Augustus

X

FIGHTING NEPTUNE

38–36 B.C.

However, the most important development by far was the defection of Sextus’ admiral Menodorus, who was in Sardinia. The former pirate was losing confidence in his master’s strategic ability and long-term chances of survival. Menodorus delivered to Octavian Sardinia and Corsica, three legions, and some light-armed troops.

Treaty or no treaty, here was an opportunity to dispose of Sextus. But before he showed his hand, Octavian sought help from Antony, whom he asked to visit Italy for consultations. He sent for an army from Agrippa, who had succeeded Calenus as proconsul in Gaul, commissioned warships at Ravenna, and arranged for other necessities of war to be assembled on the eastern and western coasts of Italy at Brundisium and Puteoli.

Unfortunately, Antony opposed hostilities with Sextus. He turned up at Brundisium on a mutually appointed date in 38 B.C., but to his annoyance found no Octavian. After waiting for a short time, he left, but wrote to his fellow triumvir, strongly counseling against war.

It is not clear what Octavian meant by the snub. The most benign, and not implausible, explanation is that he was detained by his military preparations (perhaps, too, he was not unhappy to delay Antony’s Parthian plans). However, it is rather more probable that Octavian was yielding to an unusual bout of overconfidence. With Menodorus at his side, he was privy to all Sextus’ secrets. On reconsideration, he could do perfectly well without Antony’s advice or assistance.

Octavian’s plan was to defeat Sextus at sea and then ferry troops from Italy to occupy Sicily. He would launch a two-pronged attack. One fleet would sail south from Puteoli; it would be led by Gaius Calvisius Sabinus, once an officer of Julius Caesar and one of a new breed of politicians from the provinces, who in the previous year had been the first-ever non-Latin consul. He was one of the two senators who had sought to protect Caesar on the Ides of March. Calvisius shared the command with Menodorus. The other fleet, for which Octavian appointed himself admiral, would set out from Tarentum and approach Sicily from the east.

In classical times, the sea was a frightening place. Ships were vulnerable to bad weather and sailing was avoided so far as possible during the winter months. Roman war fleets mainly consisted of rowing galleys, many of them triremes and quinqueremes. We do not know exactly how they worked. A trireme either had three banks of oars, or one bank with the oars grouped together in threes with one man per oar. It displaced about 230 tons and was nearly 150 feet long. Quinqueremes probably had one bank of oars with five men pulling each oar. There were up to 150 rowers; they were often non-Romans, though they were not, as in Hollywood films, slaves chained to their oars. Every ship had a captain, or trierarch; a helmsman; and a hortator, or encourager, who set the rowing rate. Under oar, a trireme was capable of bursts of speed—between seven and ten knots.

Warships had brass battering rams on their prows, and the usual tactic was to ram the side of an enemy ship. The Romans tended to fight sea battles as if they were on land. A grappling device was invented, the corvus or crow, which enabled soldiers to board the enemy ship and take it over. If boarding was impractical, it was possible to destroy galleys by using flaming projectiles to set them afire.

Triremes and quinqueremes found it hard to cope with storms. Their high bows made them difficult to hold into the wind. A large rectangular sail midships and one or more small ones were used during ordinary voyages, but square-rigging made it extremely difficult to gain headway against a wind. When waves hit such vessels beam-on (that is, from the side), they became hard to maneuver and were prone to being swamped or capsizing, although, being of fairly light wooden construction, they seldom sank completely.

Sextus learned of the desertion of Menodorus when the enemy fleets were under way. He immediately dispatched the old pirate Menecrates to confront Menodorus with most of his ships, and decided to await Octavian, whom he judged to be the lesser threat, off Messana (today’s Messina) in the narrow straits between Sicily and mainland Italy.

Menecrates found Menodorus and the Roman admiral Calvisius off Cumae on the Campanian coast and had the better of the engagement, although he himself was wounded and died. When dusk fell the two fleets separated, and Sextus’ ships returned to port at Messana without following up their victory.

When news came on the following day of what had taken place at Cumae, Octavian decided to brave the strait and make his way to Calvisius. This was a bad mistake. Sextus dashed out of Messana in large numbers and attacked Octavian’s fleet, which fled toward the Italian shore. Many were driven onto the rocks and set on fire. As night fell Sextus caught sight of Calvisius’ fleet sailing south to the rescue and withdrew to Messana.

