The morning of September 2nd was calm, and at an early hour Octavian’s workmanlike ships stationed themselves about three-quarters of a mile from the mouth of the Gulf of Ambracia, where they were watched by the eyes of both armies. They were formed into three divisions, the left wing being commanded by Agrippa, the centre by Lucius Arruntius, and the right wing by Octavian. At about noon Antony’s huge men-o’-war began to pass out from the harbour, under cover of the troops and engines of war stationed upon the two promontories. Octavian seems to have thought that it would be difficult to attack them in the straits, and therefore he retired out to sea, giving his enemies the opportunity of forming up for battle. This was speedily done, the fleet being divided, like Octavian’s, into three squadrons, C. Sossius moving against Octavian, Marcus Insteius opposing Arruntius, and Antony facing Agrippa. The sixty Egyptian ships, under Cleopatra’s command, were the last to leave the Gulf, and formed up behind the central division.
Antony appears to have arranged with Cleopatra that her ships should give him full assistance in the fight, and should sail for Egypt as soon as the victory was won. He intended, no doubt, to board her flagship at the close of the battle and to bid her farewell. They had separated that morning, it would seem from subsequent events, with anger and bitterness. Cleopatra, I imagine, had once more told him how distasteful was her coming departure to her, and had shown him how little she trusted him. She had bewailed the misery of her life and the bitterness of her disillusionment. She had accused him of wishing to abandon her cause, and she had, no doubt, called him coward and traitor. Very possibly in her anger she had told him that she was leaving him with delight, having found him wholly degenerate, and that she hoped never to see his face again. Her accusations, I fancy, had stung Antony to bitter retorts; and they had departed, each to their own flagship, with cruel words upon their lips and fury in their minds. Antony’s nature, however, always boyish, impulsive, and quickly repentant, could not bear with equanimity so painful a scene with the woman to whom he was really devoted, and as he passed out to battle he must have been consumed by the desire to ask her forgiveness. The thought, if I understand him aright, was awful to him that they should thus separate in anger; and being probably a little intoxicated, the contemplation of his coming loneliness reduced him almost to tears. He was perhaps a little cheered by the thought that when next he saw her the battle would probably be won, and he would appear to her in the rôle of conqueror—a theatrical situation which made an appeal to his dramatic instincts; yet, in the meantime, I think he was as miserable as any young lover who had quarrelled with his sweetheart.
The battle was opened by the advance of Antony’s left wing, and Agrippa’s attempt to outflank it with his right. Antony’s other divisions then moved forward, and the fight became general. “When they engaged,” writes Plutarch, “there was no ramming or charging of one ship into another, because Antony’s vessels, by reason of their great bulk, were incapable of the speed to make the stroke effectual, and, on the other side, Octavian’s ships dared not charge, prow to prow, into Antony’s, which were all armed with solid masses and spikes of brass, nor did they care even to run in on their sides, which were so strongly built with great squared pieces of timber, fastened together with iron bolts, that their own vessels’ bows would certainly have been shattered upon them. Thus the engagement resembled a land fight, or, to speak more properly, the assault and defence of a fortified place; for there were always three or four of Octavian’s vessels around each one of Antony’s, pressing upon them with spears, javelins, poles, and several inventions of fire which they flung into them, Antony’s men using catapults also to hurl down missiles from their wooden towers.”
The fight raged for three or four hours, but gradually the awful truth was borne in upon Antony and Cleopatra, that Octavian’s little ships were winning the day. Antony’s flagship was so closely hemmed in on all sides that he himself was kept busily occupied, and he had no time to think clearly. But as, one by one, his ships were fired, sunk, or captured, his desperation seems to have become more acute. If his fleet were defeated and destroyed, would his army stand firm? That was the question which must have drummed in his head, as in an agony of apprehension he watched the confused battle and listened to the clash of arms and the cries and shouts of the combatants. Cleopatra, meanwhile, after being subjected to much battering by the enemy, had perhaps freed her flagship for a moment from the attentions of Octavian’s little warships, and, in manœuvring for a better position, she was able to obtain a full view of the situation. With growing horror she observed the struggle around Antony’s flagship, and heard the cheers of the enemy as some huge vessel struck or was set on fire. Her Egyptian fleet had probably suffered heavily, though her sailors would hardly have fought with the same audacity as had those under Antony’s command. As she surveyed the appalling scene no doubt remained in her mind that Octavian had beaten them, and she must even have feared that Antony would be killed or captured. The anxieties which had harassed her overwrought brain during the last few weeks as to her husband’s intentions in regard to her position and that of her son Cæsarion, were now displaced by the more frightful thought that the opportunity would never be given to him of proving his constancy; for, here and now, he would meet his end. Her anger against him for his vacillation, her contempt for the increasing weakness of his character, and her misgivings in regard to his ability to direct his forces in view of the growing intemperance of his habits, were now combined in the one staggering certainty that defeat and ruin awaited him. He had told her to go back to Egypt, he had ordered her to take herself off with her fleet at the end of the battle. That end seemed to her already in sight. It was not from a riotous scene of victory, however, that she was to retire, nor was she to carry over to Alexandria the tidings of her triumph with which to cover the shame of her banishment from her husband’s side; but now she would have to sail away from the spectacle of the wreck of their cause, and free herself by flight from a man who, no longer a champion of her rights, had become an encumbrance to the movement of her ambitions.
