By the end of 32 B.C., the main body of Antony’s fleet was based in the safety of the Ambracian Gulf. At the narrowest part of the strait leading to the sea, two towers were constructed (probably where today’s Venetian towers stand), from which catapults could hurl missiles and fireballs at any passing galleys.
The ships had spent much of the summer and autumn ferrying the army to Greece and then establishing a defensive line down its Adriatic coast. A squadron guarded Leucas, the Actium roads, and the islands in the south. It protected the entry into the Corinthian Gulf and the port of Patrae (today’s Patras), where Antony and Cleopatra had established their headquarters. A garrison guarded the Methone promontory. Another force was placed on the headland at Taenarum. In addition, there were Antonian troops on Crete, and four legions held the province of Cyrenaica next to Egypt.
During the winter of 32–31 B.C., Antony’s army was distributed among these strongpoints on the western coast from Corcyra to Methone, with the largest part gathered at Actium.
At first sight Mark Antony’s strategy is hard to fathom. On the two most recent occasions when Greece had been the theater of operations, the opposing generals had focused their attention on the north of the country and the Via Egnatia, that strategically important route to Byzantium and the east. That was where Pompey the Great had based himself in 49 and 48 B.C.; Brutus and Cassius had marched west along it to meet their doom at Philippi.
By contrast, Antony placed no defenses at all north of Corcyra, a hundred miles south of the great highway. Had Octavian wished to do so, he might have sailed from Brundisium to Epirus in the expectation of an easy landfall. Some have argued that Antony’s purpose was to cover the route to Egypt. However, it is highly unlikely that Octavian would have risked his army and fleet on a long journey to invade Egypt, assuming that Antony remained in Greece. An Egyptian foray would have left Italy defenseless against invasion. The most that can be said is that Antony’s deployment would protect an escape to Egypt if that was ever to become necessary.
A more convincing explanation can be hazarded. The safest, shortest, and most sensible crossing point from Greece to Italy was from northern ports, for instance Dyrrachium and Apollonia. By occupying southern Greece, Antony may have wished to make it clear to all that he had no intention of invading the Italian peninsula. Many people, including his own supporters, would have opposed such an enterprise so long as Cleopatra accompanied him. The thought of a foreign queen marching into Rome at the head of an army was universally and totally unacceptable.
Antony’s plan can only have been to tempt, or at least allow, Octavian to transport his army into Greece. The fleet at Actium could then move north and mount a general blockade, preventing provisions and reinforcements from coming to Octavian’s assistance. Once the trap was closed, the Roman empire’s leading commander would delay offering a set-piece battle. With his safe supply route from Egypt, Antony would have all the time in the world, whereas Octavian, whom he knew already to be short of money, would soon also be short of food. Bottled up and desperate for an encounter, Octavian and his army would be easily finessed into a weak defensive position and routed.
On January 1, 31, Octavian, now aged thirty-two, resumed an official constitutional role when he entered on his third consulship. His colleague was a onetime republican, the talented Marcus Valerius Messalla Corvinus, in place of the excluded Antony. The consuls set off for Brundisium, accompanied by seven hundred senators and many equites.
Octavian had the smaller of the two armies, eighty thousand soldiers to the enemy’s one hundred thousand. The difference was mainly accounted for by the number of Antony’s auxiliary or light-armed troops. Octavian’s legions were more experienced than Antony’s mainly eastern levies, having been blooded in the Illyrian campaign.
Octavian made it clear that he expected senior personalities at Rome to accompany his army. The independent-minded Pollio, now more or less retired from politics, boldly refused, telling Octavian: “My services to Antony are too great and his kindnesses to me too well-known. So I will steer clear of your quarrel, and will be a prize for whoever wins.” Maecenas stayed behind to watch the political situation at Rome.
Bitter experience had taught Octavian to respect his own limitations as a commander. He appointed Agrippa to take direct charge of the fleet, and of the design of the campaign as a whole. Once they had learned Antony’s dispositions, the two men agreed on a plan that employed speed and surprise to turn the tables on Antony and trap him.
The first blow was to be struck at the earliest possible date. Even before the end of the stormy winter break, if at all feasible in early March, Agrippa would sail south more than five hundred miles to the Peloponnese, the southern half of Greece. His objective was to attack and capture the strongly defended fort of Methone. From this base he would then try to pick off Antony’s other garrisons along the Greek coast.
Two outcomes from this raid were envisaged. First, the supply line to Egypt would be cut and Antony’s soldiers and sailors would soon be short of food. The time pressure would be reversed. Second, Antony would have to send warships against Agrippa and in doing so would weaken his naval garrisons.
The next step would be for Octavian to transport his forces from Brundisium to somewhere near the Via Egnatia in the north, then to march south at once with all speed to corner Antony and prevent him from moving his army out of the confined area of Actium into central Greece, where he would be free to harass and perhaps outmaneuver Octavian.
This was a hugely daring plan, for it meant moving a fleet across open seas (presumably, if it was not to be detected it could not hug the coast) and risking the catastrophe of a Mediterranean storm. As it turned out, the enterprise was crowned with total success, although we do not have the details or the exact sequence of events. Methone fell and Octavian immediately, and without any kind of trouble from either the enemy or the weather, transferred the main part of his army across the Adriatic Sea, landing somewhere between the Via Egnatia and Corcyra—perhaps at Panormus (today’s Palermo in Albania).
The first news of these events to reach Antony and Cleopatra at their headquarters was that the enemy held a small place some miles north of Actium called Toryne, the Greek word for ladle. It was a sign of the nervousness of the high command at Patrae that the queen cracked a seriously bad joke to mask the general consternation: “What is so terrible about Caesar Octavian having got hold of a ladle?”
When Octavian arrived at Actium, he made camp on the northern promontory. He found an ideal spot, a hill today called Mikhalitzi about five miles north of the channel into the Ambracian Gulf. Four hundred feet high, it commanded good views all around. Immediately to the south lay enough flat ground for a battle, should that be called for.
The site had two disadvantages. First, it had no weatherproof harbor, only the nearby bay of Comaros, which was open to western gales even after a protective breakwater was constructed (traces of which survive). Walls were built down to the beach from the camp to guard against surprise attack by land. Second, water had to be brought in, either from the river Louros, a mile and a quarter or so to the northeast, or from a couple of springs on the southern plain.
Soon after his arrival, Octavian drew up his fleet in open water and offered battle, but the enemy, undermanned and performing poorly, wisely declined to come out of safe anchorage. Antony was having trouble recruiting oarsmen and retaining them. Plutarch claims that he was so short of men that his warship captains were “press-ganging travellers, muledrivers, reapers, and boys not yet of military age from the exhausted provinces of Greece.”