Social bonds in Rome have been decaying since the destruction of Carthage a little more than a hundred years earlier, under the alluring prospect of vast wealth attainable by plunder and corruption.

There have been a dozen civil wars in the hundred years leading up to 31 BCE, when the final war of the Roman Reublic ends.

The alliance between Mark Antony and Octavian had already been severely tested by Antony's abandonment of Octavia and their children in favor of his former lover Queen Cleopatra VII of Egypt (Antony and Cleopatra had met in 41 BCE, an interaction that resulted in twins).

Octavia after 36 BCE had returned to Rome with the daughters of her second marriage.

On several occasions she has acted as a political adviser and negotiator between her husband and brother.

She had in 35 BCE supplied him with men and troops to be used in his eastern campaigns.

After Roman troops captured the Kingdom of Armenia in 34 BCE, Mark Antony had made his son Alexander Helios the ruler of Armenia; he had also awarded the title "Queen of Kings" to Cleopatra, acts which Octavian uses to persuade the Roman Senate that Antony has ambitions to diminish the preeminence of Rome.

When Octavian becomes consul once again on January 31, 33 BCE, he opens the following session in the Senate with a vehement attack on Antony's grants of titles and territories to his relatives and to his queen.

Defecting consuls and senators rush over to the side of Antony in disbelief of the propaganda (which turns out to be true).

The triumvirate formed by the Ceasarians Octavian, Antony, and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus officially ends on the last day of 33 BCE, although Antony continues to call himself triumvir on his coins.

Lepidus had been forcibly retired from the triumvirate in 36, and Octavian, unlike Antony, professes no longer to be employing its powers.