ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the crucial 33-year period between Pompey’s victories in the east and the successful coup led by Octavian, leaving him in control of the Mediterranean world in 30 bc. The period witnessed the rise and fall of Julius Caesar, whose royal pretensions and disrespect for the senate resulted in his murder in 44 bc. Prior to Caesar’s death, Pompey, Crassus, and Caesar formed the First Triumvirate, an extra-legal arrangement through which they wrested control of the state from the senate. Crassus’s death in Syria fighting the Parthians made a clash between Pompey and Caesar inevitable, and Pompey was beaten at Pharsalus in 48 bc. Pompey was killed in Egypt and his faction, including Metellus Scipio and Cato the Younger, hunted down and killed. Caesar fell in love with Cleopatra, fathering a son, Caesarion, then named himself dictator for life, leading to his death. In the aftermath, Caesar’s great-nephew and heir, Octavian, was named the champion of the senate, largely at Cicero’s instigation, although he soon charted his own course. The Second Triumvirate, an arrangement between Octavian, Antony, and Lepidus, was legalised (in contrast to the First Triumvirate) and a mass proscription took the lives of thousands, including Cicero. Sextus Pompey, the surviving son of Pompey, temporarily posed a major threat, but he was eliminated and Lepidus removed. Subsequently, Antony, who had retired to the east with Cleopatra and fought a disastrous war against the Parthians, fell out with Octavian, who conducted an illegal coup. Octavian was victorious at Actium in 30 bc, and Antony and Cleopatra took their own lives in Alexandria.
