Civil War, 44–27 B.C.E.

The main competitors in the civil war after Julius Caesar’s death were Octavian (the future Augustus), Caesar’s eighteen-year-old grandnephew and adopted son, and Caesar’s friend Mark Antony. Octavian won over Caesar’s soldiers by promising them money he had inherited from their general. Marching them to Rome, the teenage Octavian forced the Senate to make him consul in 43 B.C.E., ignoring the ladder of offices.

Octavian and Mark Antony joined with a general named Lepidus to eliminate rivals. In 43 B.C.E., they formed the Second Triumvirate to reorganize the government. They murdered many of their enemies, including some of their own relatives, and seized their property.

Octavian and Antony then forced Lepidus out and fought each other. Antony controlled the eastern provinces by allying with the ruler of Egypt, Queen Cleopatra VII (69–30 B.C.E.), who had earlier allied with Julius Caesar. Dazzled by her intelligence and magnetism, Antony, who was married to Octavian’s sister, fell in love with Cleopatra. Octavian rallied support by claiming that Antony planned to make this foreign queen Rome’s ruler. He made the residents of Italy and the western provinces swear an oath of allegiance to him. Octavian’s victory in the naval battle of Actium in northwest Greece in 31 B.C.E. won the war. Cleopatra and Antony fled to Egypt, where they both committed suicide in 30 B.C.E. The general Mark Antony first stabbed himself, bleeding to death in his lover’s embrace. Queen Cleopatra then ended her life by allowing a poisonous snake to bite her. Octavian’s revenues from the capture of Egypt made him Rome’s richest citizen.