But locked up in the bottle-necked Ambracian Gulf the great fleet, with its tower-crowned array of floating giants, had as little effect on the opening phase of the campaign as if its units had been so many castles on the shore. Agrippa soon felt that there was no serious risk of any attempt being made by Antony to interrupt the long and delicate operation of ferrying over an army of a hundred thousand men and some twelve thousand cavalry from Italy to the opposite shore of the Adriatic. He took the precaution of watching the outlet of the Ambracian Gulf with his swiftest ships. The narrow entrance, while making it difficult to force a way into the Gulf, had the disadvantage of all such positions, that a large fleet would take a considerable time to issue from it into the open sea, and it was therefore comparatively easy to blockade and observe it. If Antony showed any sign of coming out, there would be time to bring up the whole fleet of Octavian to meet him in the open.
It was thus that Octavian was able securely to embark his army in successive divisions, and land it without interruption at the port of Toryne on the eastern coast of the Adriatic. Having assembled there, it marched southwards along the coast till it reached the hills on the northern shore of the Ambracian Gulf, and the two armies and fleets were in presence of each other.
The legions of Octavian encamped on a rising ground a few miles north of the entrance of the Gulf, and above a narrow neck of land which divided one of its inlets from the open sea. The coast is here hollowed into a wide bay, in which the main body of Agrippa's fleet was anchored, while a detached squadron observed the opening of the straits. The camp was surrounded by entrenchments, and connected with the station of the fleet by a road protected by lines of earthworks and palisades, for it was the custom of the Romans to make as much use of pick and spade as of sword and spear in their campaigns. On the site of the camp Octavian afterwards founded Nicopolis, "the City of Victory," as the memorial of his triumph.
From the camp on the hill there was a wide view over the Ambracian Gulf, a sheet of water some thirty miles long and ten wide, surrounded by an amphitheatre of hills sloping to flat, and in many places marshy, shores. On the wide waters the fleet of Antony lay moored, line behind line, a forest of masts and yards. In the narrows of the entrance some of his largest ships were anchored. Many of the ships of Phœnicia and Egypt displayed an Eastern profusion of colour in their painted upper works, their gilded bows, and their bright flags and streamers. Near the southern shore lay the state galley of Cleopatra, a floating palace, with its silken sails, gilded bulwarks, and oars bound and plated with silver.
A line of earthworks and forts across the neck of the northern point, garrisoned by the best of Antony's Roman veterans, defended one side of the narrows. The other side was a low-lying, triangular stretch of land, dry, sandy ground. The Greeks knew it as the Akte, just as the Italian sailors still call it the Punta, both words having the same meaning, "the Point." At its northern extremity on a rocky platform there rose a temple of Apollo, known as the "Aktion," the "sanctuary of the point," a place of pilgrimage for the fisher and sailor folk of the neighbourhood. Its name, Latinized into Actium, became famous as that of the naval battle.
On the level ground by the temple was the camp of the army of Antony and Cleopatra, a city of tents and reed-built huts, within its midst the gay pavilions of the Court. It was a mixed gathering of many nations—Roman legions commanded by veterans of the wars of Cæsar; Egyptian battalions in the quaint war dress we see on the painted walls of tombs by the Nile, and the semi-barbarous levies of the tributary kings of Eastern Asia. There were widespread dissension and mutual suspicion among the allies. Not a few of the Romans were chafing at their leader's subservience to a "Barbarian" queen. Many of the Eastern kinglets were considering whether they could not make a better bargain with Octavian. The cavalry of both armies skirmished among the hills on the land side of the Gulf, and prisoners made by Octavian's troops readily took service with them. Then one of the Asiatic kings, instead of fighting, joined the hostile cavalry with his barbaric horsemen, and night after night Roman deserters stole into the camp of Octavian on the northern height.
An attempt led by Antony in person against the Roman entrenchments was beaten off. A detachment of the fleet tried to elude the vigilance of Agrippa and slip out to sea, but had to retire before superior numbers. Then both parties watched each other, while at the head-quarters of Antony councils of war were held to debate upon a plan of campaign. The situation was becoming difficult. For Octavian contented himself with holding his fortified camp with his infantry, drawing his supplies freely from over-sea, while his cavalry prevented anything reaching Antony's lines from the land side, and Agrippa's fleet blockading the Gulf and sweeping the sea, made it impossible to bring corn from Egypt. Provisions were running short, and sickness was rife. A move of some kind must be made.
The veteran Canidius, who commanded the army under Antony, had like most of the Romans little faith in the efficiency of the fleet. He proposed to Antony that it should be abandoned, and that the army should march eastward into Macedonia, and, with an unexhausted country to supply it, await the pursuit of ten legions of Octavian in a favourable position. But Antony, influenced by Cleopatra, refused to desert the fleet, which was the one possible hope of reaching Egypt again, and rejecting an attack on the Roman entrenchments as a hopeless enterprise, he decided at last that all the treasure of Court and army should be embarked on the ships, and an effort made to break through the blockading squadrons.
While the preparations were being made, the Romans renewed their entreaties that their leader would rather stake his fortunes on a battle on land. One day a veteran centurion of his guard, who bore the honourable scars of many campaigns, addressing him with tears in his eyes, said to Antony: "Imperator, why distrust these wounds, this sword? Why put your hopes on wretched logs of wood? Let Phœnicians and Egyptians fight on the sea, but let us have land on which we know how to conquer or die." It is the appeal that Shakespeare puts into the mouth of one of Antony's soldiers:—
"O noble emperor, do not fight by sea;
Trust not to rotten planks. Do you misdoubt
This sword and these my wounds? Let the Egyptians
And the Phœnicians go a-ducking; we
Have used to conquer standing on the earth,
And fighting foot to foot."[3]