Octavian, in danger of his life and not yet aware that Calvisius was close by, scrambled ashore with his attendants, pulled men out of the water, and took refuge with them in the mountains. They lit bonfires to alert those still afloat to their existence and whereabouts. However, the warship crews were too busy putting their boats to rights and trying to make good the waterlogged wrecks to come to their aid. The survivors spent the night without food or any other necessities. Octavian did not sleep, but went about the various groups and did his best to keep their spirits up.

By great good fortune, the XIIIth Legion happened to be marching through the mountains by night (presumably making all speed to Rhegium, a port opposite Messana, in anticipation of the planned invasion of Sicily). Its commander learned of the disaster at sea and, guessing that the fires in the hills denoted survivors, led his force in their direction.

Octavian and his men were in a poor way. They were given food, and a makeshift tent was pitched for the exhausted triumvir. With typical self-discipline, he sent messengers in all directions to announce that he was alive and still in charge. Having learned, too, of Calvisius’ arrival with his fleet, he now allowed himself to snatch some sleep. It had been a terrible twenty-four hours, as he was reminded all too graphically when he awoke. Appian describes the scene: “At daybreak, as he looked out over the sea, his gaze was met by ships that had been set on fire, ships that were still half-ablaze or half-burned, and ships that had been smashed.”

As if that were not enough, a gale came up in the afternoon, one of the fiercest in living memory, whipping a vicious swell with a strong current in the narrow seas. Sextus was safely inside the harbor of Messana; Menodorus, with an experienced eye for the unpredictable Mediterranean weather, sailed out to sea, where he rode out the storm; but Octavian’s surviving ships were blown against the craggy coast and pounded against the rocks and one another. Night fell, but there was no letup in the wind until morning. More than half of the fleet was sunk, and most of the rest was badly damaged.

Another dark night of traveling through mountains ensued—and, surely, a dark night of the soul, too; for this was the worst crisis of Octavian’s career. His humiliating double defeat at sea not only signaled the ruin of his hopes to eliminate Sextus Pompeius but might well set off conspiracies against him in Rome.

Methodically, Octavian took the necessary steps to reduce this risk. Orders were sent to all his supporters and military commanders to watch out for trouble. Detachments of infantry were posted along the coastline to deter an invasion by Sextus. Men were left behind to salvage and repair his galleys.

Meanwhile, the son of Pompey the Great celebrated his great victory. Since his arrival in Sicily, he had identified the god of the sea, Neptune, with his father on coins that he had issued. Now he proclaimed himself the son of Neptune, took to wearing a dark blue cloak (instead of a commander’s regulation purple), and sacrificed some horses (and, it was rumored, men) to the god by driving them into the sea.

With a heavy heart, Octavian journeyed north to Campania, brooding on what he should do next. He needed many new ships, but had neither money nor time to build them.

Embarrassing though it was, he realized that he would have to humble himself and ask again for assistance from his fellow triumvirs—Lepidus, half forgotten in Africa; Mark Antony, whom he had snubbed only months before. Without their support, he could make no progress; also, left to their own devices, his colleagues might well open discussions with Sextus. He sent them an urgent appeal.

Almost at once, though, Octavian wished he had not done so, for he was given new heart by the return from Gaul of his friend Agrippa. The twenty-four-year-old commander had great achievements to his credit, having secured the frontier on the Rhine and founded a new city, Colonia Agrippinensis (or, as it became, Cologne). He was offered a triumph, but, sensitive to his friend’s distress, declined.

Now the victorious young general turned his attention to a style of warfare with which he was almost completely unfamiliar: fighting at sea. He decided exactly what he needed—a sufficient stretch of water, with large supplies of wood in the vicinity, where he could build a new fleet, then train both it and himself, safe from the maraudings of Sextus Pompeius, safe even from Sextus’ knowledge.

