What would it be like if Antony won?

[VespilloAD64]

I have just finished reading Dio's book on the reign of Augustus.It was an interesting angle on Antony dissing Octavian and Octavian dissing Antony.Also an indepth view of what the role of the first Emperor was like(and its not what I thought it was).As I finished the chapter on the battle of Actium and the death of Antony and Cleopatra I thought what would the Empire have been like if Antony won.Would Octavian have killed himself or would Antony have spared his life?Would Antony keep the republic or become sole ruler and would the roman people have accepted him and Cleo as sole rulers. Would the empire have expanded more or less and even collasped alot quicker than it did under the Caesars. Would Britain be invaded and made into a province and would Jesus Christ been killed by Pilot.Would we be looking back on the Ancient Romans with the same interest or would it just of simply erased itself away.Obvisouly we will never know but I think its an interesting debate on what other peoples ideas would be.

[Jona Lendering]

Lots of questions, but the basic question is, in my opinion this one: was monarchy inevitable? Augustus has done a splendid job convincing people that it was -to paraphrase De Gaulle- him or chaos, or, as Tacitus says, peace or liberty. Many historians believe that this was indeed the issue, but I am not really convinced.

In 44-43, Mark Antony did a splendid job balancing between on the one hand the Senate and its old Republican ideas, and on the other hand innovative ideas of the Caesarian type. During his Egyptian years, he presented a type of oriental monarchy that is consistently ridiculized by our Roman sources, but that might have worked, as the Hellenistic kingdoms and the Roman Dominate were to show.

Had Octavian never been there, Antony might have renewed the Republic; later, he changed his mind and chose an oriental style of leadership. Octavian's coup in 44-43 and the outcome of the battle of Actium may indeed have mattered, and the Augustean momarchy may have been less inevitable than is sometimes assumed.

[Magnus]

Hey Vespillo, mind adding your real name to your signature? Forum rules and all that. Welcome to RAT!

[Epictetus]

I think that if Antony had won monarchy would still have been in the cards. From what little I know from Antony's administration, I think he tended towards a monarchy. He behaved just like his partners Lepidus or Octavian. Sources suggest that he was very taken with Oriental style despotism, although Jona has warned a bit about these sources. But I can think of nothing offhand in his administration that could lend support to an idea that he would have restored a more republican form of government.

Now, if we go back even further - I think that an attempt to reinstate the Republic would have been likely if Caesar's assassins had won. Perhaps Brutus as another "first consul" after the civil wars, mirroring his namesake that expelled the Tarquins? If we can believe what they wrote about Brutus, I can't imagine him setting himself up as a princeps of sorts, or allowing any of his contemporaries to do the same.

[Theodosius the Great]

Avete,

In "The Last Generation of the Roman Republic", by Erich S. Gruen, the author convincingly dispels the old, oft-repeated myth about the Republic being doomed to collapse because it was supposedly dysfunctional during the 1st century b.C. . He thoroughly analyses the well-documented politics of the last ten decades of the Republic and reveals no outward signs of "decay" or being "dysfuntional". There was corruption, to be sure, but not much more than in the distant past. The Republic was as healthy as it had ever been judging by the primary sources, like Cicero. However, Gruen also believes that Caesar's civil war irrevocably destroyed the Republic. Unlike Sulla's civil war Caesar's was geographically much larger in scope, encompasing the entire Mediterranean world. It lasted much longer and cost many more lives. The divisions that formed among the ruling classes during the war were too deep to allow for any return to a Republican form of government, in Gruen's opinion.

So, by Antony's time monarchy was inevitable, IMO.

(Great book, BTW. Highly recommended.)

~Theo

[Jona Lendering]

In "The Last Generation of the Roman Republic", by Erich S. Gruen, ... (Great book, BTW. Highly recommended.)

Thanks for the summary!