The Second Triumvirate is the name historians give
to the official political alliance of Gaius Julius
Caesar Octavianus (later Augustus), Marcus Aemilius
Lepidus, and Marcus Antonius formed on 26 November
43 BC. There were two 5-year terms, covering the
period 43 BC – 33 BC. Unlike the somewhat more
famous "First Triumvirate", the Second Triumvirate
was an official (if extraconstitutional)
organization, whose overwhelming power in the Roman
state was given full legal sanction and whose
imperium maius outranked that of all other
magistrates, including the consuls.
History
The Triumvirate was established by law in 43 BC
as the Triumviri Rei Publicae Constituendae
Consulari Potestate ("Triumviri for the Constitution
of the Republic with Consular Power", invariably
abbreviated as "III VIR RPC"). It possessed supreme
political authority. The only other office which had
ever been qualified "for the constitution of the
Republic" was the dictatorate of Lucius Cornelius
Sulla. The only limit on the powers of the
Triumvirate was the five-year term set by law.
A historical oddity of the Triumvirate is that it
was an effectual three-man dictatorate which
included Antony, who in 44 BC had passed a lex
Antonia which had abolished the dictatorate and
expunged it from the Republic's constitutions. As
had been the case with both Sulla's and Julius
Caesar's dictatorates, the members of the
Triumvirate saw no contradiction between holding a
supraconsular office and the consulate itself
simultaneously (Lepidus was consul in 42 BC, Antony
in 34 BC, and Octavian in 33 BC).
Octavian, who despite his youth had extorted his
way to having been named suffect consul (consul
suffectus) for 43 BC, had been warring with Antony
and Lepidus in upper Italia when they met at Bononia
(now Bologna) in November that year and agreed to
unite and seize power. In order to refill the
treasury, the Triumviri decided to resort to
proscription. As all three had been partisans of
Caesar, their choices of targets were somewhat
peculiar. The most notable victim, Marcus Tullius
Cicero, who had opposed Caesar and excoriated Antony
in his Philippics, came as no surprise, but the
proscription of Caesar's legate Quintus Tullius
Cicero (the more famous Cicero's younger brother)
seems to be motivated by pure spite. Perhaps the
most shocking proscription was that of Caesar's
legate Lucius Iulius Caesar, Caesar's first cousin
once removed (and Antony's uncle!) and one of
Caesar's closest friends.
Octavian's colleague in the consulate that year,
his cousin and nephew of Caesar, Quintus Pedius,
died before the proscriptions got underway. Octavian
himself resigned shortly after, allowing the
appointment of a second pair of suffect consuls (the
original consuls for the year, Caesar's legate Aulus
Hirtius and Gaius Vibius Pansa Caetronianus, had
died fighting on the Senate's side of the first
civil war to follow Caesar's death, that between the
Senate and Mark Antony himself). This became a broad
pattern of the Triumvirate's two terms; during the
ten years of the Triumvirate (43 BC – 33 BC), there
were 42 consuls in office, rather than the expected
20.
The Caesarean background of the Triumviri made it
no surprise that immediately after the conclusion of
the first civil war of the post-Caesar period, they
immediately set about prosecuting a second: Caesar's
murderers Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius
Longinus had usurped control of most of the Eastern
provinces, including Macedonia, Asia Minor, and
Syria. In 42 BC, Octavian and Antony set out to war,
defeating Brutus and Cassius in two battles fought
at Philippi (Both assassins committed suicide). In
October 40 BC, the Triumviri agreed to divide the
provinces of the Republic into spheres of influence.
Octavian — who had begun calling himself "Divi
filius" ("son of the divinity") after Caesar's
deification as Divus Iulius ("the Divine Julius")
and now styled himself simply "Imperator Caesar" —
took control of the West, Antony of the East, and
Lepidus of Africa.
While Antony cemented his hold in the East and
reformed the provincial administration (like Sulla's
provincial reforms, Caesar's had been quietly
ignored after his death), Octavian tightened his
grip on the West and nominally oversaw a campaign
against the pirate commander Sextus Pompeius (the
campaign was actually commanded by Octavian's
lieutenant, Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa), which
culminated in victory in 36 BC. Agrippa had been
consul in 37 BC and had secured the Triumvirate's
renewal for a second five-year term.
Like the First Triumvirate, the Second
Triumvirate was ultimately unstable and could not
withstand internal jealousies and ambitions. Antony
cordially detested Octavian and spent most of his
time in the East, while Lepidus favoured Antony but
felt himself obscured by both his colleagues,
despite having succeeded Caesar as Pontifex Maximus
in 43. Consequently, Lepidus cooperated in
Octavian's campaign against Pompeius (son of Gnaeus
Pompeius Magnus) but foolishly attempted to seize
control of Octavian's victorious legions. Octavian
unilaterally expelled Lepidus from the Triumvirate,
but allowed him to retain his Pontificate.
Despite having married Octavia, Octavian's
sister, in 40 (Octavian married Antony's
stepdaughter Scribonia in 43), Antony openly lived
in Alexandria with Cleopatra VII of Egypt and they
had children together. A master of propaganda,
Octavian turned public opinion against his
colleague. When the Triumvirate's second term
expired in 33 BC, Antony continued to use the title
Triumvir (Octavian, opting to distance himself from
Antony, did not use it). Octavian illegally gained
Antony's will in July 32 BC and read it aloud. It
promised large legacies to Antony's children by
Cleopatra and instructed that his body be shipped to
Alexandria for burial. Rome was outraged, and the
Senate declared war.
Octavian's forces decisively defeated Antony's
and Cleopatra's at Actium in Greece in September 31
BC and chased them to Egypt in 30 BC. Both Antony
and Cleopatra committed suicide in Alexandria, and
Octavian personally took control of Egypt and
Alexandria (Egyptian chronologies consider Octavian
as Cleopatra's successor as Pharaoh). With the
complete defeat of Antony and the marginalisation of
Lepidus, Augustus was left sole master of the Roman
world, and proceeded to establish the Principate as
the first Roman "emperor". |