Antony's Speech Before the Battle of Actium

31 BC

After various opinions had been expressed by different men, Cleopatra prevailed with her advice that they should entrust the best strategic positions to garrisons, and that the rest should depart with herself and Antony to Egypt. She had reached this opinion as the result of being disturbed by omens. For swallows had built their nests about her tent and on the flagship, on which she was sailing, and milk and blood together had dripped from beeswax; also the statues of herself and Antony in the guise of gods, which the Athenians had placed on their Acropolis, had been hurled down by thunderbolts into the theatre. In consequence of these portents and of the resulting dejection of the army, and of the sickness prevalent among them, Cleopatra herself became alarmed and filled Antony with fears. They did not wish, however, to sail out secretly, nor yet openly, as if they were in flight, lest they should inspire their allies also with fear, but rather as if they were making preparations for a naval battle, and incidentally in order that they might force their way through in case there should be any resistance. Therefore they first chose out the best of the vessels and burned the rest, since the sailors had become fewer by death and desertion; next they secretly put all their most valuable possessions on board by night. Then when the ships were ready, Antony called his soldiers together and spoke as follows:

"The preparations for the war which it was my duty to attend to have all been adequately made, soldiers, in advance. First, there is your immense throng, all the chosen flower of our dependents and allies; and to such a degree are you masters of every form of combat that is in vogue among us that each of you, unsupported, is formidable to your adversaries. Again, you yourselves surely see how large and how fine a fleet we have, and how many fine hoplites, cavalry, slingers, peltasts, archers, and mounted archers. Most of these arms are not found at all on the other side, and those that they have are much fewer and far less powerful than ours. Moreover, their funds are scanty, and that, too, though they have been raised by forced contributions and cannot last long, and at the same time they have rendered the contributors better disposed toward us than toward the men who took their money; hence the population is in no way favourable to them, and is on the point of open revolt besides. Our resources, on the other hand, drawn as they have been from our accumulations, have caused not one person to feel aggrieved, and will aid us all collectively.

"In addition to these considerations, numerous and important as they are, I hesitate on general principles to add anything personal concerning myself by way of boasting; yet since this, too, is one of the factors which contribute to victory in war, and in the opinion of all men is of supreme importance,-I mean that men who are to wage war successfully must also have an excellent general,-necessity itself has rendered quite inevitable what I shall say about myself, in order that you may realize even better than you do this truth, that you yourselves are the kind of soldiers that could win even without a good leader, and that I am the kind of leader that could prevail even with poor soldiers. For I am at that age when men are at their very prime, both in body and in mind, and are hampered neither by the rashness of youth nor by the slackness of old age, but are at their strongest, because they occupy the mean between these two extremes. Moreover, I have the advantage of such natural gifts and of such a training that I can with the greatest ease make the right decision in every case and give it utterance. As regards experience, which, as you know, causes even the ignorant and the uneducated to appear to be of some value, I have been acquiring that through my whole political and my whole military career. For from boyhood down to the present moment I have continually trained myself in these matters; I have been ruled much and have ruled much, and thereby I have learned, on the one hand, all the tasks of whatever kind the leader must impose, and, on the other, all the duties of whatever kind the subordinate must obediently perform. I have known fear, I have known confidence; thereby I have schooled myself, through the one, not to be afraid of anything too readily, and, through the other, not to venture on any hazard too heedlessly. I have known good fortune, I have known failure; consequently I am able to avoid both despair and excess of pride.

"I speak to you who know that what I say is true, and make you who hear it my witnesses to its truth, not with the intention of uttering idle boasts about myself,-enough for me, so far as fame is concerned, is your consciousness of it,-but to the end that you may in this way bring home to yourselves how much better we are equipped than our opponents. For while they are inferior to us not only in number of troops and in abundance of money, but also in diversity of equipment, yet in no one respect are they so lacking as in the youth and inexperience of their commander. About his deficiencies in general I do not need to speak precisely or in detail, but I will sum up the whole matter and say, what you also know, that he is a veritable weakling in body and has never by himself been victor in any important battle either on the land or on the sea. Indeed, at Philippi, in one and the same conflict, it was I that conquered and he that was defeated.

"So great is the difference between us two; but, as a rule, it is those who have the better equipment that secure the victories. Now if our opponents have any strength at all, you will find it to exist in their heavy-armed force and on land; as for their ships, they will not even be able to sail out against us at all. For you yourselves, of course, see the length and beam of our vessels, which are such that even if the enemy's were a match for them in number, yet because of these advantages on our side they could do no damage either by charging bows-on or by ramming our sides. For in the one case the thickness of our timbers, and in the other the very height of our ships, would certainly check them, even if there were no one on board to ward them off. Where, indeed, will anyone find a chance to assail ships which carry so many archers and slingers, who have the further advantage of striking their assailants from the towers aloft? But if anyone should manage to come up close, how could he fail to get sunk by the very number of our oars, or how could he fail to be sent to the bottom when shot at by all the warriors on our decks and in our towers? Do not imagine, now, that they possess any particular seamanship just because Agrippa won a naval battle off Sicily; for they contended, not against Sextus, but against his slaves, not against a like equipment with ours, but against one far inferior. And if anyone is inclined to make much of their good fortune in that combat, he is bound to reckon on the other side the defeat which Caesar himself suffered at the hands of Sextus himself; in this way he will find, not merely that our chances are equal, but that all the considerations on our side are far more numerous and far better than on theirs. In a word, how large a part does Sicily form of the whole empire, and how large a fraction of our force did the troops of Sextus possess, that anyone should reasonably fear Caesar's armament, which is precisely the same as before and has grown neither larger nor better, merely because of his good luck, rather than take courage because of his defeat? It is precisely in view of these considerations, therefore, that I have not cared to risk a first engagement with the infantry, where they appear to have strength in a way, in order that no one of you should become disheartened as the result of a reverse in that arm; instead, I have chosen to begin with the ships, where we are strongest and have a vast superiority over our antagonists, in order that after a victory with these we may scorn their infantry also. For you know well that the turn of the scale in this war depends for both sides entirely upon just this-I mean our fleets; for if we come out victorious with this arm we shall thenceforth suffer no harm from any of their other forces either, but shall cut them off on an islet, as it were, since all the regions round about are in our possession, and shall subdue them without trouble, if in no other way, at least by hunger.

