So do they burn ships before they leave? Is that part of the strategy? Yes.

They don't have enough men to man all of their warships, so they actually burn some of them before the battle, which is really quite desperate. Nonetheless, it is not a done deal. And Octavian is not absolutely sure that he can defeat Antony. In fact, Octavian's original plan is to let Antony and Cleopatra go and then to follow them to the east, to take control of Greece, to take control of as many provinces as they can. He's confident that the dominoes will fall, now that so many men have joined him and to corner the enemy in Egypt. But Agrippa convinces us in no, we've got to fight.

And so what can you tell me about the battle itself? Is it a long undertaking and how does it unfold?

The battle takes place on the 2nd of September in the year 31 BCE. The two sides load their ships up before the battle. What's unusual about Antony ships is he's got the mass and the sails on the ship. Normally in a naval battle, you roll up the sails and you take the mass off because you want the ships to be light and you're prepared for ramming and maneuvering. But Antony and Cleopatra want to be able to sail south. They know that typically in the afternoon a northwestern breeze blows up in this part of the world. And if they have sails, they can take advantage of the breeze and go south very rapidly. Nonetheless, they haven't given up on a naval battle. The two sides get their fleets in place probably about 10am in the morning. Antony's fleet extends for about 3 and a half miles. Either end of the fleet is close to land. They're about a half mile away from the shore. Octavian keeps his fleet about a mile away from Antony's fleet. Further out at sea, the advantage of that is that it means that if Antony is going to attack the enemy fleet, his men have to row for a mile before they get there. And they're going to be pretty tired by the time they have to row for a mile to get to the enemy fleet. Cleopatra has 60 ships. With 230 ships in total, 60 ships is significant. Significant component of this. Her 60 ships are held in reserve. They're behind the front line. And probably around noon, the battle begins. Antony does attempt to charge and to ram the enemy ships, but he fails. Not long after the fighting has begun, the wind has begun to change. It started to blow from the north. And at this point, Cleopatra shocks everyone by making ready to leave. She unfurls her sails, and she and her 60 ships simply break through the line or they sail through the line. And they turn. You've got to go west out to sea at a certain point because the island of Lukas is in the way to the south. Once you get a bit far out to sea, you can then turn south and head out of there. The sources say that she does this because she's a coward, because she's a woman, and because she's an Egyptian. She was actually a Macedonian Egyptian. She may have been part Egyptian. There's some reason to think that. She's certainly a descendant of the Macedonians. I myself don't buy it. I think this was a prearranged plan that if Antony fails to make a dent in the enemy fleet, that Cleopatra will escape, Antony leaves his flagship. He leaves it. He goes onto a smaller boat and he makes his way onto Cleopatra's flagship and he joins her. And the 60 Egyptian ships and maybe a dozen of Antony ships successfully head south. They're out of there. There's no way that Octavian and Agrippa ships can catch them because they're rowing. They don't have their sails. The battle continues. Antony's men are not ready to give up. Either they don't know or don't believe that their chief has abandoned them. And ultimately, the only way for Octavian and Agrippa to win the battle is to use flame arrows. They set the enemy's ships on fire and send a lot of them to the bottom, coming quite a few of the enemy. The Octavian friendly account, according to Augustus' memoirs, 6,000 men are killed in the enemy fleet. He didn't really want to admit that because these are mostly

Romans.