperator, why do you despise these wounds and this sword of mine and pin your hopes on wretched planks of wood. Let Egyptians and Phoenicians fight at sea but give us land, that is where we’re accustomed to stand.’ ”

It was equally important not to alarm the soldiers, including Antony’s elite legion, the Larks, into thinking that they would be left to fight their way alone over the mountains against superior forces. When galleys were prepared for battle, sails were usually left ashore to lighten the vessels and thus to make them more maneuverable as well as to free space for fighting men. However, on this occasion sails were needed, since it was a breakout that was intended and sails would allow a galley to make six knots in open waters while the rowers rested. When the legionaries spotted sails, spars and rigging being loaded aboard, Antony calmed their concerns by asserting that the added speed they would give would be necessary in a victorious pursuit so that not a single one of his enemies should escape. However, no one seems to have noticed Cleopatra’s preparations. Her treasure would have been stowed on her ships discreetly and her retinue taken aboard perhaps under cover of darkness.

At last all was ready, and on September 2, 31, the rowers bent their backs to the oars as Antony’s galleys began to move slowly through the water. The twenty thousand legionaries and two thousand auxiliaries aboard tugged nervously at their equipment, conscious that even if they could swim, if they fell into the water they would be impeded by their mail coats, which they could not discard without great risk of being wounded. After some initial maneuverings to get into formation, the ships headed slowly for the mouth of the gulf, past the encampments and fortifications of the fifty thousand or so troops who had been left to fight their way out as best they could under Canidius Crassus. As they emerged into the open sea, Antony’s ships deployed into four squadrons, three of which, containing a total of perhaps 230 ships, formed a double line stretching from one shore to the other in order to protect the fourth squadron, the sixty or so Egyptian ships which were positioned to their rear.

Octavian’s four hundred ships, with perhaps as many as forty thousand legionaries on board, had been early to sea and formed up in an opposing line. He stationed his vessels some way to the seaward of Antony, anxious to lure him further forward and thus to lessen his chances of retreating back into the gulf if necessary.

At first, very little happened as the seminaked rowers rested on their oars, sweating as the heat rose in the airless confines of the rowing decks. While the conditions that day were not recorded, by noon at that time of year the temperature can easily exceed 90° Fahrenheit (33° Celsius) and the difference in the temperature of the air over the sea and land produces an onshore breeze that starts to rise at about this time and strengthens as the afternoon wears on. Even though his sails were stowed, Antony was at some risk of being blown back on shore, so he could wait no longer and headed for the enemy. Plutarch described how the rowers in Antony’s large ships could not get up sufficient speed, and hence momentum, to ram and that Octavian’s admirals also preferred close-quarters action to ramming the reinforced sides of Antony’s ships and thus risking damaging their own, more slender vessels. Hence, “the fight resembled a land battle or more precisely an assault on a walled town. Three or four of Octavian’s ships would cluster round one of Antony’s while the marines wielded catapults, spears, javelins and flaming missiles; the troops on Antony’s ships even shot at the enemy with catapults mounted on wooden towers.”

All of a sudden, Cleopatra’s ships took advantage of the turn of the breeze to the northwest and a break in the lines of fighting ships to hoist their stowed sails and to make off fast southwest for the Peloponnese. Since this change of wind was a daily occurrence and would have been well known to those encamped in the area for months, this was no doubt what had been intended ever since the council of war, even if later propagandists presented her flight as outright cowardice and treachery. When he saw the Egyptian fleet was away, Antony turned his own ships to follow. Few, however, could disengage from the fierce combat. Even Antony himself pragmatically had to switch from his own massive flagship to a swifter galley before he could do so. Thus he laid himself open to the charge of deserting his men for the sake of his mistress, a charge that rang down the centuries until Shakespeare dubbed him a “doting mallard.” But there was logic as well as love in his actions. If, as he planned, he could rebuild his forces, all could still be saved.