Antony had not abandoned his original design of preventing the combining of the forces of Octavius by carrying the war into Italy; but he had lost much time. In the spring of 31 B.C., his army and fleet being concentrated at Actium, at the mouth of the Gulf of Ambracia, he was preparing to join them when he learned that some Roman vessels were coasting the shores of Epirus. It was but the vanguard of Agrippa’s fleet, but the presence of this vanguard showed that the preparations of Octavius were in a very advanced state, if not complete. The time for surprising him was past. Antony decided, before forming new plans, to wait till the Romans should have defined their plan of the campaign. The fleet and the army, therefore, remained at Actium, but as the place was unwholesome and a stay there wearisome, Antony went to Patras with Cleopatra. Early in August he received the important news that the Roman fleet had just anchored off the coast of Epirus, that the troops were landing, and that Octavius was already at Toryne. Antony at once set out for Actium, much excited and very ill pleased that the enemy so quickly and so easily had taken up its position. Cleopatra jested with his uneasiness: “What a misfortune,” said she, “that Octavius should be sitting upon a dipper!”—in Greek Toryne means a dipper.

The army of Antony, consisting of nineteen legions and twelve thousand cavalry, and numerous auxiliaries, Cilicians, Paphlagonians, Cappadocians, Jews, Medes, Arabs, amounted to one hundred and ten thousand men. His fleet numbered nearly five hundred vessels of three, five, eight, and ten banks of oars. These last, built in Egypt, were veritable floating fortresses, surmounted with towers and furnished with powerful war-engines. Octavius had eighty thousand foot soldiers recruited in Italy, Sicily, Spain, and Gaul, ten thousand horse, and but two hundred and fifty vessels, triremes with rostra and light Liburnian galleys in about equal numbers. If the land forces were about of equal effective strength the disproportion between the naval forces was immense; but the ships of Octavius made up for their inferiority of numbers by their superiority of manoeuvring, and the excellence of their crews, who had all been with Agrippa during the long Sicilian war. On the contrary, Antony’s sailors were comparatively few, and most of them were going into battle for the first time; his heavy ships were clumsy in their evolutions,—as the hyperbolical Florus expressed it: “The sea groaned under their weight, and the wind exhausted itself in moving them.” The army of Antony occupied the northern point of Acarnania, with a strong detachment on the coast of Epirus, which was directly opposite. Firmly entrenched within defenses raised during the winter, he commanded the narrow passage into the Gulf of Ambracia in which his fleet was moored. Octavius had pitched his camp in Epirus, at a short distance from the advanced posts of Antony. Antony held an excellent position for defense, which enabled him to resist successfully the attacks of the Romans: for the Pass of Actium could not be forced; but he was blockaded on the side of the sea whence almost all his stores and munitions must reach him.

For several days the two armies were face to face. Octavius, desirous to engage, endeavored by every feint to draw his adversary into action either on land or sea. Antony, uneasy, anxious, hesitating, could not decide what step to take. He embarked the greater portion of his troops and transferred them to the coast of Epirus, as if to attack the Roman camp; then he changed his mind and recrossed into Acarnania. The officers of Antony, auguring ill of the manoeuvring qualities of his huge vessels, and, at the same time, full of confidence in the valor of the legionaries, counseled him to fight the battle on land. This was also the desire of the army. At a review he was accosted by an old centurion all seamed with scars: “Oh, Emperor, dost thou distrust these wounds and this sword, that thou puttest thy hope in rotten wood? Let the men of Egypt and Phoenicia fight on the sea, but to us, give us the land where we are used to hold our own, and where we know how to conquer or to die.” But Antony was disturbed by sinister omens. In many places his statues and those of Cleopatra had been struck by lightning; at Alba a marble statue, erected in honor of the triumvir, had been found covered with sweat. “A sign still more alarming,” says Plutarch, “some swallows, having built their nests under the stern of the Antoniad, Cleopatra’s flagship, other swallows came, drove the first away, and killed their young ones.” Frequent defeats in the skirmishes around Actium, the desertion of Domitius Ænobarbus, who suddenly passed over to the enemy, the defection of two of the allied kings, who, with their forces, abandoned the army, confirmed these evil omens in the superstitious soul of Antony. He suspected everything and everybody—his fortune, his soldiers, his friends, Cleopatra herself. Seeing her sad, discouraged, a prey to gloomy thoughts—for she, too, dwelt on the omens of the swallows of the Antoniad and the shattered statues—he fancied that she wished to poison him, that by this crime she might secure the favor of Octavius. For days he would take neither food nor drink that she had not first tasted. Out of pity for her lover, Cleopatra lent herself willingly to this caprice. One night, however, at the close of the supper, she took a rose from her crown and lightly dipped it into a cup of wine which she handed smilingly to Antony. He put it to his lips, when she arrested his hand and gave the poisoned wine to a slave to drink, who immediately fell to the floor writhing in mortal agony. “O Antony!” exclaimed Cleopatra, “what a woman you suspect. See now that neither means nor opportunities to slay you would fail me if I could live without you!”

