There had been many skirmishes throughout Sicily, but as yet no general engagement. With Octavian’s forces swarming all over his island redoubt the only option left for Sextus was to secure a decisive victory. He concentrated his naval forces against Agrippa at Naulochus where, on 3 September, under the gaze of both armies drawn up and watching from the shore, they fought.
The harpax now justified its inclusion in Agrippa’s arsenal; Appian notes that, ‘as this apparatus had never been employed before, the enemy had not provided themselves with scythe-mounted poles’ with blades long enough to hack through the cables binding them to the enemy.
The outcome was decisive. Agrippa lost only three ships, while sinking 28 and capturing 135 enemy vessels. Demochares was killed in action, Apollophanes taken alive. Sextus barely escaped with 17 ships, fleeing to the harbour of Messana and thence to the east.
The forces Sextus left behind at Naulochus immediately capitulated to Octavian. Those legions besieged at Messana surrendered to Lepidus, who united them with his own and attempted to buy their loyalty by letting them join with his men in sacking the town. Now with 22 legions under his command, Lepidus made his bid to reassert his rights, seizing the passes and ordering the garrisons ensconced in the towns he had occupied not to admit Octavian. But the men who had brought one civil war to an end were far from willing to start another one, least of all on behalf of Lepidus against the man who bore the name of Caesar, and Octavian had little difficulty winning them over. Lepidus, who, in the words of Paterculus, ‘in the tenth year after arriving at a position of power which his life had done nothing to deserve, now deserted both by his soldiers and by fortune,’ exchanged his military cloak for a dark grey garment, and, lurking in the rear of the crowd that thronged to Octavian, threw himself at his master’s feet. Octavian indulged Lepidus in retaining his title as Pontifex Maximus, but divested him of triumviral authority and banished him for life to house arrest in Circeii.
Plinius surrendered Sextus’ remaining garrisons, bringing the conflict to a close. As always in the civil wars, the price paid by the victor was inheriting the troops, and hence the financial burdens, of the loser. Rather than let them run wild, the men who had served under Sextus and Lepidus were inherited by Octavian, who now had an enormous force of 45 legions at his disposal and, as yet, no enemy against whom to lead them. Fortunately, the 25,000 cavalry and 40,000 auxiliaries under his command were not citizens and could be summarily dismissed, but only by exacting a punitive 1,200 talents from the Sicilian communities he had ‘liberated’ was Octavian able to discharge 20,000 veteran legionaries from service. He also restored 30,000 slaves to their masters, and crucified 6,000 whose masters could not be found.
Octavian celebrated an ovatio on his return to Rome on 13 November. Giving credit where it was due, he presented Agrippa with a personal seagreen banner, and, in a unique tribute, a naval crown {corona navalis), wrought of gold with the prows of ships worked into the design. Octavian, now 28 years of age, was granted tribunician sacrosanctity by a compliant Senate, which also voted for a golden statue of him to be erected on top of a column decorated with the rams of ships, inscribed:
Peace long disturbed by discord
He restored on land and sea
This was the official end of the civil wars, a victory celebrated in Epode IX of Horace, who reflected the official line when he rejoiced that ‘Neptune’s admiral was routed and his galleys fired, although he once had threatened Rome with chains struck off his friends, our treacherous slaves.’
The final days of Sextus Pompey, meanwhile, effectively encapsulated the turbulent qualities of his character and his age. Having made good his escape, he landed at Mitylene and sent ambassadors offering his services to both Antony and the Parthians. Receiving nothing but dissembling platitudes from the former, who had intercepted his messages to the latter, Sextus seized Lampsacus, enlisting many of the Romans colonized there. Now with 200 cavalry and three legions of infantry at his command, his bid to occupy Cyzicus was repulsed, but he subsequently defeated Gaius Furnius, the governor of Asia, and seized Nicea (Iznik) and Nicomedia (Izmit).
Only when Furnius was reinforced, first by the return of the 70 ships remaining from those committed by Antony for Octavian’s Sicilian campaign, then by Antony’s legate Marcus Titius, who arrived from Syria with 120 additional ships and a large army, did Sextus withdraw to the interior of Bithynia, pursued by Furnius, Titius, and Amyntas, the king of Galatia. Having finally run him to ground, Titius put Sextus to death at Miletus. No doubt gleeful he had been relieved of this burden, Octavian held games in the Circus in Rome to celebrate the event, honouring Antony with a chariot in front of the rostra and statues in the Temple of Concord.
Octavian was only too happy to transfer the responsibility for the death of Sextus because, whatever the official position, the citizens of Rome mourned this squalid end to a lustrous family bloodline. Titius had survived the proscriptions of 43 BC by seeking asylum with Sextus, only defecting to Antony after the Pact of Misenum. The people never forgot his base ingratitude; many years later, when Titius sponsored a show in the theatre of Pompey the Great, the audience rose and drove him with curses and abuse from the building.
With the west pacified internally, Octavian could at last focus on meeting the challenge of an external threat. Since the borders were secure at this time, the challenge had to be manufactured. The region chosen for this exercise was the wild frontier of Illyricum, where the writ of Roman law did not extend far beyond the isolated colonies along the coast. As Dio notes, Octavian had no complaint to bring against the peoples living there, ‘not having been wronged by them in any way, but he wanted both to give his soldiers practice and to support them at the expense of an alien people, for he regarded every demonstration against a weaker party as just, when it pleased the man who was their superior in arms.’
