THE WAR THAT MADE THE ROMAN EMPIRE

A master historian of the ancient world’s wars turns his attention to the battle that laid the foundations for the Roman Empire and to the war’s leading characters—all the stuff of legend, poetry, and film.

Few historical figures are as written about—by Cicero, Virgil, and Shakespeare, especially—as the major antagonists of the long civil war that culminated in the decisive Battle of Actium on the western shore of Greece in 31 B.C.E., and few historians can bring such a battle alive better than Strauss, a professor of classics at Cornell and author of previous studies of the battles of Troy and Salamis. His subject here is the decadelong civil war that ended at Actium, had its celebrated denouement four years later in the deaths of Antony and Cleopatra, and led to the emergence of Octavian as one of the most significant figures in Western history. Making a credible claim that an obscure engagement at the southern Greek town of Methone a half-year before the contest at Actium was the war’s turning point, Strauss sees the intervening period as “six months that shook the world.” A historian of unconcealed opinion, the author foregrounds the importance of the great Greek commander Agrippa, argues that Cleopatra and Julius Caesar were “two of the most brilliant individuals of their age,” and rates Antony more favorably than other historians. Readers will also learn much about the often overlooked and formidable Octavia, sister of Octavian and wife of Antony, Octavian’s great enemy. But the book’s strength lies less in its arguments than in the skill of the narrative. Even though written in sometimes flat prose, it’s the product of deep learning, one that avoids the distractions of scholarly minutiae and moves briskly along. It must now be considered the most up-to-date history of its subject.

A fine book about the battle whose outcome created the Roman Empire.