Octavian read this document aloud in the Senate house (according to Plutarch’s Life of Antony, 58) and he made it widely available by getting the Senate to issue a decree that was posted in the forum and sent out widely through the empire by messengers.
Whether it was real or not – and scholars debate this point still – the will contained such inflammatory claims that it set the Roman people against Antony. Octavian managed to get hold of a document that he claimed was Antony’s official will and testament – and what a document it turned out to be.
Yet it would be a piece of fake news that was to be the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. The young Octavian would eventually prove to be the master of propaganda – and, as he was also physically in Italy, unlike Antony who was in Egypt, he was able to exercise far more influence over Rome and the senate.
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