Famous Women

By Ivan Scott

Famous women have had a place in history since the formation of the first civilization. They are few in number, some fictitious, like Helen of Troy, some notorious, like Cleopatra whose name and deeds are indelibly fixed in the historical record.
In every century, indeed every generation, some few women rise to unmatched degrees of accomplishment and enjoy a general admiration. Their fame is the result of special qualities peculiar to themselves. In almost all cases beauty, or talent, or feminine verve, some significant gift, sets them apart from other women. It is the particular fascination of a unique individual that attracts and holds attention from all the others.
In these recent times public adulation given to exceptional women is magnified by means of communication almost revolutionary in scope. All is known about them; all is observed, reported upon, judged and commented on. Their power in many sectors of public life is always remarkable and runs through the full range of human activity, from politics, to science, to the arts and to literature.
In these pages twelve women are considered who have had a decisive impact on the times in which they lived. A lack of space in a book of brief compass like this does not allow for a consideration of female exemplars worldwide. In the western world, but a small fraction of earths humanity, the twelve considered here have exerted influence that extends far beyond the parochial origins of their own lives.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 9, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483604213

Ivan Scott

Born in Iowa City, Iowa in 1928, Ivan Scott earned a bachelor’s degree from the College of William and Mary, a master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Pennsylvania. Recipient of a Fulbright fellowship, he studied at the University of Paris. During nearly four decades as a teacher, he has published books and articles on French and Italian history and the history of the papacy. His most recent publications are Jews vs. Arabs: Sibling Rivalry of the Ages, (Lost Coast Press, 2001), The Man from Somalia, Citizen of the World, (Vantage Press, 2010), Famous Immigrants, (Xlibris, 2012), and Famous Women, (Xlibris, 2013) Ivan Scott is presently professor emeritus at the University of Toledo.

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Copyright © 2013 by Ivan Scott.

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Contents

Introduction

Cleopatra VII Philopater

Audrey Hepburn

Elizabeth Taylor

Ayn Rand

Victoria Goodhull

Margaret Sanger

Gloria Steinem

Madame Chiang Kai Shek

Svetlana Alliluyeva

Margaret Mead

Eleanor Roosevelt

Golda Meir

Hillary Rodham Clinton

Margaret Thatcher

Introduction

FAMOUS WOMEN HAVE HAD A place in history since the formation of the first civilization. They are few in number, some fictitious, like Helen of Troy, some notorious, like Cleopatra whose name and deeds are indelibly fixed in the historical record.

In every century, indeed every generation, some few women rise to unmatched degrees of accomplishment and enjoy a general admiration. Their fame is the result of special qualities peculiar to themselves. In almost all cases beauty, or talent, or feminine verve, some significant gift, sets them apart from other women. It is the particular fascination of a unique individual that attracts and holds attention from all the others.

In these recent times public adulation given to exceptional women is magnified by means of communication almost revolutionary in scope. All is known about them; all is observed, reported upon, judged and commented on. Their power in many sectors of public life is always remarkable and runs through the full range of human activity, from politics, to science, to the arts and to literature.

In these pages the women are considered who have had a decisive impact on the times in which they lived. A lack of space in a book of brief compass like this does not allow for a consideration of female exemplars worldwide. In the western world, but a small fraction of earth’s humanity, the women considered here have exerted influence that extends far beyond the parochial origins of their own lives.

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Cleopatra

Cleopatra VII Philopater

CLEOPATRA’S DATE OF BIRTH IS uncertain, tradition suggests late 69 B.C. Legendary Queen of Egypt, and her life story is the stuff from which legends are woven, unrecorded facts and unsubstantiated anecdotes, compounded by myths circulated long after her death. Like Jesus of Nazareth or Moses, Cleopatra’s life has no history to be consulted. However, there is no doubt that she is an authentic historical character.

