Second Triumvirate (43 BC): Octavian, Antony and Lepidus

The Second Triumvirate was the legal alliance of Octavian, Mark Antony and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, agreed near Bononia in late October 43 BC and confirmed by law on 27 November 43 BC. It gave the three men supreme power in Rome to reorganise the state and avenge the murder of Julius Caesar. Its first act was a bloody purge, the proscriptions, in which hundreds of Romans were outlawed and killed, among them the orator Cicero.

Background: Rome after the Ides of March

Julius Caesar was assassinated on 15 March 44 BC by a group of senators led by Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus. The conspirators had no clear plan for what should follow, and power passed largely to Mark Antony, Caesar’s fellow consul.

Caesar’s will named his great-nephew Gaius Octavius, then 18, as his chief heir and adopted son. The young man, known to historians as Octavian, came to Rome, took Caesar’s name and began to raise troops among Caesar’s veterans. Cicero, the leading statesman of the Senate, hoped to use him against Antony and attacked Antony in a series of speeches known as the Philippics.

In 43 BC the Senate went to war with Antony, who was besieging Decimus Brutus, one of the assassins, at Mutina (Modena). Antony was defeated in April, but both consuls, Hirtius and Pansa, died. Antony retreated to Gaul, where Lepidus and other provincial governors joined him with their armies. When the Senate refused Octavian a consulship, he marched on Rome and was elected consul in August 43 BC, at the age of 19.

The meeting at Bononia

Octavian now abandoned the Senate and came to terms with Antony and Lepidus. In late October 43 BC the three met on a small island in a river near Bononia (Bologna), each bringing an army, and spent two or three days in negotiation.

They agreed to take office as “triumvirs for the restoration of the Republic” for five years. They divided the western provinces: Antony took Cisalpine and Transalpine Gaul, Lepidus Narbonese Gaul and Spain, and Octavian Africa, Sicily and Sardinia. Antony and Octavian would lead the war against Brutus and Cassius in the East, while Lepidus held Rome. Octavian was also betrothed to Clodia, a stepdaughter of Antony.

On 27 November 43 BC a tribune, Publius Titius, passed a law, the Lex Titia, that made the arrangement official. Unlike the First Triumvirate of Caesar, Pompey and Crassus, which had been a private alliance, the Second Triumvirate was a legal magistracy with power to make laws and appoint officials.

The proscriptions

The triumvirs revived a method first used by Sulla during his dictatorship and proscriptions in 82 BC. Lists of names were posted in the Forum. Those named lost all legal protection, their property was confiscated, and rewards were offered to anyone who killed them or revealed where they were hiding. Slaves who betrayed their masters were promised freedom.

The motives were partly revenge and security, removing men who had supported the assassins or opposed the triumvirs. Money was at least as important: the triumvirs needed vast sums to pay more than forty legions. Wealthy men with few political connections were sometimes listed simply for their property.

Appian states that about 300 senators and 2,000 equestrians were proscribed; other ancient figures differ, and not everyone on the lists was killed. Many escaped to Sextus Pompey in Sicily or to Brutus and Cassius in the East. Ancient writers stressed that each triumvir sacrificed people close to him. Lepidus allowed his brother Paullus to be listed, and Antony his uncle Lucius Julius Caesar; both survived, Lucius thanks to the protection of his sister Julia, Antony’s mother.

Stories of betrayal and loyalty filled later accounts. One of the best-known pieces of evidence is a long inscribed funeral speech from Rome, often called the Laudatio Turiae, in which a husband praises his wife for hiding and protecting him while he was proscribed.

The triumvirs also tried to tax the property of 1,400 of the richest women in Rome. According to Appian, Hortensia, daughter of the orator Quintus Hortensius, spoke publicly in the Forum against the tax, and the number of women affected was reduced.

The death of Cicero

Cicero was the most famous victim. Antony insisted on his name because of the Philippics, and Octavian, who had worked with Cicero only months before, agreed. Cicero’s brother Quintus and nephew were also killed.

Cicero hesitated over whether to flee to Brutus in Macedonia. On 7 December 43 BC soldiers sent by Antony overtook his litter near his villa at Formiae, on the coast south of Rome. According to Plutarch, he leaned out and offered his neck to the sword. On Antony’s orders his head and hands, the hands that had written the Philippics, were displayed on the Rostra, the speakers’ platform in the Forum.

Consequences

The triumvirs had Julius Caesar officially deified as Divus Iulius on 1 January 42 BC, which allowed Octavian to call himself son of a god. In October 42 BC Antony and Octavian defeated Brutus and Cassius at the Battle of Philippi.

The partnership was always tense. Rivalry led to the Perusine War of 41–40 BC and to new agreements at Brundisium in 40 BC, when Antony married Octavian’s sister Octavia, and at Tarentum in 37 BC, when the triumvirate was renewed for five more years. In 36 BC Octavian stripped Lepidus of his powers after a failed attempt to claim Sicily, though he was allowed to remain pontifex maximus until his death.

The triumvirate’s powers lapsed at the end of 33 BC, and the final struggle between Octavian and Antony ended at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC.

Judgement and memory

Ancient writers judged the proscriptions harshly. Suetonius reports that Octavian at first resisted the purge but, once it began, carried it out more severely than either of his colleagues. Later, as Augustus, he presented himself as the restorer of peace and the Republic, and his own record of achievements, the Res Gestae, mentions his ten years as triumvir without describing the killings that began them.

Cicero’s death quickly became a symbol of the end of free speech and senatorial government. Writers of the early empire, such as Velleius Paterculus and the elder Seneca, preserved accounts of his last days and lamented his loss, while Antony’s role in it remained a stain on his reputation. Cicero’s speeches and letters survived and shaped how later centuries understood the late Republic.

Modern historians, following Ronald Syme’s classic study The Roman Revolution, see the triumvirate as the decisive stage in which a new ruling class, loyal to Caesar’s heir, replaced the old aristocracy. Confiscated land and property passed to the triumvirs’ supporters and veterans, laying the social foundations of the Augustan regime.

Timeline

• 44 BC, 15 March: Julius Caesar is assassinated.
• 43 BC, April: Antony is defeated at Mutina; both consuls are killed.
• 43 BC, August: Octavian marches on Rome and becomes consul.
• 43 BC, late October: Octavian, Antony and Lepidus meet near Bononia.
• 43 BC, 27 November: The Lex Titia establishes the triumvirate; proscriptions begin.
• 43 BC, 7 December: Cicero is killed near Formiae.
• 42 BC, October: Brutus and Cassius are defeated at Philippi.
• 37 BC: The triumvirate is renewed at Tarentum.

Why it matters

The Second Triumvirate turned the rule of a few strong men into law and showed how completely armies had replaced the Senate as the source of power. The proscriptions destroyed much of the old republican elite, and the triumvirate became the stage from which Octavian rose to become Augustus, Rome’s first emperor.