Agrippa knew the very place. According to Homer, the lake of Avernus was the gateway into Hades, where the dead led shadowy and enfeebled existences. Not far from Cumae, Avernus was a huge water-filled crater, with a diameter of nearly five miles and a depth of thirty-seven yards. Except for one narrow entrance, it was completely surrounded by densely wooded hills, giving it a somber, oppressive atmosphere. Here and there on the slopes, volcanic springs spewed a mixture of water and flames, steam and smoke.

A short way south was the Lucrine lake, separated from the sea by a low thin strip of land (“as broad as a wagon road,” wrote the contemporary geographer Strabo).

No sentimentalist, Agrippa was undaunted by the gloomy spirit of the place. He had the brilliantly simple, highly ambitious idea of cutting a canal south from Avernus to the Lucrine lake and thence to the sea. This was quickly done, while a tunnel was also driven northward to the seaside town of Cumae, so creating a second means of access. In this way, a huge, new, completely secure, secret harbor was created, which was named Portus Julius.

The trees on the slopes of Avernus were cut down; keels were laid and galleys built. Twenty thousand freed slaves were recruited as oarsmen, and learned their craft in safety and secrecy. Among other things, they were able to practice using a lethal refinement of the corvus that Agrippa had invented: this was the harpax, a grapnel fired from a ship-borne catapult.

This vast enterprise called for substantial resources. Wealthy supporters of Octavian financed ships, and a message came from Antony offering military help. It is likely that Agrippa brought funds with him from Gaul, and money was raised from the empire’s provinces.

In response to Octavian’s plea, transmitted by the emollient Maecenas, Antony, who had spent the winter at Athens, agreed to return to Italy in the spring or early summer of 37 B.C.; it was in his interest to ensure that the west was quiet before he set off against Parthia and also he needed (as was allowed by the Treaty of Brundisium) to recruit troops in Italy.

He sailed with a large fleet to Brundisium, but once again found its port closed to him. Irritated by this evidence of Octavian’s renewed fickleness, he sailed round to Tarentum, where he invited Octavian to join him. He was now not at all sure that he would support his fellow triumvir against Sextus. Octavia was accompanying Antony and was very upset at the prospect of another quarrel breaking out between her brother and her husband. “If the worst should happen,” she wrote to her brother, according to Plutarch, “and war break out between you, no one can say which of you is fated to conquer the other, but what is quite certain is that my fate will be miserable.”

Octavian took the point; indeed, he had probably done so even before his sister approached him. His refusal to meet his colleague had been as much of a blunder as his original cry for help. He was certainly not ready for war with Antony and had no excuse even for wishing it. There were matters that the triumvirs needed to discuss—for example, an extension of the Triumvirate, which was on the point of expiry. A meeting was evidently in order. The only eventuality Octavian wanted to avoid was Antony joining him in the war against Sextus. To ensure his future as co-ruler of the empire, he must win his own battles.

So it was agreed that a conference be held at Tarentum. Maecenas traveled down from Rome to make the arrangements and plan the agenda. He was also an unofficial minister of culture, who recognized the importance of the arts to the promotion of a political regime. He had a sharp eye for literary talent, and was always on the lookout for it. He gathered a group of poets around him, to whom he gave the freedom of his house at Rome. Chief of these was Virgil, now in his early thirties.

Another member of the inner circle was Horace, twenty-seven years old and Maecenas’ favorite. A lover of the peaceful life, Horace agreed with the Greek philosopher Epicurus that pleasure was the only good. Completely without vanity, he has left thumbnail descriptions of his rotund appearance:

Come and see me when you want a laugh. I’m fat and sleek,

In prime condition, a porker from Epicurus’ herd.

And

Of small build, prematurely grey, and fond of the sun,

He was quick to lose his temper, but not hard to appease.

His eminent patron was portly too, and wrote him an epigram in verse: “If I don’t love you, Horace, more than my life, may your friend look skinnier than a rag-doll.”

It was typical of the man that Maecenas assembled some poets to accompany him on the journey, probably for the fun of it and for good conversation, though these literary personalities may have been dragooned into providing secretarial services.

Horace wrote a lighthearted poem describing the trip. After two days’ leisurely travel from Rome he and a companion, a professor of rhetoric, arrived at a great malarial swamp, the Pomptine Marshes (before his death, Julius Caesar had planned to drain them, but this was not accomplished until Benito Mussolini did it in the 1930s). They left the road for a night and were hauled through wet wasteland in a barge.

