steered to a position off the entrance formed in two
divisions, the one led by Agrippa, the other by Octavian. Agrippa, whose
experience and record of naval victory gave him the executive command, had
no intention of risking his small ships in the narrows, where they would
have been opposed by an equal number of heavier ships, more numerously
manned, and would lose whatever advantage their superior handiness and
seaworthiness gave them, through having no room to manoeuvre. He kept
his fleet of four hundred triremes sufficiently far from the shore to avoid
the shelving shallows that fringe it near the entrance to the straits, and
to have ample sea-room.

[Illustration: ROMAN WARSHIPS
_After the paintings found at Pompeii_]

For some time the fleets remained in presence of each other, both
hesitating to begin the attack. Antony knew that his slower and heavier
ships would have the best chance acting inshore and on the defensive, and
Agrippa was, on the other hand, anxious not to engage until he could lure
them out seaward, where his light craft would have all the gain of rapid
manoeuvring.

It was not till near noon that at last the Western fleet closed with the
Allies. The ships that first encountered were nearly all Roman vessels, for
the Egyptian and Asiatic squadrons were not in the front line of Antony's
fleet, and the brunt of the attack fell upon the sluggish giants that had
been so elaborately fortified with booms in the water and towers and
breastworks on their decks. As the attacking ships came into range, arrows,
javelins, and stones flew hurtling through the air from the line of
floating castles, missiles that did not, however, inflict much loss, for
the men on the decks of the attacking fleet crouched behind bulwarks or
covered themselves with their oblong shields, and their bowmen made some
show of reply to the heavier discharge of engines of war on Antony's ships
and to the more rapid shooting of the Asiatic archers. The days were still
far off when sea fights would be decided by "fire," in the sense of the
discharge of projectiles.

Could the tall ships have rammed the smaller and lower galleys of Octavian
and Agrippa they would certainly have sent them to the bottom--a sunken
ship for each blow of the brazen beak. But attempts at ramming were soon
found by Antony's captains to be both useless and dangerous. It was not
merely that their lighter and nimbler opponents easily avoided the onset.
T