Talk:Battle of Actium

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Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 15:23, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

How many ships?

In the Order of battle section, I see Anthony: 500, including 230 large galleys; Octavian: 250. Then in the Combat section, I see Anthony: 140; Octavian: 260. Perhaps someone could investigate Antony's strength. Jontel (talk) 19:08, 14 June 2019 (UTC)

Britannica has Antony with 500, and some other sources seem to follow. (Octavian's difference, 10 ships, is trivial). Some things that maybe could account for the difference could be

1. 500 referring to Antony's entire fleet including Cleopatra's and that of other allies (if any; can't recall) while 140 :is the number of ships under Antony's direct control.
2. Maybe his fleet was 500, but most of it wasn't in the battle.
3. The source giving 140 isn't counting a bunch of really small corvettes and such.
4. Nobody really knows. I mean primary sources are 2000 years old and there wasn't fact-checking then I guess. And/or there maybe contradictory sources.

Here, a website called "Ancient Ports" says

Depending on the various ancient sources, Octavian had between 250 and 400 battle ships and Antony, with his numerous oriental allies, had between 170 and 500 ships, out of which 60 Egyptian ships (Plutarch, Antony, 70). In addition, each had hundreds of supply ships.

So they say conflicting sources. I don't really trust Plutarch to the same degree I would trust, say, Samuel Elliot Morrison. Different times. I don't think we should say "500" one place and "140" right after. It confuses the reader and makes us look feckless.

I would go with what Ancient Ports says and give a range and say sources differ. However, while Ancient Ports looks really really good, it seems to be the long-term obsessive-hobby work of one person, Arthur de Graauw (he is a coastal engineer), and not published in print form. He's probably a better source for this fact than Shuckberg, who wrote a hundred years ago and also wasn't fact-checked, and it's suspicious that Shuckberg was so certain (you know how Experts get). But then, the 140 figure doesn't give a source, but just says "Shuckberg says 500"!

I think Arthur de Graauw is almost certainly correct, but he's just got a website, and Shuckberg had had a published book. Doesn't matter, but the way the Wikipedia rolls, we'll need a better source than de Graauw.

Tarn, W. W. (1931). "The Battle of Actium". Journal of Roman Studies. 21 (2): 173–199. doi:10.2307/296516. JSTOR 296516. looks extensive. But I can't access it. Herostratus (talk) 05:03, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

How many galleys?

This is still an issue in 2024. Battle of Actium#Order of battle says 250 and 400. Battle of Actium#Combat says there were 140 and 260. The sources used are either ancient or from 1917. Ed ^{[talk] [OMT]} 05:24, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

See Lange, Carsten Hjort (December 2011). "The Battle of Actium: a Reconsideration". The Classical Quarterly. 61 (2): 608–623. JSTOR 41301557. for the arguments. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 07:14, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

Contradiction regarding Gaius Sosius

This article states: "It was there that Antony's fleet faced the much larger fleet of smaller, more manoeuvrable ships under commanders Gaius Sosius and Agrippa." This implies that Gaius Sosius was the commander of the fleet opposing that of Antony.

However, the article on Gaius Sosius itself states: "He commanded part of the fleet of Antony and Cleopatra at the battle of Actium in 31 BC, following which he was taken captive." This asserts that Gaius Sosius was in fact a commander of Antony's fleet.

This is a clear contradiction and must be resolved. 83.87.45.143 (talk) 16:20, 28 March 2024 (UTC)

Well spotted. The statement here appears to have misconstrued the cited source, which says “the two fleets” were commanded by GS & A; earlier it mentions GS as one of Antony’s “closest allies” (p.32), while A had been in charge of Octavian’s fleet for several years (p.24). Any suggestions on the best way to rephrase?—Odysseus1479 23:46, 8 November 2025 (UTC)

Good catch indeed. I started by removing Sosius, as he only commanded part of Antony's fleet. Trying to make the sentence work better revealed that we'd mentioned Agrppa twice in the lead already, that saying Antony's fleet sailed through the bay was somewhat confusing, as if they'd left it before joining battle, and we didn't have any direct indication of the battle's immediate outcome. I tried to improve all that and leave that part of the WP:LEAD more a summary of the article body, which renders the single ref superfluous. NebY (talk) 15:23, 9 November 2025 (UTC)

Notes lacking information

Some of the notes reference Eck (2003) but there is no note with full bibliographical address. Some googling shows only two texts with such author's name and year but the topics nor page numbers don't match. There's also a note that says only "Scullard (1982)" which corresponds to an edition of "From the Gracchi to Nero" but the article in other places (including references) references the 2013 edition. ~2026-37198-79 (talk) 23:42, 27 June 2026 (UTC)

That's bad - and longstanding! In 2021 an editor copy-pasted content from elsewhere on Wikipedia (content now at War of Actium and Rise of Augustus) without copying the necessary bibliographic information and without providing the necessary attribution per Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia. I'll try to bring in the information and do the attributions. NebY (talk) 16:19, 28 June 2026 (UTC)