Horace was then joined by Maecenas, and the following day by Virgil and two other poets. The company stopped at Capua (today’s Santa Maria Capua Vetere), where they took an afternoon off from travel. Capua was one of the richest cities in Italy; Cicero had called it a “second Rome.” A great center for gladiatorial combats, it boasted a fine amphitheater (the ruins that can be seen today are of a later building), where Spartacus once fought.

However, no one was interested in seeing the sights; Maecenas went off to take some exercise, while Horace, who had an eye infection, and the delicate Virgil took a siesta, “for ball-games are bad for inflamed eyes and dyspeptic stomachs.”

Some days later, when the arid hills of Apulia (today’s Puglia), Horace’s homeland, came into view, the travelers took refuge from the heat in a villa at Trivicum (Trevico). Horace’s sore eyes were irritated by a smoky stove, but his spirits were lifted by the prospect of an amorous encounter.

On this occasion, his hopes were frustrated:

Here, like an utter fool, I stayed awake till midnight

Waiting for a girl who broke her promise. Sleep in the end

Overtook me, still keyed up for sex. Then scenes from a dirty

Dream spattered my nightshirt and stomach as I lay on my back.

Three more days rolling along in wagons were made exceptionally uncomfortable and exhausting because the roads had been damaged by heavy rain, still bucketing down. The weather improved as Horace and his friends approached Brundisium, before making their way to the elegant Greek city of Tarentum and the world of great affairs.

The principals—Mark Antony and Octavian—eventually met at the little river Taras, which flowed into the sea at a point between Tarentum and Metapontum, another city founded by mainland Greeks. It was a splendid sight: an army peacefully encamped on land and a great fleet lying quietly offshore. The idea was that the stream should separate the two mutually distrustful parties. Without planning to do so, the triumvirs arrived at the same time. Antony, who was staying at Tarentum, leaped down impulsively from his carriage, jumped unaccompanied into one of the small boats moored at the riverbank, and started to cross over to Octavian.

Realizing that he would lose face if he did not immediately return this demonstration of trust, Octavian, too, boarded a boat himself. The triumvirs met in midstream, and immediately fell into an argument, because each politely wanted to disembark on the other’s bank. Octavian won, on the grounds that Octavia was at Tarentum and he would not see her if Antony and he met on his side of the river. He sat beside Antony in his carriage and arrived unescorted at his colleague’s quarters in the city. He slept there that night, without any of his guards.

This little incident is of no great importance in itself, but it does illustrate a difference between the two men. When they disagreed, it was always Octavian who got his way. When he wanted something, he tended to pursue it with single-minded intensity, whereas Antony, seeing himself as the senior partner in government, had the careless self-confidence to give way.

Antony was eventually persuaded to back Octavian and abandon any thought of going over to Sextus. It was agreed that the Triumvirate, the term of which had expired on December 31 of the previous year, 38 B.C., be renewed for a further five years. The triumvirs also rescinded all the concessions to Sextus and promised mutual assistance. Antony offered 120 ships from his fleet (which was expensive to keep up and not very useful for a general intent on conquering the Asian landmass), and in return was promised four legions.

Once more the colleagues parted. Everyone was becoming accustomed to treaties signed with great solemnity that almost instantly became obsolete, so there were no celebrations of the kind that had marked the accord at Brundisium. However, a coin of Antony’s, issued at Tarentum, shows Antony’s and Octavia’s heads facing each other: unusual in Roman coinage, although common enough among Hellenistic kings who wished to emphasize harmony between husband and wife.

Octavian now prepared for a showdown with Sextus. He was pleased to receive his colleague’s ships, but had no serious intention of finding him his legions. This raises the question of his good faith. It was clear that Antony took their entente seriously, but Octavian’s behavior betrays a patient and undeviating pursuit of power. A sharp-eyed opportunist, he seized every gain that came his way, giving as little as possible in return.

