Two Battles — Octavian, Antony and Cleopatra: The War for the World
Two armies face each other at Philippi. Antony fights opposite Cassius, Octavian opposite Brutus. So Plutarch writes, and he goes on to record something that does not fit the tale of the victor: in the first battle Octavian was utterly routed by Brutus, lost his camp and barely escaped pursuit, slipping away in secret.
Suetonius confirms it: weakened by illness, Octavian let himself be driven out of his camp and barely escaped to Antony’s detachment. Octavian himself, in his memoirs, told it differently: he had left the camp before the battle because a friend had had a dream. The memoirs have not survived. We know the story of the dream from Plutarch and from Suetonius, who adds that the dream saved Octavian: the enemy stabbed his empty litter (Augustus 91).
Meanwhile Antony defeats Cassius. Plutarch adds that some authors claim Antony was not even in that battle and arrived only when his men were already pursuing the enemy. Cassius, unaware that Brutus has won, has his freedman Pindarus kill him. Some time later comes the second battle, and Brutus, defeated, takes his own life. Plutarch adds that it was Antony who took the glory, because Octavian was ill.
The soldiers are a problem. The money promised during the war must be paid out, and land for the veterans must be taken from other people’s fields. Appian records that distributing the land and founding colonies was an extremely hard task: the soldiers demanded the cities promised to them before the war, the cities wanted the burden spread across all of Italy, and there was no money. Lepidus, accused of treason, loses his provinces, but when Octavian judges the accusation baseless, he receives Africa in exchange. Octavian also sells off the rest of the confiscated property.
Octavian was not gentle in victory. Suetonius writes that he was merciless toward the most distinguished prisoners, not sparing them even insults. Revenge for his uncle is done, but no one speaks of it aloud yet. The talk is of who gets what.
The division is simple, though costly. Octavian returns to Italy to distribute land among the soldiers and found colonies for the veterans. He takes this on himself because of his illness. Antony sets off for Greece and Asia for the money promised to the soldiers: five hundred drachmas a head, as Plutarch records. They divide the provinces as before, and take Lepidus’s share for themselves.
In Greece Antony behaves, at least at first, in a way that makes the Greeks like him. He listens to lectures, watches games and rites, is lenient in the courts. He likes being called a philhellene. In Asia kings and their wives vie with one another in giving him gifts, and he goes back to his old pleasures.
One gets the West and the thankless task of settling veterans on other people’s land. The other gets the East, and with it wealth and kings at his door. Who will gain from this?