In the late afternoon, while yet the victory was actually undecided, although there could have been no hope for the Antonian party left in Cleopatra’s weary mind, a strong wind from the north sprang up, blowing straight from unconquered Rome towards distant Egypt. The sea grew rough, and the waves beat against the sides of the Queen’s flagship, causing an increase of confusion in the battle. As the wind blew in her face, suddenly, it seems to me, the thought came to her that the moment had arrived for her departure. Antony had told her with furious words to go: why, then, should she wait? In another hour, probably, he would be captured or killed, and she, too, would be taken prisoner, to be marched in degradation to the Capitol whereon she had hoped to sit enthroned. She would pay her husband back in his own coin: she would desert him as he had deserted her. She would not stand by him to await an immediate downfall. Though he was sodden with wine, she herself was still full of life. She would rise above her troubles, as she had always risen before. She would cast him off, and begin her life once more. Her throne should not be taken from her at one blow. She would, at this moment, obey Antony’s command and go; and in distant Egypt she would endeavour to start again in the pursuit of that dynastic security which had proved so intangible a vision.
Having arrived at this decision she ordered the signal to be given to her scattered ships, and hoisting sail she passed right through the combatants, and made off down the wind, followed by her damaged fleet. At that moment, it seems, Antony had freed his flagship from the surrounding galleys, and thus obtained an uninterrupted view of the Queen’s departure. His feelings must have overwhelmed him,—anger, misery, remorse, and despair flooding his confused mind. Cleopatra was leaving him to his fate: she was obeying the order which he ought never to have given her, and he would not see her face again. All the grace, the charm, the beauty which had so enslaved him, was being taken from him; and alone he would have to face the horrors of probable defeat. He had relied of late so entirely upon her that her receding ships struck a kind of terror into his degenerate mind. It was intolerable to him, moreover, that she should leave him without one word of farewell, and that the weight of his cruelty and anger should be the last impression received by her. He could not let her depart unreconciled and unforgiving; he must go after her, if only to see her for a moment. Yet what did it matter if he did not return to the battle? There was little hope of victory. His fevered and exhausted mind saw no favourable incident in the fight which raged around him. Disgrace and ruin stared him in the face; and the sooner he fled from the horror of defeat the better would be his chance of retaining his reason.
“Here it was,” says Plutarch, “that Antony showed to all the world that he was no longer actuated by the thoughts and motives of a commander or a man, or indeed by his own judgment at all; and what was once said in jest, that the soul of a lover lives in the loved one’s body, he proved to be a serious truth. For, as if he had been born part of her, and must move with her wheresoever she went, as soon as he saw her ships sailing away he abandoned all that were fighting and laying down their lives for him, and followed after her.” Hailing one of his fastest galleys, he quickly boarded her and told the captain to go after Cleopatra’s flagship with all possible speed. He took with him only two persons, Alexander the Syrian, and a certain Scellias. It was not long before the galley, rowed by five banks of oars, overhauled the retreating Egyptians, and Cleopatra then learnt that Antony had followed her and had abandoned the fight. Her feelings may be imagined. Her leaving the battle had, then, terminated the struggle, and her retreat had removed the last hope of victory from the Antonians. Antony was a ruined and defeated man, and a speedy death was the best thing he could hope for; but not so easily was she to be rid of him. He was going to cling to her to the end: she would never be able to shake herself clear of him, but, drowning, he would drag her down with him. Yet he was her husband, and she could not abandon him in defeat as in victory he had wished to abandon her. She therefore signalled to him to come aboard; and having done this she retired to her cabin, refusing to see him or speak to him. Antony, having been helped on to the deck, was too dazed to ask to be taken to her, and too miserable to wish to be approached by her. He walked, as in a dream, to the prow of the ship, and there seating himself, buried his face in his hands, uttering not a word.