During 37 B.C. and the spring of 36, Agrippa continued with his preparations in the lake of Avernus and the Lucrine lake. At last, the armada was ready. The plan of campaign was complex but potentially devastating. Three fleets were to set sail simultaneously for Sicily. Lepidus had been roused from his torpor in Africa; he would come with a thousand transport ships, seventy warships, sixteen legions, and a large force of Numidian cavalry, make landfall on the south of the island, and capture as much territory as he could. Another fleet, including Antony’s donated ships, would sail from Tarentum, and Octavian himself from Puteoli.

To counter this formidable convergence of military and naval power, Sextus could muster no more than three hundred ships and ten legions. Unlike his opponents, he did not have an inexhaustible supply of manpower. Nevertheless, his successes to date gave him every reason to suppose he could maintain his mastery of the seas.

To begin with, fortune favored Octavian. Lepidus succeeded in landing twelve legions—a large part of his army—on Sicily and immediately invested the port of Lilybaeum on the island’s western tip. If there was one way in which he could be depended on, though, it was that his loyalties were undependable. He seems immediately to have opened a line of friendly communication with Sextus, so that he would be ready to profit from any eventuality.

On July 3, disaster struck. The skies opened and the fleets were all overwhelmed by another terrible storm. The ships from Tarentum returned to port as soon as the wind began to rise. Octavian took refuge in a well-protected bay on the west coast of Italy, but then the wind veered to the southwest and blew straight onto the shore. It was now impossible to sail out of the bay, and neither oars nor anchors could hold the ships in position. They smashed against one another or the rocks. The tempest lasted into the night. Many ships were lost. It would take a month to rebuild the fleet.

It was probably now that, in a combination of defiance and despair, Octavian cried out, according to Suetonius, “I will win this war even if Neptune does not wish me to!”

Unfortunately, the end of summer was already in sight. A wise commander would call it a day until the following spring, especially after such a mauling. At Rome the popular mood was swinging against the triumviral regime and in favor of Sextus. A current lampoon demonstrated the scorn with which the people now regarded Octavian:

He took a beating twice at sea

And threw two fleets away.

So now to achieve one victory

He tosses dice all day.

The criticism was unfair; Octavian did indeed like to gamble in his leisure hours, but he was not idling now. He sent Maecenas to Rome to try to quiet his critics, while he himself rushed around Italy talking to settler veterans and reassuring them. Strenuous efforts were made to refurbish the damaged ships and lay new keels.

For Octavian was going to take a gamble, one of the riskiest of his life. He could not afford a long winter of discontent at Rome, so he would stake everything on one last throw of the dice. The war against Sextus was to resume.

Now that Lepidus was safely established on Sicily, Octavian and Agrippa saw that their best tactic was to find a way of landing more troops on the island so that they could bottle up Sextus in Messana. With massively superior land forces, it would then be a relatively simple matter to crush him or drive him into the sea. To attain this objective, they would have to draw most of Sextus’ navy into an engagement in the seas off northern Sicily. While he was so distracted, the legions in the toe of Italy would have an opportunity to slip across to Tauromenium (Taormina), south of the straits of Messana, unchallenged, perhaps even unnoticed.

That was the idea. It did not work. Lepidus ferried his remaining four legions from Africa, but unfortunately one of Sextus’ squadrons came upon them. In the misapprehension that the flotilla was friendly, the transports sailed up to it and many were destroyed. Two legions drowned.

While Octavian sailed down the western coast of Italy, the fleet at Tarentum set out for the port of Scolacium (today’s Squillace), on the “sole” of the Italian boot. It was accompanied by an army marching along the coast beside the ships.

Seeing a large number of enemy sails in ports on the northern seaboard of Sicily, Octavian correctly judged that Sextus must be present, and that the moment was ripe for the army at Scolacium to embark for Tauromenium. He handed over command of the fleet to Agrippa and sailed to Italy to join his legions.

The following day, Agrippa engaged the enemy fleet off the northern port of Mylae and gained the upper hand. However, the Pompeians withdrew in good order and, with evening coming on, Agrippa decided it was too risky to give chase. Sextus cleverly guessed that Agrippa’s activities were a blind. Immediately after supper, he set off for Messana with his main fleet, leaving a detachment of ships to deceive Agrippa into thinking he was staying where he was. Hiding in port, he would await the triumvir’s arrival and catch him unawares.

