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Updated: May 16, 2025
Octavian and Anthony were under oath; and how long did that last? My first claim to renown was based on having rewon the allegiance of our troops in Britain, who had broken the most solemn oath a man can take of loyalty to Rome. An oath binds nobody. It simply is an emphasis of what a man intends that minute. It expresses an emotion. I believe the gods smile when they hear men pledge themselves.
Dion also differs from Plutarch in repeatedly ascribing to Octavian great anxiety to secure the treasures which Cleopatra had with her, and which she was likely to destroy by fire if driven to despair. The historian may well leave to the biographer, nay, to the poet, the affecting details of the closing scenes of Cleopatra's life.
Antony's fleet now anchored in the waters of the Ambracian Gulf, while his legions encamped on a spot of land which forms the northern horn of that spacious inlet. But the place chosen for the camp was unhealthy; and in the heats of early summer his army suffered greatly from disease. Agrippa lay close at hand watching his opportunity. In the course of the spring Octavian joined him in person.
Before evening closed, the whole fleet was destroyed; most of the men and all the treasure on board perished. A few days after, when the shameful flight of Antony was made known to his army, all his legions went over to the conqueror. It was not for eleven months after the battle of Actium that Octavian entered the open gates of Alexandria.
As Octavius and Octavian, the man seems like one without will or desires of his own, acting in blind obedience to impersonal forces that aimed at his supremacy in the Roman world. As Augustus, he becomes another man altogether, almost fathomlessly wise and beneficient; a Master of Peace and Wisdom. He gave Rome Peace, and taught her to love peace.
Octavian now began to feel that any appearance of friendship with Antony was a source of weakness rather than of strength at Rome. Misunderstandings had already broken out. Antony complained that Octavian had given him no share in the provinces wrested from Sext. Pompeius and Lepidus.
After the death of Cæsar, a long-haired star was conspicuous to Rome and to the nations, during the games which were exhibited by young Octavian in honor of Venus and his uncle. The vulgar opinion, that it conveyed to heaven the divine soul of the dictator, was cherished and consecrated by the piety of a statesman; while his secret superstition referred the comet to the glory of his own times.
But now as the first step in the rebuilding of the priesthoods Octavian restored the college to its old rank and gained also the additional advantage that the people were impressed with the moral righteousness of their cause against Antony and Cleopatra, and also with the fact that it was a foreign, i.e. an international war, and not a civil one, in which they were about to engage.
Octavian felt that the blank wall would not be more impervious to his explanations than the bunch of human hostility that peered over its coping; he wisely decided to withhold his peace overtures till a more hopeful occasion.
He was allowed to reappear as Frederick in "Lovers' Vows," repeating his first success; and on January 8, 1821, he benefited as Octavian in the "Mountaineers," a play associated with the early glories of Edmund Kean.
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