Augustus_ The Life of Rome's First Emperor - Anthony Everitt [110]
Antony presumably hoped that other ships of his would also be able to break away, but they were fully engaged trying to fend off Octavian’s larger fleet. After about an hour, the wind strengthened. Some of Antony’s ships began to give up the unequal struggle and surrendered. Others withdrew into the Actium strait.
It is often difficult at the height of a battle for generals or admirals to know what is going on around them. Had Octavian won, or had he lost? He suspected he was the victor, but could not be absolutely sure. The light was failing. There was a swell. It was not always easy to distinguish enemy ships from those of friends. If he received any reports from across a battlefront that was probably not less than four miles long, he could not rely on them. As he was somewhere in the center of his line, he would have witnessed the queen’s departure under full sail, but could have had no idea that Antony had left the scene with her.
What Octavian did see was some sort of retreat by enemy ships. During the wars against Sextus Pompeius he had learned the hard way that admirals were often obliged to spend a sleepless night after a battle at sea. Now that he and Agrippa had probably succeeded in bottling up what remained of Antony’s fleet, they wanted to avoid any risk of it slipping away under cover of darkness or at first light. So, uncomfortable and dangerous though it was, they kept their ships at sea in the Actium roads throughout the hours of darkness.
At daylight Octavian, now back on land, could assess the outcome. He saw now that he had won at least a partial victory. About thirty or forty enemy galleys had been sunk and about five thousand of Antony’s troops killed. The commanders of the remaining one hundred thirty or one hundred forty ships briefly considered their position, realized it was hopeless, and surrendered. However, a sizable army of up to fifty thousand men was holding together under Canidius Crassus, who started leading it toward the Pindos mountains and the relative safety of Macedonia. Unless that force could be neutralized in some way, the battle of Actium would simply be a passing incident in the war, not its decisive encounter. So he marched after Antony’s legions.
As things turned out, he did not need to worry. Until the day after the battle, the soldiers had no idea that their commander had abandoned them. The men longed to see him and were sure that he would soon turn up from somewhere or other. But the days passed with no sound or sight of him, and their confidence collapsed. The time had come for them to do a deal with the victor. In essence, the soldiers demanded to be treated as if they had been on the winning side. After a week of tough negotiations, Octavian agreed to keep the legions in being instead of disbanding them and, most important, he promised to give them the same rewards as the victorious army.
The deal done, Canidius and other senior officers wanted no part of it. One night they left camp secretly and made their sad way to Antony.
XV
A LONG FAREWELL
31–30 B.C.
* * *
Now the tourist resort of Mersa Matrouh, this small coastal town commands a large and beautiful lagoon with miles of sandy beach. In this delightful spot (promoted today as a “corner of paradise”), Antony plunged into the deepest gloom. He had hoped to make contact with four of his legions in Cyrene, but they declared for Octavian and refused to meet him. He sent Cleopatra ahead to Alexandria, where her ships arrived garlanded as if in victory. Before the truth came out, she had any potential opponents killed. In the meantime, her disconsolate paramour was able, in Plutarch’s dry words, “to enjoy all the solitude he could desire.”
Octavian sent a victory dispatch to Rome, but, patient and methodical as ever, was in no hurry to deal with Antony and Cleopatra. He decided to spend the oncoming winter