Thus some hours passed, but after it had grown dark the beat of the oars of several galleys was heard behind them, and presently the hull of the foremost vessel loomed out of the darkness. The commotion on board and the shouts across the water aroused Antony. For a moment he seems to have thought that the pursuing ships were bringing him some message from Actium—perhaps that the tide of battle had turned in his favour. He therefore ordered the captain to turn about to meet them, and to be ready to give battle if they belonged to the enemy; and, standing in the prow, he called across the black waters: “Who is this that follows Antony?” Through the darkness a voice responded: “I am Eurycles, the son of Lachares, come to revenge my father’s death.” Antony had caused Lachares to be beheaded for robbery, although he came of the noblest family in the Peloponnese; and his son had fitted out a galley at his own expense and had sworn to avenge his father. Eurycles could now be seen standing upon his deck, and handling a lance as though about to hurl it; but a moment later, by some mistake which must have been due to the darkness, he had charged with terrific force into another Egyptian vessel which was sailing close to the flagship. The blow turned her round, and in the darkness and confusion which followed, Cleopatra’s captain was able to get away. The other vessel, however, was captured, together with a great quantity of gold plate and rich furniture which she was carrying back to Egypt.
When the danger was passed Antony sat himself down once more in the prow, nor did he move from that part of the ship for three whole days. Hour after hour he sat staring out to sea, his hands idly folded before him, his mind dazed by his utter despair. By his own folly he had lost everything, and he had carried down with him in his fall all the hope, all the ambition, and all the fortune of Cleopatra. It is surprising that he did not at once put an end to his life, for his misery was pitiable; yet, when at last the port of Tænarus was reached, at the southern end of the Greek peninsula, he was still seated at the prow, his eyes fixed before him. At length, however, Iras, Charmion, and other of Cleopatra’s women induced the Queen to invite him to her cabin; and after much persuasion they consented to speak to one another, and, later, to sup and sleep together. Cleopatra could not but pity her wretched husband, now so sobered and terribly conscious of the full meaning of his position; and I imagine that she gave him what consolation she could.[118]
As their ship lay at anchor several vessels came into the harbour, bringing fugitives from Actium; and these reported to him that his fleet was entirely destroyed or captured, more than five thousand of his men having been killed, but that the army stood firm and had not at once surrendered. At this news Cleopatra, who had not been wholly crushed under the weight of her misfortunes, seems to have advised Antony to try to save some remnant of his forces, and to send messengers to Canidius to march his legions with all speed through Macedonia into Asia Minor. This he did; and then, sending for those of his friends who had come into the port, he begged them to leave him and Cleopatra to their fate, and to give their whole attention to their own safety. He and the Queen handed to the fugitives a large sum of money and numerous dishes and cups of gold and silver wherewith to purchase their security; and he wrote letters in their behalf to his steward at Corinth, that he should provide for them until they had made their peace with Octavian. In deep dejection these defeated officers attempted to refuse the gifts, but Antony, pressing them to accept, “cheered them,” as Plutarch says, “with all the goodness and humanity imaginable,” so that they could not refrain from tears. At length the fleet put out to sea once more, and set sail for the coast of Egypt, arriving many days later at Parætonium, a desolate spot some 160 miles west of Alexandria, where a small Roman garrison was stationed.[119] Here Antony decided to stay for a time in hiding, while the braver Cleopatra went on to the capital to face her people; and for the next few weeks he remained in the great solitude of this desert station. A few mud huts, a palm-tree or two, and a little fort constituted the dreary settlement, which in the damp heat of September must have presented a colourless scene of peculiarly depressing aspect. This part of the coast is absolutely barren, and only those who have visited these regions in the summer-time can realise the strange melancholy, the complete loneliness, of this sun-scorched outpost. The slow, breaking waves beat upon the beach with the steady insistence of a tolling bell which counts out a man’s life; the desert rolls back from the bleak sea-shore, carrying the eye to the leaden haze of the far horizon; and overhead the sun beats down from a sky which is, as it were, deadened by the heat. In surroundings such as these heart-broken Antony remained for several weeks, daily wandering along the beach accompanied only by two friends, one, a certain Aristocrates, a Greek rhetorician, and the other the Roman soldier Lucilius, who, fighting on the side of the enemy at Philippi, as we have read, had heroically prevented the capture of the defeated Brutus, and had been pardoned by Antony as a reward for his courage, remaining thereafter, and until the last, his devoted friend.