The anxiety and depression reached the army, encamped in an unwholesome situation, and with reduced supplies. One day, Canidius himself, hitherto so eager for battle, counseled the abandonment of the fleet, and to carry the war into Thrace, where Dikome, king of the GetÆ, promised to send reËnforcements. But what need was there of reËnforcements, since they were already superior in numbers to the enemy? Cleopatra offered another opinion, if no less shameful, at any rate more sensible. Flight against flight, it would be better to go to Egypt than to Thrace. She proposed to leave part of the army in Greece, to garrison the fortified towns; to embark the rest, and set sail for Egypt, passing through the fleet of Octavius. After fresh hesitation, Antony adopted this plan, though assuredly it was bitter to flee from an army whose leader he despised. All tends to the belief, besides, that Antony hoped to destroy the Roman fleet in the naval engagement that must ensue on issuing from the narrow passage of Actium. If he gained the victory he would be able to regain his position and attack the demoralized army of Octavius; if the victory remained doubtful—for with so powerful a fleet he could not admit the supposition of a defeat—he would sail for Egypt. The retreat would be but a last resource.

Desertion and disease had greatly reduced the crews of the galleys. Antony decided to burn one hundred and forty of them in order to fill up with their crews the remainder of the fleet. Twenty-two thousand legionaries, auxiliaries, and slingers were put on board the ships. Not to discourage the soldiers and sailors, it was concealed from them that these preparations for battle were indeed preparations for retreat. The secret was so well kept, that it was a surprise to the pilots when they received orders to carry the sails with them. They recollected that in battle the vessels were worked with oars only. Antony had it reported that the sails were carried the better to pursue the enemy after the victory.

On the morning of September 2d the vessels of Antony formed in four grand divisions, crossed the channel of Actium, and, issuing thence, were disposed in battle array opposite the fleet of Octavius, who was awaiting them at eight or ten stadia from the land. On the side of Antony, he himself, with Publicola, commanded the right wing; Marcus Justus and Marcus Octavius the center, and Coelius the left wing. Cleopatra commanded the reserve with sixty Egyptian vessels. On the side of the Romans, Octavius commanded the right wing, Agrippa the left, and Arruntius the center. About noon the battle began. The troops on land, who were under arms and motionless near the shore, saw not, as is usual in sea-fights, the galleys rush at each other seeking to strike with their rostra or beaks of steel. On account of their slow rate of speed, the heavy vessels of Antony could not strike with that impetuosity which gives force to the shock, and the light galleys of the Romans feared to break their rostra against those enormous ships, constructed of strong beams joined with iron. The battle was like a succession of sieges, a combat of moving citadels with moving towers. Three or four Roman galleys would unite to attack one of Antony’s vessels, so huge, says Virgil, that they looked like the Cyclades sailing on the waters. The soldiers cast grappling-irons, fired burning arrows on the decks, attached fire-ships to the keels, and rushed to board them, while the powerful batteries placed at the summit of the towers of the beleaguered ship showered down on the assailants a hail of stones and arrows. At the very first the Roman right wing, commanded by Octavius, gave way before the attack of the division under Coelius. At the other extremity Agrippa, having designed a movement to surround Antony and Publicola, these turned on their right and thus uncovered the center of the line of battle. The swift Liburnian galleys improved the opportunity to attack the vessels of the two Marcuses, in the rear of which was the reserve under Cleopatra. Success and reverse went hand in hand; the two sides fought with equal fury, and the victory was doubtful, but the nervousness of Cleopatra was to be the ruin of Antony’s cause. For hours she had suffered a fever of agony. From the deck of the Antoniad she anxiously watched the movements of the fleets. In the beginning she had hoped for victory; now, terrified by the clamor and tumult, her only desire was to escape. She awaited with ever-increasing impatience the signal for retreat. Suddenly she noticed the right wing moving towards the coast of Epirus, the left putting to sea, and the center, which protected her, attacked, separated, broken, penetrated by the Roman Liburnians. Then, “pale with her approaching death”—pallens morte futura—listening only to her terror, she ordered the sails to be hoisted, and with her sixty vessels she passed through the midst of the combatants and fled towards the open sea. In the midst of the battle Antony perceived the motion of the Egyptian squadron, and recognized the Antoniad by its purple sails; Cleopatra was fleeing, robbing him at the decisive moment of his powerful reserve; but the queen could not order the retreat, he alone could give the signal for that. There is some mistake—a feint, perhaps a panic. Antony in his turn hoists the sails of his galley, and rushes in the wake of Cleopatra. He will bring back the Egyptian vessels and restore the chances of the battle. But before overtaking the Antoniad the unhappy man has time to think. Cleopatra has deserted him either through cowardice or treason; he can bring back to Actium neither her nor her fleet. Next he thinks he will return to the combat, which is now only a rout, to die with his soldiers—to die without seeing Cleopatra once more! he cannot do it. A fatal power drags him after this woman. He reaches the Antoniad, but then he is overcome with his disgrace. He refuses to see the queen. He seats himself on the prow of the vessel, his head on his hands, and remains thus for three days and three nights.