Her father was Ptolemy XII Auletes, her mother was Cleopatra VI Tryphaena. The name Cleopatra was an honorific title bestowed on Ptolemaic queens from the time that a marital union had been established between the Ptolemaic and the Syrian Seleucid dynasty. There were several queens in that line, Cleopatra VII would be the last.

Ptolemy XII and Cleopatra VI ruled Egypt jointly. Married, they were brother and sister (some believed they were cousins). Their family origin was Macedonia, one of the most primitive regions in the Greek peninsula. The military campaigns of Alexander the Great had begun there, resulting in the conquest of an area larger than the Middle East as it known today. After his death in 323 B.C. an interregnum ensued, lasting for more than two decades. At the end of prolonged internecine warfare, three generals controlled what historians would call the Hellenistic World. Greece came under the rule of a general, Antigonus; the larger part of the Middle East went to another general, Seleucus I. The third general, Ptolemy, ruled Egypt. His reign as Ptolemy I Soter (Savior) began in 305. His policy, which would remain his family’s policy for the next two and one-half centuries, was to assign the attribution of divinity to the dynasty, as had the Pharaohs before them. Like the Pharaohs also, Ptolemy instituted a form of dynastic incest in order to ensure a racial purity of the Macedonian ascendancy; white people ruled brown people. Ptolemaic cousins married cousins for the same reason. Rival sisters in an ever-expanding class vied for power, playing crucial roles in times of dynastic succession. Over several generations the Ptolemies had spoken Greek exclusively, a foreign family ruling a land alien to them.

Cleopatra VII was the first Queen among them to learn the Egyptian language. Again, legend relates that she had a marked capacity for learning foreign languages. Reputedly a beautiful woman, she was not. An exceptionally prominent nose distorted her profile too much. Seductive, appealing to men, she certainly knew her powers and how to use them. The fascination she earned from men who desired her was not owed to physical beauty, but her magnetic personality. She possessed extraordinary will power, the need for dominance, a great wit and confidence in herself; endowed with cunning ways, her critics said.

Cleopatra had exceptional abilities in governance. Her experience in ruling began while she was a teenager, around age fourteen. While on a mission to Rome, accompanied by Cleopatra, Ptolemy XII was effectively deposed. His wife, his sister, his co-ruler, in fact, seized power, determined to rule alone. She did not rule long. She was poisoned, the result of family feuding and habitual sibling rivalries. One of the sisters, Berenice IV, arranged the murder in order to rule in her father’s absence. The family suspected that Ptolemy intended to accept roman sovereignty. Ptolemy, supported by a Roman force, returned to Alexandria and imprisoned Berenice. By his decree she was executed and Cleopatra made his regent.

Ptolemy XII ruled four years, and then died. His will stipulated that Cleopatra VII and her ten-year old brother, Ptolemy XIII, should rule jointly. Cleopatra was eighteen, the ten-year old boy submissive enough that she ruled independently, as if a single sovereign. She removed Ptolemy’s name from all official documents, an unspoken testimony that she ruled alone. Coinage was minted in her name, her face embossed on each coin. She alone decided upon Egypt’s foreign relations, dealing by herself with the Roman occupation force, Gabiniani, which had been instrumental in restoring her father’s power. The leader of the Gabiniani, Aulus Gabinius (Julius Caesar’s father-in-law), refused to assist the Syrians in their conflict with the Parthians, the most powerfully organized people in the region, a continuing threat to the Roman Imperium. Cleopatra dissented. When the Roman governor of Syria sent his sons to Alexandria, seeking support, Gabinius had the envoys killed. Thereafter, Cleopatra’s essential military support disappeared at a time when the conflict with her brother was reaching a critical point.

Family feuds, pitting brother and sister against each other, were enlarged when courtiers loyal to Ptolemy XIII led by a eunuch named Pothinius, deposed Cleopatra. She fled to Syria and her brother ruled alone. Her only remaining sister, Arsinoe IV, joined her. Several years younger than Cleopatra, Arsinoe was the half sister of both Cleopatra and her brother Ptolemy; same father, different mothers.