Octavian, having climbed to a high point to survey the sea and finding no sign of the enemy, loaded as many legionaries as he could onto troopships and sailed from Scolacium to Italy’s toe, the cape of Leucopatra. Vulnerable to attack because of the troopships, he had thought of crossing the straits under cover of night, a dangerous stratagem in the days before radar, but safer than risking interception by Sextus. However, when he received news of Agrippa’s success at Mylae, Octavian decided, in Appian’s words, not “to steal over like a thief in the night but to cross in daylight with a confident army.” The war was drawing to a triumphant close, Sicily would soon be in his hands, and Sextus’ days as the last republican in arms were numbered.

Octavian made landfall on Sicily south of Tauromenium and disembarked his troops. Suddenly, before the army had even finished making camp, Pompeius appeared over the northern horizon with a large fleet. Riding in parallel on the shore was his cavalry. Then up from the south marched Sextus’ infantry. The surprise was total. The cavalry harried the soldiers still at work on the fortifications, but both Sextus’ fleet and infantry held back. This was a serious error, for they missed the opportunity not only to win a decisive victory but also to capture the triumvir.

Nightfall should have afforded some rest, but Octavian’s soldiers had to complete their defenses; when dawn came they were sleepless, exhausted, and unfit for battle. It was a desperate situation. Octavian knew he had to save the fleet; if it was not to be picked off at will on the beaches or at anchor, it must sail away as soon as possible, even if doing so meant risking battle with Sextus. So he handed command of the legions to Lucius Cornificius, an early follower of his who had prosecuted Brutus in 43 B.C. for Julius Caesar’s murder and was one of the new breed of politicians from outside the magic circle of great families.

Octavian himself put out to sea with his fleet, making the rounds of the ships in a fast, light trireme, called a liburnian, to encourage his sailors and raise their morale. Once he had done this, he stowed his admiral’s standard, presumably because he believed himself to be in extreme danger and anonymity would increase his chance of survival. Evidently he did not expect to win any encounter.

Sextus sailed out of Messana on the attack. There were two fiercely fought engagements, in which the triumvir’s ships came off worse. Numerous galleys were captured or set alight; some made off without orders to the Italian mainland. Other crew members swam to the Sicilian shore and were either caught and killed by Sextus’ cavalry or scrambled up to Cornificius’ camp and safety. Eventually darkness drew a veil over the catastrophe.

Octavian did not know what to do. He spent most of the night among his fleet’s small auxiliary craft, wondering whether to risk sailing back to Sicily through all the wreckage to find Cornificius, or to seek out his troops on the mainland. He decided on the latter course. Setting off in a single ship, he was hotly chased; it was probably now that, believing he was about to be captured, he asked a loyal aide, the eques Gaius Proculeius, to be ready to kill him.

However, Octavian just managed to elude his pursuers and reach the shore, where he disembarked. He was out of immediate physical danger, but found himself completely alone except for his armor bearer. Apparently he hid for a time in a cave. When he thought of his army isolated and under siege on the Sicilian coast, he was, according to Dio, “terribly distressed.” The war was about to be lost and his glittering career was in ruins.

His travails were not over. Octavian was walking on the coast road in the direction of Rhegium when he saw a flotilla of biremes heading for the shore. He went down onto the beach to greet them, only realizing in the nick of time that they were Pompeians. As he made his lucky escape by narrow, winding paths, he encountered a new and completely unexpected danger: an attack by the slave of an officer on his staff whose father he had proscribed. No more details of the attempt on his life are known, except that he survived.

Some people from the mountains came down to see what was going on and found Octavian nearing the limits of mental and physical endurance. They transferred him from one small boat to another to evade detection and at last brought him to his waiting legions.

Octavian gave another immediate and characteristic display of sangfroid. Food and sleep could wait; first, he dispatched a liburnian to Cornificius in Sicily to brief him on what had happened, and sent messengers around the mountains to let everyone know he was safe. Thorough-minded as always, he was not going to allow any administrative slipup or communication failure to nullify this new opportunity for a comeback.

The situation looked more difficult than it really was. Two immediate things had to be achieved if momentum was to be regained. First, somehow or other Octavian’s legions had to get themselves to Sicily. This seems to have presented few difficulties now that Agrippa, profiting from his sea victory, had occupied some ports on the island’s northern coast. A successful transfer was soon effected.

