Tiberius Read Online Free Page A

taught him how to speak very plainly indeed. Augustus built himself a fleet and turned it over to a man named Marcus Agrippa, a very great Roman who fought batdes, built aqueducts, gave gladiatorial displays, provided free baths for the common citizen—acted, in a word, like a wardheeling politician at election time, but never tried to take power from his master, Augustus. That made him very odd in Rome, but very valuable. Agrippa showed Sextus Pompey that even a descendant of Neptune could be whipped in a sea battie, and opened up the food routes to Africa again.
    With those two thorns out of his side, Augustus turned his attention to Antony.
    The trouble Was, Rome was weary of civil wars. So many thousands had died, so much treasure had been squandered, that it was plainly dangerous to risk starting another war between Roman and Roman. Augustus wanted to fight Mark Antony because he thought he would win. But he did not dare begin it, and Mark Antony, infuriatingly, would nor begin it for him, no matter how many ugly letters Augustus sent to Egypt.
    Augustus turned to Livia for advice.
    Throughout his life he turned to her with the problems of state, and she never failed him. She came up with a scheme: Don't declare war on Mark Antony. Declare war on Cleopatra; she is no Roman; then let Antony do as he likes.
    Augustus did, and what Antony liked, of course, was to fight on the side of his wife; and once again great masses of Roman legions came to battle each other for control of die known world.
    They met at a place called Actium.
    Actium is a little cape of land in the Ambracian Gulf. Mark Antony's army came up to one side of the gulf, Augustus' camped on the other. They couldn't get at each other, but they could shout across at each other—the gulf is only a few miles wide—and presently the war fleets of both sides appeared.
    The warship of the Romans was the galley—great wooden vessels with patchy sails, relying mostly on the muscle-power of rowers to move them lumberingly through the water. In Egypt the fashion was to make things colossal and stately: Mark Antony's galleys had as many as ten banks of oars, great hulks with four or five hundred men rowing and another couple of hundred carrying arms on deck. Augustus' fleet (commanded again by Marcus Agrippa) had smaller vessels, but faster ones and more of them. Augustus needed to have more of them. Ram-and-board was the favorite naval tactic of the time, but that would not work against Mark Antony's monsters. They were armored against the sharp beaks of the enemy ships with huge timbers and plates of brass. Brass spikes protruded from their sides. Two or three of Augustus' smaller ships attacked each of the giants, but dared not come close enough to board; it was hounds harrying a boar. The little ships could be destroyed in a moment if they came too close.
    So the littl e ships laid back and fought with missile weapons. Antony had those too— big ones—catapults large enough to batter the walls of a city. But they were as slow as his ships; it took time to wind them, time to set them; before one of the blunderbusses could be aimed, its target was already somewhere else. Meanwhile the little ships struck; fired arrows, fired lighter catapults, hurled balls of flaming pitch to set the giants afire. The fight went on for hours—even after dark, although Roman battles almost always stopped with the setting of the sun. Thousands died, while their friends or foes on the shores screamed imprecations or shouted encouragement. Most of them died very badly; killed by the smoke, roasted to death in their armor, drowned, savaged by the schools of sharks that came hurrying in to the feast. It was a long hard fight, but Augustus won it. Cleopatra's own galley blundered out of position and began to retreat, Antony followed, the line of battle was destroyed, and wholesale surrenders began at once. Antony and Cleopatra escaped—for the moment—but they had lost everything and