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Actium   Listen
noun
Actium  n.  
1.
Naval battle where Antony and Cleopatra were defeated by Octavian's fleet under Agrippa in 31 BC.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Actium" Quotes from Famous Books



... by landing-bridges, and the glory of victory was due not to Neptune but to Mars. It was not until the civil wars at the close of the republic that real naval battles occurred, and that Neptune received his share of glory for the victory at Actium in B.C. 31, and later over Sextus Pompeius, in a temple erected by Agrippa in the Campus Martius, behind the beautiful columns of which the Roman ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter

... carcass. That struggle was neither a Pharsalia, in which two great men contended for supremacy in a republic, nor a Philippi, in which parties fought deliberately in support of certain principles, but an Actium; and the question to be decided was, With which of two energetic forms of force should the victory be? Louis Napoleon contended for the imperial form, for the rehabilitation of the scheme of his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various

... of the town of Actium, near which Antony lost the world, in a small bay, where two frigates could hardly manoeuvre: a broken wall is the sole remnant. On another part of the gulf stand the ruins of Nicopolis, built by Augustus ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore

... on the Ionian Sea, and west of AEtolia, was Acarnania, occupied by a barbarous people before the Pelasgi settled in it. It had no historic fame, except as furnishing on its waters a place for the decisive battle which Augustus gained over Antony, at Actium, and for the islands on the coast, one of which, Ithaca, a rugged and mountainous island, was the residence ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord

... that time, they plundered. They ruined the temple of Apollo at Claros, that of the Cabiri in Samothrace, of Ceres at Hermione, of Aesculapius at Epidaurus, those of Neptune in the Isthmus, at Taenarus and in Calauria, those of Apollo at Actium and in the isle of Leucas, those of Juno at Samos, Argos, and ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch

... plastic and the graphic arts. It has been made the theme of poets and of prose narrators. It has appeared and reappeared in a thousand forms, and it appeals as much to the imagination to-day as it did when Antony deserted his almost victorious troops and hastened in a swift galley from Actium in pursuit ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr

... intellectual life; always occupied in procuring pleasure for others, and above all for Madame de Maine, whom he adored, he was a type of the Sybarite of the eighteenth century, but, like the Sybarites who, drawn by the aspect of beauty, followed Cleopatra to Actium, and were killed around her, he would have followed his dear Benedicte through fire and water, and, at a word from her, would, without hesitation, and almost without regret, have thrown himself from the ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)

... "Je te recommande de faire ton possible pour faire acquitter ce brave homme. Et toi, continua-t-il en s'adressant au veteran, va en paix: tes affaires sont en bonnes mains, ta cause triomphera.—Mon puissant empereur, repliqua le soldat, quand votre pouvoir fut menace a la bataille d'Actium, je n'ai point charge un autre du soin de votre defense. J'ai combattu moi-meme, exposant ma vie pour sauver vos jours. Voyez ces cicatrices! Ces traces ineffacables prouvent avec quel devouement je vous ai servi!" En meme temps il decouvrit ...
— French Conversation and Composition • Harry Vincent Wann

... together in one political league, is strained to its utmost tension. The catastrophe may for a while be staved off; but to all appearance they are hurrying to the verge of one of those conflicts which, like those of Pharsalia and Actium, affect the condition of States for twice ten centuries. The Turkish empire, encamped but for four centuries on the frontiers of Europe, and the Chinese monarchy, contemporary with David ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... the Epidamnian oligarchy, refused. The Epidamnians then sought help from the Corinthians, who undertook to assist them. The Corcyraeans, highly resenting this interference, attacked the Corinthian fleet off Cape Actium, and gained a signal ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith

... shut, but if it were war, they should be open. Twice only were the gates shut after the days of Numa; for the first time when Titus Manlius was Consul, after the ending of the first war against Carthage, and for the second time when the Emperor Augustus, after vanquishing Antony at Actium, established universal peace both by land and sea. This temple then King Numa built, and shut the gates thereof, having first made treaties of peace ...
— Stories From Livy • Alfred Church

... sky. Rain still fell fretfully in scuds and fleeces; but where for hours there had been nothing but a monotone of greyness, suddenly fire broke and radiance and storm-clouds in commotion. Then, as if built up by music, a rainbow rose and grew above Leucadia, planting one foot on Actium and the other on Ithaca, and spanning with a horseshoe arch that touched the zenith, the long line of roseate cliffs. The clouds upon which this bow was woven were steel-blue beneath and crimson ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... poets into your hands. The minion and vertical planet of the Roman lustre and bravery, was never better pleased than when he had a whole constellation about him: not his finishing five several wars to the promoting of his own interest, nor particularly the prodigious success at Actium where he held in chase the wealth, beauty and prowess of the East; not the triumphs and absolute dominions which followed: all this gave him not half that serene pride and satisfaction of spirit as when he retired himself to umpire the different excellencies of his insipid friends, ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan

... suggest that the Romans should leave their ancient home like the Phocaeans of old, and seek a new one in the islands of the blest. Some idea was abroad that Caesar had meant to transfer the seat of government to Ilium, and after Actium the same intention was ascribed to Augustus, probably without reason; but the third ode of Horace's third book seems to express the popular rumour, and in an interesting paper Mommsen[13] has stated his opinion that ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler

... himself to sovereign power, amidst the riot of bacchanals, and in the embraces of harlots, who, when he had attained to that power, delivered it up to a lascivious queen, and would have made an Egyptian strumpet the mistress of Rome, if the Battle of Actium had not saved us from ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton

... she laughed. "He would be no toy of Caesar. He dreams of conquest. He will gather an army in Judea, Parthia, and Arabia. He will attack Caesar, and Caesar is growing old. Do you not know it is long since Actium?" ...
— Vergilius - A Tale of the Coming of Christ • Irving Bacheller

... in whose cause his father, Cneius Pompeius, lost his life. The remainder of this History, which is lost, carried the narration down to the quarrels of Octavianus and Marcus Antonius, which ended in the defeat of Antonius in the battle of Actium, B.C. 31, and his death in Egypt, B.C. 30. The victory over Antonius placed all the power in the hands of Octavianus, who, in the year B.C. 27, received from the Roman Senate the title of Augustus, or the Sacred, by which name he is commonly known as the ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch

... figure is completely nude. The attitude is like that of the female type just described, except that the left foot is advanced. Other statues, agreeing with this one in attitude, but showing various stages of development, have been found in many places, from Samos on the east to Actium on the west. Several features of this class of figures have been thought to betray Egyptian influence. [Footnote: See Wolters's edition of Friederichs's "Gipsabgusse antiker Bildwerke," pages 11 12.] The ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell

... next year (B.C. 38) Antony was himself in Syria, carrying on the war which ended with the battle of Actium; and he sent to Alexandria to beg Cleopatra to join him there. On her coming, he made her perhaps the largest gift which lover ever gave to his mistress: he gave her the wide provinces of Phoenicia, Coele-Syria, Cyprus, part of Cilicia, part of Judaea, and part of Arabia ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport

... were published in B.C. 30 about the same time. We have references to Actium (B.C. 31), as in Sat. ii. 5, 63; and Sat. ii. 1 (written last) speaks of Augustus (ll. 11-15) as the hero in war, not yet the bringer of peace, and was probably therefore composed before the temple of Janus was shut in the ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton

... this statement he based on the fact that our Saviour was born in the twenty-eighth year of the reign of Augustus; and he reckoned from A.U.C. 727, when the emperor first took the name of Augustus. The early Christians, however, dated from the battle of Actium, which was A.U.C. 723, thus making the Nativity 750. Now we believe that that event took place during Herod's reign, and we know that Herod died between the 13th March and 29th March, on which day Passover commenced, in A.U.C. 750, so that it stands to reason ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton

... significant roll might be made of those who have been great intellectually and pitiful failures morally! It has often been affirmed that Hannibal might have conquered Rome, and been the master of the world except for the fatal winter at Capua. Antony, possibly, would have been victor at Actium if it had not been for something in himself that made him susceptible to the fascination of the fair but treacherous Egyptian queen. Achilles was a symbolical as well as an historical character. There was one place—with him in ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford

... propensity to murder and other sorts of unrighteousness there would have been no historical heroism. It is a consoling reflection. And then, if one examines impartially the deeds of violence, they appear of but small consequence. From Salamis to Actium, through Lepanto and the Nile to the naval massacre of Navarino, not to mention other armed encounters of lesser interest, all the blood heroically spilt into the Mediterranean has not stained with a single trail of purple the deep azure ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad

... was less noteworthy; so unnecessary even that every student must regret Actium, Antony's defeat, the passing of Caesar's dream. For Antony was made for conquests; it was he who, fortune favoring, might have given the world to Rome. A splendid, an impudent bandit, first and ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus

... at least a beginning has been made in demonstrating that the glosses are not themselves consistent. Those early commentators who variously place the confiscation of Vergil's farm after the battle of Mutina (43 B.C.), after Philippi (42) and after Actium (31), who conceive of Mark Antony as a partizan of Brutus, and Alfenus Varus as the governor of a province that did not exist, may state some real facts: they certainly hazard many futile guesses. The safest ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank

... the remains of the town of Actium, [6] near which Antony lost the world, in a small bay, where two frigates could hardly manoeuvre: a broken wall is the sole remnant. On another part of the gulf stand the ruins of Nicopolis, built by Augustus in honour of his victory. Last night I was at ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero

... overplus of shipping will we burn; And, with the rest full-mann'd, from the head of Actium Beat the approaching Caesar. But if we fail, We ...
— Antony and Cleopatra • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... divinity until B.C. 430, when the Romans, in order to avert a plague, built a temple in his honour; but we do not find the worship of Apollo becoming in any way prominent until the time of Augustus, who, having called upon this god for aid before the famous battle of Actium, ascribed the victory which he {84} gained, to his influence, and accordingly erected a temple there, which he enriched with ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens

... breath, Raleigh was strong in the arm, he was "up," and he hit hard. The fellow's face was a "picture," coloured in cardinal. Such an opportunity does not occur twice in a lifetime; Raleigh's genius seized the opportunity, and he became great. Actium was a ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies

... assassination of a ruler is a blunder as well as a crime. In vain does Mark Antony desert the movement, rally Egypt and the barbaric East, and seek to transfer the seat of empire from the Tiber to the banks of the Nile or the Orontes; plebeian and imperial Rome wins a final victory at Actium, and definitively secures the empire of the civilized world ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson

... of France in his time. His actions were more important; and it is certainly not too much to maintain that the exploits of Homer, Aristotle, Dante, or my Lord Bacon, were as considerable events as anything that occurred at Actium, Lepanto, or Blenheim. A Book may be as great a thing as a battle, and there are systems of philosophy that have produced as great revolutions as any that have disturbed even the social and political existence of ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... there was one person, whose case appeared a little singular. He had a youth about eighteen years old standing by his side. He told me, "he had for many years been commander of a ship; and in the sea fight at Actium had the good fortune to break through the enemy's great line of battle, sink three of their capital ships, and take a fourth, which was the sole cause of Antony's flight, and of the victory that ensued; that the youth ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift

... of Pharaoh, by the Turks of the present day. The ancient Hyksos, or shepherd kings (patriarchs) of the Hebrews, are sometimes confounded in ancient history, with the descendants of Ham, being of the same original stock. Egypt has not had a ruler of its own since the battle of Actium, fought by Augustus Caesar, thirty years before our Saviour, as God by his prophet had foretold that their own kings would cease forever to reign over that country. After the battle of Actium, it became a Roman province, and since that time, it has ...
— The Negro: what is His Ethnological Status? 2nd Ed. • Buckner H. 'Ariel' Payne

... assumed the air of a loyal, strictly silent servant, who would only venture to confirm and deny what the Alexandrians had already learned. Yet his knowledge consisted merely of a confused medley of false and true occurrences. While the Egyptian fleet had been defeated at Actium, and Antony, flying with Cleopatra, had gone first to Taenarum at the end of the Peloponnesian coast, he asserted that the army and fleet had met on the Peloponnesian coast and Octavianus was pursuing Antony, who had ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... of Cenchreas and Lecheus, those excellent ports, drew all that traffic of the Ionian and Aegean seas to it; and yet the country about it was curva et superciliosa, as [560]Strabo terms it, rugged and harsh. We may say the same of Athens, Actium, Thebes, Sparta, and most of those towns in Greece. Nuremberg in Germany is sited in a most barren soil, yet a noble imperial city, by the sole industry of artificers, and cunning trades, they draw the riches of most countries to them, so expert in manufactures, that as Sallust ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... that Augustus, being once asked by a veteran soldier for his aid in a lawsuit, told the petitioner to go to a certain advocate. "Ah," replied the soldier, "it was not by proxy that I served you at Actium!" So struck, continues the tradition, was Augustus with this response, that he personally took charge of the soldier's cause, and gained it for him. Possibly it may be on the theory that his subjects "do not serve him by proxy" ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various

... England can never be safely undertaken except by some power that is master of the seas; and England is not in the least disposed to abandon her maritime supremacy. There would have to be a Battle of Actium before her shores could be in danger, and she must have lost it; and no matter what is said concerning the excellence of the French navy, that of England is as much ahead of it in all the elements of real, enduring strength, as it has been ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... of Augustus.—This era was established to commemorate the battle of Actium, which was fought on the 3rd of September, in the year 31 B.C., and in the 15th of the Julian era. By the Romans the era of Actium was considered as beginning on the 1st of January of the 16th of the Julian era, which is the 30th B.C. The Egyptians, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various

... was able of its malice to hold it stationary in a stiff breeze though all sails were set. According to the legend (a popular method by means of which the descendants of great men explained away their faults and blunders), at the famous sea-fight at Actium, Mark Antony's ship was held back by a remora in spite of the efforts of hundreds of willing galley-slaves. Shakespeare may say that Cleopatra's "fearful sails" were the cause of Antony's fatal indecision and flight, and a lesser ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield



Words linked to "Actium" :   town, Greece, naval battle, Hellenic Republic, Ellas



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