The sister’ exile was of short duration, ended because of a spreading revolution at Rome, expanding throughout the Roman Empire. It was a vast territory, not to be described in a few words; the Italic peninsula, the lands of Gaul north of the Alpine Mountains; to the south, Spain, and the better part of the Mediterranean littoral; eastward, Greece, the cities of Asia Minor and most of the Middle East regions. Only the Parthians and the Egyptians remained an obstacle to be conquered by the ever-growing Roman colossus.

The dominant figures in Roman politics at the time Cleopatra’s destiny was being determined were Julius Caesar and Gnaeus Pompey. Both men were aristocrats, scions of noble families. Both were driven toward a relentless rivalry, due to their imperious natures and the nature of Roman politics. In an unusual symbiosis, military men dominated policies and politician dominated military men. In this way, Rome had become the greatest military power in the Mediterranean region.

About the same age, the personal power Caesar and Pompey enjoyed resulted from their great wealth and social standing. The advantage in their rivalry belonged to Pompey. He relied on the senatorial class where real power lay. Caesar, popular with the Roman masses, based his political strength on the popular assembly, the Tribunate. Like many aristocrats of that era, great wealth could be translated into military power by establishing private armies, mercenaries loyal to the leader, for so long as wages and salaries were paid.

The expansion of an aristocratic republic became over time a hegemonic power in the Mediterranean region, depending on a working relationship between private armies. Political power flowed from military power, always concentrated at last in a single dominant figure. By the time Caesar and Pompey were middle-aged men power was concentrated in three rivals, Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus. A Triumvirate of unequals, the latter was eased out of all but nominal power, and a duel between the dominant two commenced for absolute control of the Roman state.

Caesar’s acquaintance with Cleopatra (which would become an intimate one eventually) began about the time the Triumvirate was breaking up. She had accompanied her father on his mission to Rome. An anecdotal account of the trip tells that Ptolemy XII intended to deliver Egypt to Rome, accepting the role of governor of what would become a Roman province. This had been Syria’s fate; it seemed this might be Egypt’s fate also. Better to be a governor of a province than a defeated monarch, transported in chains to Rome, to endure the humiliation of Rome’s notorious Triumph, the celebration of victory followed by the execution of the loser (traditionally by strangulation).

If the story is a true one about a weak ruler intent on committing treason, the other account of his wife’s defection, taking control of Egypt in his absence, is to be believed also. The intervention of the Triumvirate saved Ptolemy XII’s power, resulting in the execution of his daughter, Berenice IV, who had allegedly murdered her mother in order to maintain Ptolemaic supremacy in Egypt. He ruled another four years and died, having named Cleopatra VII and her brother, Ptolemy XIII, co-rulers.

The intervention of the Triumvirate in Egyptian dynastic disputes brought Caesar and Pompey to a final conflict. The latter’s maneuvers in the Senate resulted in making Caesar an outlaw; technically he was guilty of treason, because he had dared to leave the Gaullic provinces entrusted to his rule without the Senate’s permission. Crossing the river Rubicon into Italy, he faced the retribution Pompey could impose on him in the name of the Senate authority.

Pompey’s strength, like his advantage, lay in the East where in a long career he had made his power seem unassailable. Caesar’s power was restricted to Italy where a friendly populace, centered in the power of the Tribunate, made him invincible. Beyond Italy, he had little or no power. Two Tribunes (Marc Antony and C. Cassius), rallied to Caesar’s side, and assumed command of his largest forces.

