Representing Victory: Octavian\u27s Tropaeum at Nikopolis and the Visual Language of Competitive Success

War is competition on the grandest scale, and victory is the end product of competition. The winning side in war is faced with the issue of how to represent victory both to their own side and their enemy. This dynamic grows even more complex when the conflict is a civil war. Octavian\u27s victory over Antony and Cleopatra at Actium, in 31 BCE, marked the end of the Roman Civil Wars. This victory cemented Octavian\u27s status as the preeminent political figure in the vast Roman Empire. The empire Octavian won, however, was far from united. No region represented this disunity more than Greece, located at the divide between the eastern and western provinces. Due to its central location, three climactic battles, Pharsalus, Philippi, and Actium had been fought in and around Greece over the preceding twenty years. However, none brought about a shift in Roman life quite like Actium, which marked the final step in the transition from Republic to Principate. In the wake of Actium, Octavian founded a victory city, Nikopolis, in 31 BCE, to commemorate the climactic battle on Greek soil. Many victory monuments were created to commemorate Actium both in the east and west. The Actian Nikopolis, and its sister city, the short lived Nikopolis of Alexandria, were unique among them. The foundation of victory settlements was a Hellenistic tradition, dating to Alexander, and was practiced rarely by the Romans and only in the east. Nikopolis, built by the uprooting and relocation of other local Greek settlements, represented a massive undertaking. Despite the vast scale of construction, the exact relationship this monument and city held with Augustan Rome is unclear. Scholars have looked at both the site of Nikopolis itself (Murry and Phoitos, 1989, Isager, 2001) and Augustan victory imagery in the Rome (Hölscher, 2003, Zanker, 1988, Gurval, 1995). However, nobody has tried to connect the two and explain how Nikopolis relates with Roman victory construction elsewhere. In this paper I intend to examine the relationship between Nikopolis and the celebration and construction that took place in Rome upon Octavian\u27s return to the city after Actium. For Roman examples I will look at the triple triumph and the Actian arch. While all of these loosely commemorate the same event, Nikopolis borrows from a Greek precedent whereas the triumph and arch are very Roman. I will try to determine to what extent location and audience affects the tools of commemorating Victory. I hope this research will show that Nikopolis is a distinct expression of monumental construction, reflecting the same sentiments as Roman victory monuments, but reinterpreting them for a Hellenized Roman audience. Bibliography Gurval, Robert Allen. 1995. Actium and Augustus: The Politics and Economics of Civil War. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Hölscher, Tonio. 2003. Images of War in Greece and Rome: Between Military Practice, Public Memory, and Cultural Symbolism. Journal of Roman Studies 2003: 1-17. Isager, Jacob ed. 2001. Foundation and Destruction: Nikopolis and Northwestern Greece. Athens: Monographs of the Danish Institute of Athens. Murry, William M. and Photios, Petsas M. 1989. Octavian\u27s Campsite Memorial for the Actium War. Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 79: 1-172. Zanker, Paul. 1988. The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press