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Now, Actium is far from the decisive battle it is portrayed to be. The battles was fairly minor-it was the events after the battle, and the complete unravelling of the Antonian/Cleopatran effort afterwards that was decisive.

With that said, Antony held all the cards in Greece initially yet played a series of bad hands to put himself in the position he was at Actium. So, what if he gambles on a land battle, which Canidius had argued he should do, instead of a naval battle, and wins? How does an Antony dominating the Roman world turn out?

Contrary to popular belief, Antony was not hated by the Romans as an eastern monarch or something along those lines-that was how Octavian portrayed him, and he had to go to great lengths to even get the Senate to sanction a war against Cleopatra, for he couldn't even get them to agree to declare war on Antony. Of course even then more than a third of the Senate up and left and made way to Antony's camp. So, he is still very popular with a large portion of the Roman Senate, and the people don't hate him either.

Now, what would his rule look like: I imagine he'd still spend a lot (though not all) his time in the east. Another go at an invasion of Parthia with the help of his ally, the Median King Artavasdes, is almost a given. I can see him having a very hands off approach as far as governing goes. Maybe he leaves a few friends like Ahenobarbus and Canidius (conveniently two people who didn't get along with Cleopatra too...) to look after the west with the Senate having a lot of autonomy for how they go about their business.

edit: Also, I forgot to mention Hellenization: I can see over time a much more Hellenized west. This seemed to be happening OTL naturally, and Octavian went to great lengths it seems to stop this hellenization of the west culturally, while at the same time having a lot of his building projects stem from what he saw in his visit to Alexandria. So that in and of itself will have huge longterm repercussions.
Thoughts?
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