In the fall of 48, the duel between Caesar and Pompey was decided in Greece, on the plains of Pharsalus. Pompey had a larger number of foot soldiers, supplemented by a considerable cavalry. In an inconclusive battle Pompey was free to regroup and choose the next military engagement. Inexplicably, he fled to Alexandria where he would be able to assemble his fleets (Caesar had none). But he was defeated by Ptolemaic politics. The boy-King, Ptolemy XIII, arranged for his assassination. One of Pompey’s trusted centurions accomplished the deed, decapitation. Thereafter, Cleopatra and Ptolemy XIII fell into an impasse, the old unanswerable question the cause of it. Would Egypt fight in order to resist Roman interference, or would an arrangement be made with the Romans that would leave Egypt independent? Fearing her brother’s growing power, Cleopatra fled to Alexandria, resolved to raise an army and assume a single rule of Egypt. Ptolemy XIII’s deposition was her goal.

Caesar, unaware of Pompey’s demise, knowing only of his adversary’s retreat, arrived in Alexandria with his legions two days after the murder. Tradition tells that Caesar was outraged by the dishonorable way in which Pompey had died, beheaded in the presence of his wife and his four children; an affront to Roman dignity and authority that could not be tolerated. He occupied the city and Ptolemy XIII fled for his life.

Cleopatra, having no need for the forces she had assembled, returned to Alexandria. Again, legend has a story to tell, repeated in some detail by the Greek writer Plutarch one hundred fifty years later. When she asked for an audience through intermediaries, Caesar refused. To gain a hearing, she had her servants roll her up in a large carpet (naked by some accounts) and carried by a Sicilian porter into the palace. By all these hearsay accounts, the meeting between the ex-queen and the latest conqueror of Egypt went well. Caesar had known Cleopatra personally since she was a teenager living with her father in exile in Rome.

Rather than annex Egypt to the Roman Imperium, Caesar decided to change the regime at Alexandria. The price Cleopatra was willing to pay for the service being offered her was pregnancy. Less than a year later, she delivered a baby boy that she said Caesar had sired.

In this same interval Mithridates, one of Rome’s most implacable enemies, had besieged Alexandria, with the intention of saving the boy king from the Romans. The effort failed, and during one of the battles, Ptolemy XIII drowned in the Nile River. This simplified Ptolemaic succession considerably. Caesar announced that Cleopatra had resumed her legitimate authority and would rule jointly with another younger brother, Ptolemy XIV.

The final problem to be solved in the matter of succession was the latest Ptolemaic child borne by Cleopatra. She named him Caesarion Ptolemy XV, suggesting Caesar should acknowledge him as his heir. He refused, perhaps an implication that he did not believe he was the father; or that this was merely the first test of two strong-willed individuals. Secretly, in his will, Caesar designated his great-nephew, Gaius Octavian, as his heir. This would not be known until after he was assassinated in 44.

The love affair of Cleopatra and Caesar, if it can be called that much since it was politically inspired, lasted less than three years. Love between them was problematic, sexual gratification certain, as often is the case between an older man and a young woman. He was fifty and she was twenty-one. They would not marry, and he would divorce his second wife, Calpurnia Pisonis.

In 47, Caesar returned to Rome. The next year, Cleopatra arrived on a state visit with her infant child. She stayed at one of his country houses, notoriously his mistress, a scandal for the staid Roman aristocracy. She was still in Rome in March 44 when threats were being made against Caesar’s life.

Unlike his rival Pompey, Caesar had not been well received by the senatorial classes. His popularity remained with the Roman masses who believed he might become another Gracchus, a reformer dedicated to the needs and the desires of Rome’s huge and desperately poor underclass. However, his ambitions were so great and so little concealed, that his friends began to doubt his intentions. It was clear that, like Pompey, he wanted the whole power, the Imperator, which meant dictator for life, even for his posterity.

Traditionally, the Romans, not unlike the Greeks, were accustomed to assigning the dictatorship to the one judged most able in times of great necessity, but afterward withdrawing their trust in one-man rule. Pompey had been granted that trust and he had not misused it. Caesar could not instill the same degree of trust in his many political critics. Four of his closest colleagues turned against him. Of the four, one of his closest friends, Decimus Brutus, thrust a dagger into his side on the Ides of March, the fifteenth day of the month. He expired almost at once, so surprised, legend recounts, that he said wonderingly, as if disbelieving, You too Brutus?

