Few battles have had such dramatic outcomes as the great sea battle at Actium in 31 BC. The defeat of Cleopatra and Marc Antony by Octavian ushered in a Roman revolution. Octavian became the Emperor Augustus and before long, with the Pax Romana, not only Rome was transformed from clay into marble, as the new leader boasted, but just about every corner of the new empire. After Actium, the world order changed. Of the many achievements marking this revolution – ranging from Virgil’s Aeneid to the Ara Pacis in Rome – the Victory City of Nicopolis, founded at Actium by Octavian, is truly remarkable. More remarkable still is the Actium Monument built on the hill overlooking the new town. Described by Plutarch, Suetonius, and Dio Cassius, its discovery by Alexander Philadelpheus in the early decades of the 20th century brought to light anchor-shaped sockets on some of the visible stone blocks, into which the bronze rams from the captured ships of Cleopatra and Marc Antony had been inserted. A full excavation in the 1990s, now followed by its magisterial publication, has been one of the most important strands in the professional career of the Greek archaeologist Konstantinos (Kostas) Zachos.
A career in Greek archaeology
The publication of the Actium Monument in three volumes (two are published; the third volume is forthcoming imminently) is certain to define Kostas’ career, but over the past 50 years he has established himself as one of the great archaeologists of his age. We meet most years for dinner in Epirus – this time in the Pindos mountains at Ano Pedina – and talk about archaeology and travels. A dapper man who defies his age, speaks English with lyrical ease, has a winning smile and an obvious energy, he is the perfect companion with whom to share a bottle of wine. Few people I know have such a mixture of charm and curiosity, a combination to fuel endless conversations that, in our case, include shared experiences – good and bad – in southern Albania. (He excavated for two seasons at the hilltop town founded at Antigonea by Pyrrhus around 300 BC and destroyed by the Roman, Aemilius Paullus, in 168 BC.)
Kostas grew up on the slopes of Mount Olympus, went to university in Thessalonica, and on graduating in a bitterly divided Greece, went off to visit an uncle and cousins in Boston. He readily warmed to the America of the ’70s and enrolled to study at Boston University, its archaeology department chaired by James Wiseman. Keeping body and soul together by waiting tables in a pizzeria, he was at one point challenged as to whether to go into the hospitality business. Instead, as he says with a lilting humour, he found his way back to Greece on a fellowship with the American School of Classical Studies at Athens in 1978-1979. It was during this return to Greece that he was first introduced to Nicopolis. It was also when he learned of the newly opened competition to join the Greek archaeological service, the Ephoreia. Quite unexpectedly, as he tells it with a passing smile, he aced the exams.
One person’s trash is another person’s treasure