Battle of Actium
Octavian's fleet defeats Antony and Cleopatra off the coast of Greece. Egypt is annexed the following year, which completes Roman control of every Mediterranean shore and secures the grain supply that the city of Rome depended on. A naval battle, not a land one, is the decisive event - which is itself an argument about what held the empire together.
Historical — it happened, and the record is settled.
Subjects
- Augustus (Gaius Octavius / Imperator Caesar Divi Filius Augustus) · person · Rome and the provinces · not located
- The Mediterranean Sea (Mare Nostrum) · geographic_feature · Mediterranean basin
- Alexandria · city · Egypt
Evidence
Partly verified — Core facts are sourced; some optional detail is deliberately absent. This is the standing of the weakest source, not an average.
Res Gestae Divi Augusti (Monumentum Ancyranum)
Augustus's own account of his achievements, in Latin and Greek, listing offices, benefactions, conquests and the claim that he 'transferred the state to the free disposal of the Senate and People'. It is the founding document of the Principate's self-presentation and simultaneously a piece of political advocacy, not a neutral record.
Cambridge University Press (critical edition, A. E. Cooley, 2009); inscription at Ankara, Turkey · composed by 14 CE; inscribed copies 1st c. CE · Partly verified
Res Gestae Divi Augusti, principal copy on the Temple of Rome and Augustus, Ankara; critical edition A. E. Cooley, 'Res Gestae Divi Augusti: Text, Translation, and Commentary', Cambridge, 2009
Roman Imperial Coinage, Volume I: from 31 BC to AD 69
Augustan coinage circulated imperial titulature, portraiture and slogans (CIVIBVS SERVATEIS, SIGNIS RECEPTIS, AEGYPTO CAPTA) to a largely non-reading population across three continents. Coinage is the empire's highest-volume communication medium and one of its few genuinely empire-wide standardisations.
Spink & Son / British Museum (RIC series) · revised edition 1984 (C. H. V. Sutherland) · Partly verified
RIC I (2nd edn), Augustus; type catalogue searchable via the Online Coins of the Roman Empire project at http://numismatics.org/ocre/
Recorded on Augustus (Gaius Octavius / Imperator Caesar Divi Filius Augustus)
Related
Related because they share a subject in the Atlas — never because the text looks similar.
- Dedication of Constantinople · 0330-05-11
- Assassination of Julius Caesar · -0044-03-15
- The Augustan settlement: Octavian becomes Augustus · -0027
- The Punic Wars · 264-146 BCE