Antony Falls: Rome's Last Rival Defeated at Alexandria

Mark Antony led a cavalry charge out of Alexandria on July 31, 30 BC, and routed Octavian's horsemen in what would be the last Roman victory he ever won. By nightfall, his fleet had defected, his infantry had deserted, and the man who had once commanded half the Roman world was preparing to die by his own hand. The final confrontation between Antony and Octavian had been building for over a decade. After Julius Caesar's assassination in 44 BC, the two men had divided the Roman Republic between them, Antony controlling the wealthy eastern provinces and Octavian holding Rome and the west. Their alliance, always uneasy, collapsed as Antony's relationship with Cleopatra VII of Egypt provided Octavian with devastating propaganda: a Roman general who had abandoned his Roman wife for a foreign queen and supposedly planned to give Rome's eastern territories to Cleopatra's children. The decisive naval battle at Actium in September 31 BC had already sealed Antony's strategic fate. His fleet, weakened by desertion and disease, was crushed, and he fled to Egypt with Cleopatra. Over the following months, Antony's allies defected one by one as Octavian's forces advanced through the eastern Mediterranean. By July 30 BC, Octavian was at the gates of Alexandria with an army that vastly outnumbered Antony's remaining forces. Antony's cavalry sortie on July 31 achieved a brief, futile victory. When he returned to the city expecting his fleet to engage Octavian's ships, he watched in horror as his warships raised their oars in surrender. His infantry followed. Cleopatra retreated to her mausoleum and sent word that she was dead. Antony, believing the message, fell on his sword but did not die immediately. Carried to Cleopatra, who was in fact alive, he died in her arms. Cleopatra took her own life days later, ending the Ptolemaic dynasty and Egypt's independence. Octavian annexed Egypt as a personal province and returned to Rome as the undisputed master of the Mediterranean world, soon to rename himself Augustus and found an empire that would endure for five centuries.