"Now I think that there is no further need even of words to show you that we shall be struggling, not for small or insignificant ends, but in a contest such that, if we are zealous, we shall obtain the greatest rewards, and if careless, we shall suffer the most grievous misfortunes. Why, what would they not do to us, if they should prevail, when they have put to death practically all the followers of Sextus who were of any prominence, and have even destroyed many followers of Lepidus though they cooperated with Caesar's party? But why do I mention this, seeing that they have removed from his command altogether Lepidus himself, who was guilty of no wrong and furthermore had been their ally, and keep him under guard as if he were a prisoner of war, and when they have also exacted contributions of money from all the freedmen in Italy and from all the rest likewise who possess any land, going so far as to force some of them actually to resort to arms, and then for that act put large numers to death? Is it possible that those who have not spared their allies will spare us? Will those who levied tribute upon the property of their own adherents keep their hands from ours? Will they show humanity as victors who, even before gaining supremacy, have committed every conceivable outrage? Not to spend time in speaking of the experience of other people, I will enumerate their acts of insolence toward ourselves. Who does not know that, although I was chosen a partner and colleague of Caesar, and was given the management of public affairs on equal terms with him, and received like honours and offices, in possession of which I have continued for so long a time, yet I have been deprived of them all, so far as lay in his power; I have become a private citizen instead of a commander, disfranchised instead of consul, and this not by the action of the people nor yet of the senate (for how could that be, when the consuls and some other senators went so far as to flee at once from the city in order to escape casting any such vote?), but by the act of this one man and of his adherents, who do not perceive that they are training a sovereign to rule over themselves first of all? Why, the man who dared while I was still alive and in possession of so great power and was conquering the Armenians, to hunt out my will, to take it forcibly from those who had received it, to open it and read it publicly-how, I say, should a man like that spare either you or anybody else? And how will he show any kindness to others to whom he is bound by no tie, when he has shown himself such a man toward me-his firend, his table-companion, his kinsman?

"Now in case we are to draw any inferences from his decrees, he threatens you openly,-at any rate he has made the majority of you enemies outright,-but against me personally no such declaration has been made, though he is at war with me and is already acting in every way like one who has not only conquered me but also murdered me. Hence, when he has treated me in such a way,-me, whom he pretends not even yet at this day to regard as an enemy,-he surely will not keep his hands off you, with whom even he clearly admits that he is at war. What in the world does he mean, then, by threatening us all alike with arms, but in the decree declaring that he is at war with some and not with others? It is not, by Jupiter, with the intention of making any distinction among us, or of treating one class in one way and another in another, if he prevails, but it is in order to set us at variance and bring us in collision, and thus render us weaker. For of course he is not unaware that while we are in accord, and acting as one in everything, he can never in any way get the upper hand, but that if we quarrel, and some choose one policy and the rest another, he may perhaps prevail; and it is for this reason that he acts as he does toward us.

"Just as I, therefore, and the Romans associated with me foresee the danger, in spite of our enjoying a kind of immunity so far as the decrees are concerned, and as we comprehend his plot, and yet neither abandon you nor look privately to our own advantage, in like manner you, too, whom even he himself does not deny that he regards as hostile, yes, most hostile, ought to bear in mind all these facts, and counting both our dangers and our hopes as common to us all, you should cooperate in every way in what we have to do and eagerly share in our zeal, balancing against each other what we shall suffer (as I have explained) if defeated, and what we shall gain if victorious. For while it is a great thing for us just to escape being the victims of insult and greed, if by any chance we are defeated, yet it is greatest of all to conquer and thus to be able to accomplish all we have prayed for. On the other hand, it is most disgraceful for us, who are so many and so valiant, who have weapons, money, ships, and horses, to choose the worse instead of the better course, and when it is in our power to confer liberty upon the other side as well as upon ourselves, to prefer to share their slavery with them. Our aims, you must know, are so opposed that, whereas he desires to reign as a sovereign over you, I wish to free them as well as you, and this indeed I have confirmed by oath. Therefore, as men who are to struggle for both sides alike and to win blessings in which all will share, let us earnestly strive, soldiers, to prevail at the present moment and to gain happiness for all time."

After speaking to this effect Antony put all his most prominent associates on board the ships, to prevent them from beginning any mutiny if left by themselves, as Dellius and some other deserters had done; he also embarked great numbers of archers, slingers, and heavy-armed troops. For seeing that the size of Caesar's ships and the number of his marines were chiefly responsible for the defeat of Sextus, Antony had built his vessels much higher in the water than those of his opponents, constructing only a few triremes, but instead some ships with four and some with ten banks of oars, and all the remainder in between these two; upon these he had built lofty towers, and he had put aboard a large number of men, who could thus fight from walls, as it were....

Dio's Roman History. (London: 1917), pp. 469-485.