he well-trained crews evaded every attempt to run them down or grapple
them, chose their own distance as they hovered round their huge
adversaries, and presently as they gained confidence from impunity, began
successfully to practise the manoeuvre of eluding the ram, and using their
own bows, not for a blow against the hull of the heavier ship, but to sweep
away and shatter her long oars, that were too heavy to be saved by drawing
them in or unshipping them. Successful attack on the oars was equivalent to
disabling an adversary's engines in a modern sea-fight. And when a ship was
thus crippled, her opponents could choose their own time to concentrate
several of their ships for a joint attempt to take her by boarding.

The unwieldy ships of Antony's first line, with their half-trained and
untrained crews, must have formed a straggling irregular line with large
intervals as they stood out to sea, and it was this that gave Octavian's
fleet the opportunity for the worrying tactics they adopted. Had the
Egyptian and Phoenician ships come to the support of the leading line,
their more sailor-like crews might have helped to turn the scale against
Octavian. But while the fight was yet undecided and before the Egyptian
squadron had taken any part in it, a breeze sprang up from the land,
blowing from the north-east. Then, to the dismay of Antony's veterans who
watched the battle from the headland of Actium, it was seen that the
Egyptians were unfurling their sails from the long yards. The signal had
been given from Cleopatra's stately vessel, which as the battle began had
rowed out to a position in the midst of the Egyptian squadron, and now
shook out her purple sails to the breeze, silken fabrics of fiery red, that
seemed at first glance like a battle-signal. But in battle sails were never
used and ships trusted entirely to the oar, so to set the sails meant
plainly that the fight was to be abandoned.

Driven by her silver-tipped oars, helped now with the land breeze that
swelled her sails, Cleopatra's galley passed astern of the fighting-line on
its extreme left, and sixty of the warships of Alexandria followed their
queen. Those who watched from the land must have hoped against hope that
this was a novel manoeuvre, to use the breeze to aid the squadron of their
allies to shoot out from behind the main body, gain the flank of the enemy,
and then suddenly let the sails flap idly, furl or drop them, and sweep
down with full speed