Second, Cornificius, pinned down by Pompeius’ troops near Tauromenium, had to extricate himself and join Agrippa. This was accomplished too, although it entailed a painful march across an arid expanse of old, cooled lava near Mount Etna.

Only a few days had passed since Octavian’s debacle, but the tables were turned. He was master in Sicily of twenty-three legions, twenty thousand cavalry, and more than five thousand light-armed troops. His forces were overrunning the island, and Sextus recalled his army in the west to the northeastern enclave, which was all that was safely left to him of his island realm.

Sextus realized that the only way he could retrieve a rapidly deteriorating situation was to provoke a confrontation at sea. On September 3, his fleet sailed north out of Messana, rounded the cape of Pelorum (today’s Cape Faro), and met Agrippa’s fleet in the sea between the ports of Mylae and Naulochus.

Octavian appears to have played little part in the battle. If we are to believe Suetonius, he was suffering some sort of psychological crisis—a relapse to his state of mind at Philippi.

On the eve of the battle he fell so fast asleep that his staff had to wake him and ask for the signal to begin hostilities. This must have been the occasion of Antony’s taunt: “He could not face his ships to review them when they were already at their fighting stations; but lay on his back in a stupor and gazed up at the sky, never rising to show that he was alive until his admiral Marcus Agrippa had routed the enemy.”

The surviving descriptions of the encounter say little about the opposing fleets’ tactics; maybe this grand mêlée of about six hundred warships was little more than a multitude of individual encounters, trireme against trireme, while from the land the infantry of both sides looked on apprehensively.

As time passed it began to appear that Sextus was losing more ships than his adversary (thanks in good part to Agrippa’s harpax). Some of his galleys began to surrender, and Agrippa’s men raised the paean, or victory shout, which was picked up and echoed by the soldiers onshore. A setback became a rout. One of Sextus’ admirals killed himself, the other surrendered to Agrippa. Only seventeen warships survived.

Sextus was so stunned by what had taken place that he omitted to give any orders to his infantry, with the result that they, too, immediately surrendered. He rushed to Messana and changed out of his commander in chief’s uniform with its blue cloak into civilian clothes. He loaded everything of any use, including all the money he had, into the poor remainder of his fleet, embarked with his daughter and some of his entourage, and sailed eastward, intending to apply to Mark Antony for help. Yet again, unconsciously no doubt, he was following his father’s example, who, when shocked by his defeat at Pharsalus, fled to seek safety in the east.

The battle of Naulochus, as it was named, was over, and with it the Sicilian war.

Lepidus was feeling extremely pleased with himself. Sidelined by Antony and Octavian, he had found the last few years less than satisfactory; but now he was having an excellent war. As commander of a great army, he was the master of Sicily. The chance of a lifetime presented itself. It was time for him to flex his muscles. He laid claim to the island on the grounds that he had landed there first and received the largest number of surrenders by cities.

Octavian, enraged, took action typical of him, at once careful and bold. He sent out some agents, who discovered that Lepidus’ soldiers thought little of him, admired Octavian’s courage, and were exasperated by the prospect of another civil war.

Once the ground had been prepared, the moment came for a bravura display of personal heroism. Octavian rode up to Lepidus’ camp with some cavalry, which he left by the outer defenses. Then, unarmed and dressed in a traveling cloak, he walked with a handful of companions into the camp—as one contemporary commentator put it, “bringing with him nothing but his name.” It was a striking piece of political theater, repeating his earlier forays into potentially hostile crowds. As he walked through the lines, the soldiers he met saluted him.

As Naulochus had shown, Octavian still found it hard to cope with the experience of battle, but when stung by opposition to him personally he did not hesitate to place his life at risk. For him, bravery was not an assertion of collective defiance and solidarity among colleagues but a solitary, obstinate act of will.

Lepidus, alerted by the uproar that something was amiss, rushed out of his tent and ordered that the intruder be repelled by force. Suddenly Octavian was in mortal danger. According to Appian, Octavian “was hit on the breastplate but the weapon failed to penetrate to the skin and he escaped by running to his cavalry. The men in one of Lepidus’ outposts jeered at him as he ran.”

