his troops "were not ready to shed more blood for him and preferred Octavian. Though his life was spared, Lepidus was stripped of his triumviral powers. The stage was now set for
the final and decisive clash between the master of the West and the master of the East.
From 41 B.C. onwards Antony had had plenty of work to do. The northern marches of Macedonia had first to be secured against invaders; thereafter the Parthians never ceased to
threaten Asia Minor and the Levant, where Rome's subjects were bled white by his heavy financial demands. He became increasingly dependent on the wealth of Egypt and on its
Queen Cleopatra. In 37 he packed a pregnant Octavia off back to Italy, and shortly afterwards publicly acknowledged his twin children by Cleopatra, who was herself dreaming of
recreating the great empire of her Ptolemaic ancestors. In the autumn of 34 he provocatively proclaimed Cleopatra's son Caesarion to be the legitimate issue of Julius Caesar, and
much of the East was parcelled out to Caesarion and his mother, 'King of Kings' and 'Queen of Kings', and to his own two children by Cleopatra.
Gold Coin (Aurreus) Issued By Mark Antony Just Before The Battle Of Actium (32-31 B.C.). The so-called 'legionary issue' stresses Antony's naval and military might, with a galley
on the obverse, and a legionary 'eagle' (aquila) between two standards on the reverse. Different dies name the different military units for which the coins were intended. Note
Antony's claim to possess triumviral authority: IIIVIR R(ei) P(ublicae) C(onstituendae).
That gave Octavian a chance too good to miss: Antony could now be caricatured as a renegade apostate from the great traditions of Rome, the creature of an Egyptian she-devil. The
Triumvirate was not renewed when it expired at the end of 33; Antony retained the title and claimed the powers, but Octavian eschewed both, posing as no more than the universally
desiderated champion of the ordered West. Antony was enormously powerful in ships and men and money, for he 'held the East in fee': his splendid general Ventidius Bassus had
driven the Parthians back over the Euphrates in 39, and in 34 Armenia briefly became a province of Rome. But he could not invade Italy as the consort and champion of the 'scarlet
woman'. He planned to lure Octavian to defeat in north-west Greece, but, outguessed and outmanoeuvred by Agrippa, he was beaten at sea off Actium in September 31, and escaped
to Egypt with Cleopatra, leaving his massive, but leaderless, forces to surrender. By the summer of 30 Octavian was in Egypt, closing in for the kill. Antony took his own life, falsely
believing Cleopatra to be dead, and died in her arms: she herself was taken prisoner, but preferred the deifying bite of an asp to the humiliation of being led in a Roman triumph. Two
decades of civil war had at last come to an end. It remained to be seen if the new Caesar could find that way out which had eluded the old.
The Augustan Constitution
For three years or so after Actium Octavian's rule was essentially of a personal and irregular nature. He took care not to formalize his ascendancy and used this breathing space to
tidy up loose ends in readiness for his first constitutional settlement in 28/7 BC, when he surrendered his supremacy and formally restored the government to Senate and People. As
he himself expressed it later in his Res Gestae (34), the autobiographical inscription which he directed to be erected outside his mausoleum in the Campus Martius where the citizens
could read and admire what their great leader had done for the Roman commons: