What if mark antony won

What was the significance of the Battle of Actium 31 B. The Battle of Actium 31 B. Roman literature and languages have influenced later societies because Latin evolved into Romance Languages and influenced other languages as well. Also, Romans used Latin to communicate their new ideas and technologies to other societies.

People still study Latin because it influenced so many other languages. The religion of ancient Rome dated back many centuries and over time it grew increasingly diverse. As different cultures settled in what would later become Italy, each brought their own gods and forms of worship.

This made the religion of ancient Rome polytheistic, in that they worshipped many gods. Ancient Rome had a large influence on the modern world. From bridges and stadiums to books and the words we hear every day, the ancient Romans have left their mark on our world. Art and Architecture. Ancient Romans have had a tremendous impact on art and architecture.

Roman building methods and ideas are seen in many modern buildings. Roman artistic ideas both visual and literary are still valued and studied today. Concepts from Roman government have been picked up in our current system. The Roman language influences our language and is used in the fields of science and law.

Roman sewers are the model for what we still use today. A Roman brick sewer. Aqueducts, gave the people of Rome water, and, from around 80 BC, sewers took the resulting waste away, often from another innovation, the public latrine. There were two types of people in ancient Rome — citizens and non-citizens.

For a while, plebians common people were not citizens. Only patricians noble class, wealthy landowners, from old families could be citizens. They are now Italians mixed for many generations since the Roman Republic!

When Christianity became the state religion, the Church reduced the state resources by acquiring large pieces of land and keeping the income for itself. The society had to support various members of the Church hierarchy like monks, nuns, and hermits.

Thus, probably leading to the fall of the Roman Empire. The Goths were a nomadic Germanic people who fought against Roman rule in the late s and early s A. The ascendancy of the Goths is said to have marked the beginning of the medieval period in Europe. If, however, there was a will in the temple of Vesta, did it necessarily contain the provisions Octavian reported?

In addition to the fact that the Vestals probably could have exposed a partial forgery as easily as a total one, there are other reasons to believe in the accuracy of the provisions that Octavian reported. If the will had been a forgery, one would expect it to have been shocking and full of new material damaging to Antony's reputation. But of the three provisions known to us, Antony had already publicly announced one and had openly acted in a fashion that presaged the other two6.

In the autumn of 34 B. Antony had staged a triumph in Alexandria. In the gymnasium of the city he had declared that Caesarion was the legitimate son of the dictator and was King of Kings, that Cleopatra was Queen of Kings, and that the two were joint monarchs of Egypt and Cyprus. He also carved up provinces belonging to the Roman people and their allies for the benefit of Cleopatra and his own children by her.

Then too the fact that he had held the triumph in Alexandria, not in Rome, had, according to Plutarch, offended Roman sensibilities7. These Antonian grants of land and titles — the so-called "Donations of Alexandria" — are beyond dispute. In addition to the literary evidence there is the concrete evidence of coins8. Thus Antony had already proclaimed Caesarion' s legitimacy, he had already granted seemingly excessive favors to Cleopatra and her children, and he had already expressed a personal preference for an Oriental wife and an Eastern city.

No one can doubt the authenticity of the "Donations", yet they were damaging to Antony's Roman reputation and were helpful in Octavian's propaganda. Why, then, should one doubt the authenticity of the provisions of the will? They had an effect on the Roman people similar to that of the "Donations", but they were not shockingly new or different from Antony's past actions ; their genuineness is somewhat confirmed. They simply refreshed memories at a critical time.

One may object that Octavian forged these sections in order to rekindle hatred for Antony at the most opportune time.

This argument, in view of Antony's actions in the East, seems perverse ; but in answer to it one can follow Kenneth Scott in pointing out that the ancients themselves seem to have accepted the will as genuine. There is no indication that either Antony or his partisans disavowed the document. This is so despite the fact that much Antonian counter-propaganda has managed to survive, especially in Suetonius.

Tacitus, a critic of Augustus, is also silent. Not even a single rumor of the possibility of forgery is recorded. On the other hand, Dio contains a report that suggests that Antony admitted the authenticity of the document9. John Crook has made the strongest argument against the authenticity of Antony's will. He bases it on a legal point :. Cleopatra was a peregrina, a non-citizen woman, without the i us conubii. Antony's children by her and equally Julius Caesar's child by her, if he was Caesar's child were consequently peregrini Now peregrini can neither be instituted heredes under a Roman citizen's will, nor can they be legatees under it ; If the only heirs instituted were all peregrines there would be no valid heredis institutio at all, and the whole will would fail and before Augustus the estate would pass as an intestacy to the deceased's sui heredes, if any, in equal shares In short, Cleopatra and her children were not Roman citizens.

Under Roman law they could not benefit from the will of a citizen. Why would Antony make such an elementary legal error? Suetonius relates that Octavian had the will publicly read in order to prove that Antony had fallen away from conduct becoming a citizen One could read into Suetonius' report an explanation for the poorly drafted testament.

Antony was so engrossed in his Oriental life and so out of touch with Rome that he acted in ignorance or in contempt of the law. But if one should not expect Antony to commit such an elementary legal error, why should one conceive of the forger as doing so?

Would not the forgery have been obvious or at least severely questioned? A legal error would have invited doubt and criticism. Moreover a forgery would have been equally beneficial to the propaganda of Octavian had its form complied with the requirements of the testamentary law. The three recorded provisions could all have been included. The forger could have had Antony declare Caesarion legitimate. He could have had him request burial in Alexandria He could even have had him demonstrate a desire to leave property to Cleopatra and her children.

For example, the forgery could have been in the form of a fldeicommissum. In such a document Antony would have instituted as heir a man whom he trusted and who was legally eligible to inherit. Then he would have requested that man to deliver the designated property to Cleopatra and her children. The point is, if indeed there was a difficulty with Antony's will, that fact would better serve as evidence in favor of authenticity than against it.

If the document had been a forgery, it surely would have appeared legally unblemished. Octavian would not have invented a will whose authenticity could have been challenged on technical legal grounds. He had many enemies and his seizure of the testament had shocked and disturbed a number of Romans. Yet, as I have already noted, there exists no ancient testimony that even suggests that the will had been forged or altered. Is it necessary therefore to assume that Antony acted in ignorance or willful disregard of the law?

Neither alternative seems wholly acceptable. But neither, in fact, is necessary. There are several other possible Any one of them may justify acceptance of Antony's will as legally valid despite the ordinary rules of the Roman law. Perhaps Antony did indeed attempt to benefit Cleopatra by use of a fldeicommissum.

The jurist Gaius writes that such a device was principally employed in order to allow peregrini to profit from the will of a citizen — in fact, he says, this was probably the origin of it But Suetonius, a man familiar with legal terminology, reports that Cleopatra's children were inter heredes nuncupati by Antony's will. It seems unnatural to apply such a phrase to "fideicommissary heirs" who benefited only indirectly and only by the actions and goodwill of the man who was truly and legally named In addition, since the fldeicommissum would have created only a moral duty for the heir, not a legal one it was Augustus who made fulfillment of the fldeicommissum obligatory , it is unlikely that Antony would have chosen to use it, especially when more direct routes were available.

Next one might ask, as did Lily Ross Taylor, whether it is certain that Cleopatra was not a Roman citizen It may have been possible that she or her family received a special grant of citizenship. If she had been a citizen from birth or childhood, however, a large part of Octavian' s propaganda would have been undermined.

It focused, after all, on the notion that his struggle was the struggle of all Italy against the evil influence of a foreign woman and an alien culture, not against a fellow citizen or citizens who happened to be his political adversaries But Antony, of course, could have granted her and her children citizenship. If he had done so, he would not have expected legal difficulty in naming them his heirs One might argue that the propaganda of Octavian would have expressed outrage at such a grant of citizenship.

Antony could still have won back many in Rome with victory at Actium, though. He had already secured the support of legions formerly led by Julius Caesar — assassinated a little over a decade earlier — and, says Edwards, Octavian was hard pressed to raise the funds for this war. Perhaps the main problem for Antony and Cleopatra was that Octavian was not actually present at the battle, and his or so ships were commanded by an experienced admiral named Agrippa.

So even if Antony and Cleopatra somehow won at Actium, Octavian would have lived to fight another day, still likely with the support of Rome. While that did give Antony access to significant resources, especially land forces and money, in the eyes of many in Rome he was a traitor. Perhaps his best chance after Actium would have been to keep Octavian out of the eastern provinces, where he could have built his own influence with Cleopatra.

In essence, the Roman Republic would have been divided in two.