It was a painful humiliation. Yet in the next few hours Lepidus’ men began to desert him. He went out and pleaded with them to remain loyal. He caught hold of a standard, saying he would not release it. “You will when you’re dead!” one of the standard-bearers said. Now it was Lepidus’ turn to be humbled. Frightened, he let go: the game was up. Seeing that this was so, he changed out of uniform and made his way to Octavian at top speed, with spectators jogging along beside him as if at a public entertainment.

Octavian was well able to be ruthless and cruel when opponents fell into his hands; his performance to date had been an implicit criticism of his adoptive father’s policy of clemency. But now he made a decision that presaged a change of approach.

At this very moment, for the first time since leaving Apollonia eight years previously, he faced no visible threat to his position. He knew that what everyone wanted was peace and a return to the rule of law. As a demonstration that this was his desire, too, he stood when Lepidus came up to him, and prevented the suppliant from falling to his knees as he intended. He administered no punishment and sent Lepidus to Rome dressed as he was, as a private individual.

Most significantly of all, Octavian did not strip him of his highly prestigious position as pontifex maximus, where his predecessor had been Julius Caesar. He was, however, deposed as triumvir; he left public life and spent his remaining twenty years in comfortable retirement at Circeii, a seaside resort about fifty miles south of Rome.

The town was built on the side of a steep crag, crowned by a temple of the sun and a lighthouse; it was originally an island, and the malarial Pomptine Marshes lay on its landward side. According to legend, in one of the numerous caves on its slopes the witch Circe had once lived, she who changed visitors into swine. It was not an inappropriate spot for one of Rome’s least appealing politicians to end up in.

When he gathered together all the various armies, Octavian found that he had under his command a grand total of forty-five legions, twenty-five thousand cavalry, about thirty-seven thousand light-armed troops, and six hundred warships. It was impractical to demobilize them all at once, for to acquire land on which they could settle would take time and money. Instead he paid part of the promised donatives, distributed honors, and pardoned Sextus’ officers.

The soldiers, especially his own, mutinied, demanding full payment of everything owed and immediate discharge. In response, Octavian announced a campaign against the Illyrians (in today’s Albania), for which he would need legions, and increased the number of awards to officers and men. He also made some conciliatory gestures, discharging those who had fought at Mutina and Philippi and offering an additional donative of two thousand sesterces. Calm returned to the camp.

After Naulochus, Sextus Pompeius made good speed to the eastern Mediterranean and, in another uncanny echo of his father’s flight in 48 B.C., put in at Mytilene. Only sketchy accounts survive of his next moves. He seems to have been well provided with cash, for he crossed over to the province of Asia, where he managed to raise large numbers of troops. Soon he was in command of three legions.

Antony showed little interest in Sextus, but was irritated to find that he had offered his services to the Parthian king. The governor of Asia, Gaius Furnius, offended by Sextus’ incursion into his province, marched against him with a large force. A sensible man would have surrendered, and Sextus was promised honorable treatment if he did so. Unaccountably he dug his heels in, tried to escape, but was caught.

The son of Pompey the Great had wasted his last chance of survival. He no longer had the slightest political or military value and could not be trusted to behave intelligently. In 35 B.C., Sextus Pompeius was executed, presumably with Antony’s approval. He was about twenty-six when he died—an age at which most men are launching, not concluding, their lives and careers.

Why did Sextus not win his war? For a long time he went from victory to victory. If he had taken Menodorus’ advice and refused to discuss terms with the triumvirs he could have starved Italy into submission and this biography might well have had him instead of Octavian as its subject.

The later ancient literary sources depict Sextus as a pirate, but he and his contemporaries saw him as a great Roman nobleman in pursuit of his rights. Appian claims that Sextus had no discernible strategic purpose and a pronounced tendency to avoid following up successes. There is some merit in the charge that Sextus failed to prosecute a long-term aim with adequate vigor.

He also did not take into account the disproportion in the relatively limited resources over which he had control and those at the disposal of the triumvirs, even when taken singly. This meant that he could not afford to wait on events, for sooner or later he would be outnumbered.

The youthful challenger to the post-republican regime lost, not so much through lack of intelligence or military and naval ability, but because he failed to think things through.