Another friend, the Tribune Marc Antony, delivered the eulogy at his funeral, some of his words said to be memorable; also memorable in Shakespeare’s dramatic peroration: Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears. I come not to condemn Caesar, but to praise him, noblest of all Romans.

After Caesar’s death, Antony became a public figure, literally overnight. Always the faithful tribune who had served selflessly the most famous of the Roman aristocrats, he assumed Caesar’s position as dictator, without asking for Senate approval. Most agreed that the emergency created by the disappearance of Rome’s most renowned leader required immediate and resolute action. The killing of Caesar had been welcomed without regret by most of the senators.

Judged to be too closely identified with the late dictator, Antony had the task of conciliating those who had murdered Caesar, and at the same time using the exceptional powers he had arrogated to himself (munificent bribes as well), to move the conspirators out of Rome and to distant places where they were rewarded with high posts in administration. Some held the highest office, Consul; others would become Consuls.

Antony became Caesar incarnate, as it were, conciliating the numerous factions that had arisen to oppose one-man rule, all the while performing that feat himself. With exceptional ability he defused a situation that might have become the revolutionary movement many had feared. In this atmosphere, concerned for her safety and that of her young son, Cleopatra departed for Alexandria. Within a year after her return, her brother, Ptolemy XIV, died from being poisoned, probably arranged by Cleopatra. She named her son Caesarion (now four) her regent.

The only threat to Antony’s pretensions came, not from Caesar’s natural son, but from his adopted son, Gaius Octavian. Anthony could not but scorn a young man eighteen years old without any experience. He was thirty-eight, highly experienced, a lifetime spent in politics and warfare, expecting to set aside easily the callow youth at some future time and convenience.

Antony misjudged the young man he scorned. Unaware, like his family, that he was Caesars’ adopted son, after the will was read Octavian did not delay in announcing his intentions. Henceforth, he would be called Caesar, in memory of his departed father. His pretension was widely accepted by the roman aristocracy and would for coming centuries be a pretension rulers of the Roman Empire attached to themselves.

In this unexpected way a new duel commenced, more than reminiscent of the last one that had pitted Caesar against Pompey. Antony contested Octavian’s ambitions. A new Triumvirate was soon formed, Octavian and Antony the leading figures, the third member an inconsequential individual named Lepidus. For the next five years Octavian and Antony decided all matters, civil and military. They agreed their cooperation should last five years, without senate approval.

As was the case in the first triumvirate, shared power did not mean collaboration, but rather a time of waiting on events. Hardly had the funeral ceremonies come to an end, when a new party, the Caesareans, appeared dedicated to Caesar’s memory and devoted to fulfilling his ambitions. Chief among these partisans were Octavian and Antony.

The conspirators which Antony had established earlier at several points in the East worked toward the opposite end, a restoration of the liberties the Roman republic had lost under Caesar’s dictatorship. Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus were the principle members among these zealots.

Cleopatra made common cause with the Caesareans, as might be expected. A year after her power had been simplified by the elimination of Ptolemy XIV, she established a working relationship with one of the Caesarean leader in the East, leading to two years of naval engagements in some of which she participated.

