Cleopatra: Last Queen of Egypt by Joyce Tyldesley Basic Books,
290 pp., $27.50 One of the most important Roman discoveries of
the last fifteen years is still little known. Unearthed in
northern Greece, it is the monument erected to commemorate the
naval battle of Actium in 31 BC, fought between Octavian (the
future emperor Augustus) on the one side and Mark Antony, with
his lover and financial backer, Queen Cleopatra VII of Egypt, on
the other. Victory effectively handed to Octavian control of the
Roman world, and ended the decade of civil wars that had
followed the assassination of Julius Caesar. Antony and
Cleopatra, the rival claimants to power, sloped back to
Alexandria, the capital of Egypt. The vast memorial to the
battle is a major work of Roman state art, with terraces,
colonnades, freestanding statues, and a large altar covered with
sculpture celebrating the new Augustan regime. It stood on a
prominent headland, overlooking the site of the battle,
reportedly on the exact spot where Octavian had pitch