Arve and welcome to Emperors of Rome, a Roman history podcast from Latrobe University.

I'm your host Matt Smith and with me today is Dr. Steele Brand, Associate Professor of

History at the Kings College in New York City.

This is episode CLXXVI, the Battle of Philippi.

More than two years have passed since the death of Caesar and we have now come to the final

battle of the liberators' war.

Octavian and Mark Antony lead their forces west to confront Cassius and Brutus, who have

amassed quite the army in the meantime.

He's Steele Brand.

The Battle of Philippi is the decisive battle that determines whether or not the Roman

Republic will indeed remain a Republic or whether it will transition into some form

of autocratic rule and the defeat, ultimately, of the Republican forces means that the Roman

Republic has become a Roman Empire and the sense that it controls a vast swath of territory.

Now it's also imperial in the sense that it's run by what we would describe as an emperor,

one man rule.

Was it the intention for this to be the final battle, the final confrontation?

If all sides had their own way, would this have been how they ended it?

I don't know if they were prepared fully if this is where they wanted to hold it or was

it more of a, this is just how it happened, kind of scenario.

There are lots of battles in history where the latter that you just described, where it

just sort of happened that way.

In fact, more often than not, the quote-unquote decisive battles that we read about in history,

...