Antony suspected her of manipulating both sides to insure her independence. In the summer of 41, he invited her to meet him at Tarsus for a talk. She agreed. Accepting the legendary account of the meeting at face value it may be thought he was charmed by her, as Caesar had been. Forgetting his wife, Fulvia, he spent the winter months of 41-40 with Cleopatra at Alexandria. One may suppose that a genuine love relationship developed in that time, from which political interests could not be separated. Cleopatra’s aims were twofold: to maintain her sovereign independence, to exploit any situation that might allow her to become a Roman Queen in the future, mistress of a territory that extended from the British Isles to the far southern reaches of her own domain. Antony’s aim, as historians have recorded it, was simply to have a good time and enjoy her company. But he also intended to realize a plan he had entertained for several years. The man who could defeat the seemingly unconquerable Parthians and bring them under Roman control would become the Imperator, perhaps for life, the perpetual dictator of the Roman world. Cleopatra was seduced evidently by the enormity of the idea. There began a fatal collaboration, not so much directed against Octavian as toward the realization of a grand scheme from which they both might profit.

It seems certain that an important part of their agreement, from Cleopatra’s perspective, was a plan to get rid of her younger sister, Arsinoe. She suspected that Arsinoe was plotting in order to take her place, and this meant that her son, Caesarion would be disinherited. The death of Arsinoe was the only solution, but difficult to achieve since Arsinoe lived in enforced seclusion in the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus. It was a captivity from which she could not easily escape.

When Caesar returned to Rome in 47, Arsinoe had been transported there, to serve as a prize of war at his Triumph, when he arrived in the city. Custom required that Arsinoe would be strangled at the end of the ceremony. But Caesar, for reasons not clear, perhaps compassion, or merely political expediency, spared her life. She was placed in the sanctuary at Ephesus where she would remain for the rest of her life. Her life was a short one. Sometime in 41, Arsinoe was murdered on the steps of the Temple, the assailants unknown, the deed arranged by Anthony, instigated by Cleopatra. Approximately nine months later, 25 December 40, Cleopatra gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl. She named the boy Alexander Helios and the girl Cleopatra Selene II, identifying Antony as the father.

During her enforced seclusion at the Temple Artemis, Arsinoe was heard to refer to herself as Queen of Egypt, which may explain the drastic action Cleopatra took against her sister. There was not a little truth in Arsinoe’s braggadocio. She was indeed the ex-Queen of Egypt, actually the unwilling client of Roman power imposed on her by Julius Caesar. In September 48, he had her installed as co-ruler with her brother, Ptolemy XIII. While Cleopatra waited for Caesar’s attention and his disposition of her future, Arsinoe ruled, in company with her brother. Her rule was brief, from September 48 to January 47. Her misfortune, and for Ptolemy XIII as well, came when she joined Egyptian forces with those besieging Alexandria. Ptolemy lost his life, falling into the Nile River and drowning. Arsinoe was taken captive, detained until transported to Rome the next year. By chance, or perhaps out of necessity, Cleopatra appeared in Rome at the same time. Perhaps she was obliged to witness her sister’s humiliation, exhibited as a prize of war in Caesar’s Triumph. Arsinoe’s life had been spared but she was a perpetual captive at the Temple Artemis, she would have known that her sister Cleopatra had become the reigning queen of Egypt.

Installed Queen of Egypt, a convenient substitute for her unfortunate sister Arsinoe, Cleopatra had to think about her future. A warrior-queen, like Arsinoe, she did not want to become a Roman prize in a war she could not expect to win against the greatest power of the ages. Once Caesar was gone after 44, she had to choose between his successors, Antony and Octavian. She chose the former, perhaps one of the greatest gambles in world history, considering the events that followed her death.

Antony’s war on the Parthians did not prosper. His possession of the East, agreed to by Octavian and Lepidus, did not serve as an adequate base for fighting the unbeatable foe that had been a thorn in the Roman side long before he and Cleopatra embarked upon their campaign to change the Roman world, perhaps change the whole world. She could not furnish him land troops, having few. Her ships, a small fleet even by the standards of the time, served no useful purpose for fulfilling his ambitions.

As the civil war, Caesareans vs. anti-Caesareans, persisted year after year, the inevitable confrontation of two men was repeatedly deferred. In those years Octavian had consolidated his control in the western provinces, from the lands of the Gauls in the north to the hinterlands of North Africa. Like Julius Caesar in his time, the adopted son Octavian, was the master of the western half of what would soon be called the Roman Empire.

