teran Canidius, who commanded the army under Antony, had like most of
the Romans little faith in the efficiency of the fleet. He proposed to
Antony that it should be abandoned, and that the army should march eastward
into Macedonia, and, with an unexhausted country to supply it, await the
pursuit of ten legions of Octavian in a favourable position. But Antony,
influenced by Cleopatra, refused to desert the fleet, which was the one
possible hope of reaching Egypt again, and rejecting an attack on the Roman
entrenchments as a hopeless enterprise, he decided at last that all the
treasure of Court and army should be embarked on the ships, and an effort
made to break through the blockading squadrons.

While the preparations were being made, the Romans renewed their entreaties
that their leader would rather stake his fortunes on a battle on land. One
day a veteran centurion of his guard, who bore the honourable scars of
many campaigns, addressing him with tears in his eyes, said to Antony:
"Imperator, why distrust these wounds, this sword? Why put your hopes on
wretched logs of wood? Let Phoenicians and Egyptians fight on the sea, but
let us have land on which we know how to conquer or die." It is the appeal
that Shakespeare puts into the mouth of one of Antony's soldiers:--

"O noble emperor, do not fight by sea;
Trust not to rotten planks. Do you misdoubt
This sword and these my wounds? Let the Egyptians
And the Phoenicians go a-ducking; we
Have used to conquer standing on the earth,
And fighting foot to foot."[3]

[3] "Antony and Cleopatra," Act iii, scene 7.

The sight of the Egypto-Roman fleet crowding down to the narrows with their
sails bent on their yards showed that they meant to risk putting to sea,
and Octavian embarked on Agrippa's fleet, with picked reinforcements from
the legions. For four days the wind blew strongly from the south-west and
the blockaded fleet waited for better weather. On the fifth day the wind
had fallen, the sea was smooth and the sun shone brightly. The floating
castles of Antony's van division worked out of the straits, and after them
in long procession came the rest of the Roman, Phoenician, and Egyptian
galleys.

From the hills to the northward of the straits, from the low-lying headland
of Actium to the south, two armies, each of a hundred thousand men, watched
the spectacle, and waited anxiously for the sight of the coming battle.

The Western fleet had