Actium

-31 BC- The Battle of Actium (modern day Preveza, Greece)!
   -Before the battle, shit was looking grim for Marc Antony.  His troops were sick and dying, plus his foreign allies and even his own men were deserting him.
      -Many reasons for why, as even his own senior staff was deserting him, but one excuse was that Cleopatra was obnoxious in her position as leader of the troops.
      -To try and break out, Antony sent his fleet out from the bay to try and break through Octavian and Agrippa's blockade, but to no avail.  What was he going to do??
         -Desperate, Antony tried to break out with his fleet on more time, except this time the goal was just to get Antony and Cleopatra out so they could get back to Alexandria.
            -This officially kicked off the Battle of Actium!
   -As Antony moved to push Agrippa's fleet out of the way, Octavian was too busy fighting Antony's other fleet in the south, and so Cleopatra saw that the middle was now temporarily open.  She decided to go for it!
      -Cleopatra's fleet actually hadn't been fighting because on Cleopatra's ship was Antony's treasury.  So, they were purely on the defensive... as long as the treasure wasn't captured or Antony killed, there was hope.
         -Antony saw what Cleopatra was doing so he quickly transferred to a smaller, quicker vessel and followed her through the opening.
            -By the next morning, obviously Antony and Cleopatra had escaped, but the battle was over and Octavian was the clear victor.  However, Antony's infantry remained on land.
               -Antony's troops couldn't believe that Antony had fled, so they offered to surrender if they were given Octavian's word that they would be given fair treatment.  Octavian decided to take them up on their offer, and so all of Antony's troops were then incorporated into Octavian's forces and treated as if they had been in his army all along, and were even given spoils, payment, etc. (which pissed off some of the troops in Octavian's original officers, of course).
                   -Octavian then landed on the island of Samos (off the west coast of Asia Minor) while Antony and Cleopatra fled back to Alexandria.
   -As Octavian planned for his invasion of Egypt, he sent home thousands of soldiers who had completed their service.
      -However, these troops were dismayed when they returned home because they weren't given any money or land, as the city was once again bankrupt and couldn't afford to hook them up with anything.
         -Because of this, the soldiers began to riot, and even Agrippa couldn't calm them down when he returned to Rome.
            -Octavian then returned and promised payment and land once Antony was defeated, which actually worked in calming them down!
-Not everyone was dominated by (or happy with) Octavian.
   -Marcus Lepidus (the Younger), son of the triumvir Marcus Lepidus, started to make plans to assassinate Octavian once he returned to Rome. 
      -However, Octavian's powerful ally and political adviser Gaius Maecenas had been left in charge of managing Rome, and when he found out about Lepidus the Younger's conspiracy he acquired the names of all the co-conspirators and had them executed immediately.
-Meanwhile, Antony and Cleopatra were kind of fucked, stuck in Egypt and surrounded by Romans and Roman client states who had gone over to Octavian's side. 
   -Shit quickly grew worse for them, as four legions inside Egypt had defected to Octavian's side as Octavian himself marched through Syria to Egypt.
      -Also, Octavian was meeting very little resistance from the Egyptian troops who were supposed to defend Egypt, who probably knew something was up and a regime change was just around the corner.
-August 1, 31 BC- Antony sent out a naval fleet to attack Octavian's fleet, but Antony's fleet immediately surrendered when they reached Octavian's fleet.  After this, his cavalry and infantry began to desert him. 
   -Soon, Antony was all alone.  He marched back to the palace to blame Cleopatra for everything (and maybe kill her?), but Cleopatra had arranged for her servants to tell him that she was already dead.  Antony then went and tried to kill himself in his room by falling on his sword, but before he died the servants came to tell him that actually Cleopatra wasn't dead after all but had summoned him to her half-built mausoleum that had been under construction during this time. 
      -They cried together, and Antony drank one last goblet of wine before dying. 
      -As for Cleopatra, she didn't kill herself (at least not yet), but instead begged for her life and Octavian decided to let her live (probably just so he could parade her through Rome in a triumph). 
         -According to legend, Cleopatra then killed herself with a poisonous snake smuggled in by a servant.  Who knows though, but either way she definitely died in captivity during this time.
-Octavian then surveyed Alexandria, and famously visited the Tomb of Alexander the Great, which he adorned with flowers (and also placed a golden diadem on his Alexander's mummified head!).
   -The Roman Empire was now fully under Octavian's control!