In September 31 BC two Roman generals fought a naval battle off western Greece that decided whether Rome would be ruled by a republic or by a single man. The losers fled to Egypt and killed themselves the following summer. Who won the battle?
Octavian's fleet under his admiral Agrippa beat Antony and Cleopatra at Actium. Antony killed himself first, on the false rumour that Cleopatra was already dead; she followed him a few weeks later. Pompey had been dead for seventeen years by then — Caesar had defeated him at Pharsalus in 48 BC, and he'd been murdered in Egypt shortly after. Caesar himself had been assassinated thirteen years earlier on the Ides of March.
Read the full facts →Augustus (63 BC – 14 AD), born Gaius Octavius and known earlier as Octavian, was the first Roman emperor. After winning the civil war that followed the assassination of his adoptive father Julius Caesar, he established a new political system — the Principate — that ended the Roman Republic in fact while preserving its forms. He ruled Rome for 40 years and died at age 75.
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