Antony’s situation in the east was equally secure, only disturbed by his continued war with the Parthians. In 37, Octavian, Antony, and Lepidus met at Athens and agreed to renew the Triumvirate for another five years.

During four years of continuous warfare, the demanding obligations of a vast territory incumbent on him, Antony became, in modern parlance, Cleopatra’s commuting boyfriend. After one of his visits she became pregnant, probably late 33. The next year, she delivered another baby, naming the boy Ptolemy Philadelphus, in memory of one of her famed ancestors, Ptolemy II Philadelphus.

In 33, Antony divorced Octavia and married Cleopatra, following Egyptian rites. Late in 34, they celebrated his victories in Armenia and Media. In an elaborate ceremony conducted in Alexandria, Antony and Cleopatra sat on a golden throne. He was dressed to portray Dionysus, and she was dressed to portray Isis. A ceremony called Donations of Alexandria followed. Antony and Cleopatra were seated on a golden throne with their children seated below them. Antony distributed the power of his empire, for the present and for the future. He declared himself King of Kings, Cleopatra Queen of Kings. Cleopatra’s oldest child, Caesarion, was declared the lawful son of Caesar and his legitimate heir, a calculated insult, no doubt, directed against Octavian, Caesar’s adopted son. Cleopatra’s union with Caesar was declared a legal marriage sanctioned by Macedonian law. Cleopatra and Caesarion were crowned co-rulers of Egypt and Cyprus. Alexander Helios became king of Armenia, Media and Parthia (still unconquered). Cleopatra Selene II was named Queen of Cyrenaica and Libya. Philadelphius became king of Phoenicia, Syria, and Cilicia.

Antony’s Donations of Alexandria, an arbitrary dismemberment of the Roman Republic, outraged many senators. While the establishment of the Triumvirate had required the senate’s permission, none had been given formally, evidently because none was requested. The doubtful outcome of the civil war had placed all decisions in abeyance. Now, at Octavian’s behest, the senate voted a declaration of war against the Egyptian Queen. But, to make war on Cleopatra was to make war on Antony, her former paramour, now her husband and ally. Accordingly, the senate stripped him of all authority, making him effectively an outlaw. His position in this respect was not unlike that of Caesar in 49 when he had crossed the Rubicon to confront Pompey.

It followed that Octavian would move his forces against those of Antony, his sometime friend, sometime enemy. The civil war, engaging Caesareans against anti-Caesareans changed complexion entirely, becoming a war reduced to two men seeking exclusive control of the whole of the empire.

Antony had the advantage in most ways. The anticipated field of action was the East, his backyard so to speak. He could martial more armed men than Octavian and call upon the seasoned veterans who had been fighting in Parthia and Armenia. His fleet of warships, combined with Cleopatra’s, outnumbered Octavian’s naval force by 100 ships.

In the winter of 32-31, Antony mobilized in Greece 75,000 foot soldiers, mounted cavalry in excess of 12,000. The next spring, Octavian transported to the same vicinity 80,000 foot soldiers and 12,000 cavalry. On land, they were equal in numbers, but unequal in strategy. In the first engagements Antony’s forces were divided by maneuvers of Octavian’s chief commander, Marcus Agrippa. His cavalry seized Corinth and Patrae in the first days of fighting. Demoralized, many of Antony’s foot soldiers and mounted men defected to Octavian’s side. He would in the course of the next year, gain control of Greece, and after that, Asia Minor, opening the way to Egypt.

At sea Antony’s reverses were essentially the same, superior strategy prevailed over superior numbers. The commands of the combined fleets Antony had placed in the Gulf of Actium were divided in morale and purpose. The officers in charge, half-hearted in their duties, had resisted in vain Cleopatra’s desire to command her own ships, Antony opposed just as