The Battle That Saddled Cleopatra With an Undeserved Bad Rep

In September 31 BC, one of the most critical military campaigns in history reached its climax in a sea battle off the coast of Actium, Greece. The main players were, on one side, the famous lovers Mark Antony and Cleopatra, and on the other, Octavian and his right-hand-man Agrippa. Octavian would be victorious and go on to claim the title of emperor of Rome. But the person who would emerge from this battle with the most famous name was and remains the queen of Egypt, Cleopatra. In his new book THE WAR THAT MADE THE ROMAN EMPIRE, bestselling historian Barry Strauss writes about why the historical record branded Cleopatra as the weak link in this battle, and why that was untrue—in fact, her daring was what allowed her and Antony to live to fight another day.

As the wind picked up off Actium, any earlier haze disappeared from the sky. The sea breeze rose steadily, bringing relief to the hot September afternoon. The breeze started at a right angle to the shore. The surface of the water began to ripple. Then, as the wind intensified, and because of the rotation of the Earth, it shifted direction from west to northwest. Waves deepened, and the first hints of whitecaps appeared in the steel-blue sea. Locked in action, the two lines of warships might have seemed indifferent to marine or atmospheric conditions, but, in fact, they had been carefully following the wind all day—and probably no one more so than Cleopatra.

As the wind picked up slowly, a gap widened increasingly in the center of Antony’s line. It appears that he had planned this. He certainly had placed his most experienced admirals at either end of the line, as did the enemy. He might have expected that the fighting would be less intense in the center, thereby leaving an opening— just the place for a breakout. Cleopatra was the one to exploit it.

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