Page "Battle of Actium" Paragraph 2

The alliance commonly known as the Second Triumvirate, renewed for a five-year term in 38 BC, broke down when Octavian came to perceive Caesarion, the son of Julius Caesar and the Egyptian Queen Cleopatra VII, as a major threat to his power.

That occurred when Mark Antony, the other most influential member of the Triumvirate, abandoned his wife, Octavian's sister Octavia Minor, and moved to Egypt to start a long-term romance with Cleopatra, thus becoming de facto stepfather to Caesarion.

Such a love affair was doomed to become a political scandal.

Antony was inevitably perceived by Octavian and the majority of the Roman Senate as the leader of a separatist movement that threatened to break the unity of the Roman Republic.