The War That Made the Roman Empire
Antony, Cleopatra, and Octavian at Actium
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
A “splendid” (The Wall Street Journal) account of one of history’s most important and yet little-known wars, the campaign culminating in the Battle of Actium in 31 BC, whose outcome determined the future of the Roman Empire.
Following Caesar’s assassination and Mark Antony’s defeat of the conspirators who killed Caesar, two powerful men remained in Rome—Antony and Caesar’s chosen heir, young Octavian, the future Augustus. When Antony fell in love with the most powerful woman in the world, Egypt’s ruler Cleopatra, and thwarted Octavian’s ambition to rule the empire, another civil war broke out. In 31 BC one of the largest naval battles in the ancient world took place—more than 600 ships, almost 200,000 men, and one woman—the Battle of Actium. Octavian prevailed over Antony and Cleopatra, who subsequently killed themselves.
The Battle of Actium had great consequences for the empire. Had Antony and Cleopatra won, the empire’s capital might have moved from Rome to Alexandria, Cleopatra’s capital, and Latin might have become the empire’s second language after Greek, which was spoken throughout the eastern Mediterranean, including Egypt.
In this “superbly recounted” (The National Review) history, Barry Strauss, ancient history authority, describes this consequential battle with the drama and expertise that it deserves. The War That Made the Roman Empire is essential history that features three of the greatest figures of the ancient world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Historian Strauss (The Caesars) delivers a gripping account of the war for control of the Roman Empire that culminated in Octavian's decisive victory over Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in western Greece in 31 BCE. Strauss situates the conflict in the epidemic of violence that followed the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BCE and the disintegrating relationship between Octavian and Antony, which was exacerbated by Antony's decision to divorce Octavian's sister, Octavia, and ally with Cleopatra. Tracking the six-month military campaign that led up to Actium, Strauss spotlights Octavian's "right-hand and indispensable admiral," Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa; rehabilitates Antony's reputation as a strategist; and details how the lives of legionaries, sailors, and ordinary citizens were upended by the war. The book's centerpiece is a vivid reconstruction of the Battle of Actium, which pitted 600 warships with crews totaling nearly 200,000 people against each other. Though Strauss's comparisons between ancient and modern warfare are occasionally jarring (at one point, he references the disparaging of "rear-echelon mother—ers" during the Vietnam War), he has an eye for telling details and a knack for explaining the era's complex political alliances and rivalries in clear terms. Ancient history buffs will be riveted.
