 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
|
 |
south wing broke ranks. Cleopatra sailed to safety, probably signaled by Antony to do so, although the
historian DIO CASSIUS dismissed her flight as the act of a woman and an Egyptian. Antony, with his
own ship pinned by a harpax, transferred to another vessel and also fled toward Egypt. Victory at sea was
total for Octavian, and Antony's general, CANDIDUS CRASsus, faced a mutiny in his own ranks and
surrendered.
An invasion of Egypt followed in July of 30, but Actium had already established Octavian as the
undisputed master of Rome and its far-flung world. By August, Antony and Cleopatra were dead by their
own hands. Octavian returned to Rome to become the first Roman emperor, Augustus. PLUTARCH and
Dio Cassius wrote extensive versions of the battle. See also CIVIL WARS (SECOND TRIUMVIRATE)
and NAVY.
¤ ACTS OF THE PAGAN MARTYRS Literature that dates to the 1st century A.D., detailing the
hardships and trials of Egyptian nationalists in ALEXANDRIA. Written in a dramatic and bitterly
antiRoman style, the work, mainly fragmentary, includes accounts from the period of AUGUSTUS to the era
following the reign of MARCUS AURELIUS.
¤ ADLECTIO The process by which an individual was chosen to be a Roman senator. Generally, it was
accomplished by being enrolled on the lists of the SENATE. This was an arbitrary process at times, and
Caesar used it to increase Senate numbers. The tradition was carried on by the emperors with some
prudence and hesitation at first, as in the case of Augustus and Claudius, but Domitian, Macrinus and
others used it with enthusiasm.
¤ ADOPTIO Or adoptatio, the name used for adoption, one of the principal areas of domestic relations in
Rome with regard to parent and child, the other being lawful marriage. There were actually two
variations of the process: adoptio and adrogatio. Adoption of a person not in the power of a parent (sui
iuris) was called adrogatio. It was originally possible only in Rome and with the vote of the populace
(populi auctoritate) in the Comitia Centuriata. By the 1st century B.C., the comitia was effectively
replaced in this matter by thirty lictors who were asked their approval. Those citizens living in the
provinces were not eligible for this approbation and were thus required to ask the permission of the
emperor, beginning the process that came to be known as the adrogatio per rescriptum principis. From the
time of Diocletian, this act was mandatory. Adoptio involved a complex series of mandpationes
(emancipations) within the framework of a law in the XII Tables.
By the terms of adoption, a Roman citizen passed from one family to another, a change of family that
meant that the adrogatus brought with him all persons under his potestas into the household of the
adrogator, while acknowledging the patria potestas of the family's head. It served a useful purpose both
socially and politically, as a childless individual could adopt and ensure the continuation of the sacra of
the family, bequeathing not just property to the heres (heir), but the family as well, for the new member
accepted the name and rank of the adoptive father. Politically, adoption could be used to great advantage
as a means of improving one's prospects by becoming adopted into a higher class family - moving from
the Plebeian to the Patrician class. The opposite movement had advantages of its own; Pulcher Clodius
was adrogated into a plebeian family by a lex curiata in order to be eligible for election as tribunus plebis
 |