I'm watching HBO's Rome and simultaneously reading up a bit on Octavian and Mark Antony, both of whom I find fascinating. While this series dramatizes many of the events, it also skips a lot of the events that motivate some of the major historic points. In this sense I'm having difficulty finding information about how Octavian could go from being an enemy of Mark Antony, defeating him and being able to use enough coercion with his armies to be named Consul, but then his armies are apparently too small and he has to leave Rome and make peace with Antony, leading to the second triumvirate. Can someone provide a little context as to how this happen and how this two people were able to seal peace barely a year after being enemies?
When Caesar died Octavian was relatively unknown, he wasn't even in Rome when Caesar passed and it took time for him to simultaneously be told Caesar was dead and Octavian was his heir.
Caesar had the popular support of the people and Antony played that up big time to further turn public support away from the conspirators. There were those, Antony included, who saw Antony as the natural heir to Caesar and weren't best pleased at the upstart. Octavian had been well-schooled, but his best chance for any military experience had been thwarted by personal illness and his political roles had been minor.
Antony was less the policitian, but he was a brilliant military leader and very charismatic.
Lepidus never got Antony's fame but he also acted as a kind of deputy to Caesar and potentially was seen as more reliable than the reckless Antony. He marshaled his own forces after the death of Caesar but was urged to maintain peace. Lepidus and Antony both requested the Senate continue to acknowledge their offices and Caesar's reforms in exchange for them not pursuing the assassins of Caesar.
But Antony ended up taking an army to Gaul, Lepidus was ordered to go after him. Lepidus wasn't about it, and Antony was defeated at Mutina by a force that included Octavian. Octavian was there to fight because he was 'loyal' to the Senate at that moment. But with his remaining force Antony met up with Lepidus and they agreed to ally. [Lepidus might or might not have actually wanted to].
The Senate then gave Octavian his own 'crossing the Rubicon' moment by demanding Octavian surrender his troops to Brutus, who Antony had been fighting to begin with. Octavian wasn't having it and he met up with Lepidus and Antony. The nuances of the alliance were much more detailed, but essentially, they all wanted power, weren't fond of the Senate, they all were important Romans, and they all had a bone to pick with Caesar's killers. The alliance gave them all relatively what they wanted, because separately the Senate was going to keep trying to quash them and prevent another repeat of Caesar. The murderers of Caesar meanwhile would have flourished. Whatever personal disagreements they had didn't outweigh the benefits of banding together.
The battle between Octavian and Antony hadn't been personal to begin with, other than perhaps rivalry as Caesar's would-be heirs. The alliance was born of practicality and not really sentiment, but it wasn't as if they were hated enemies forced to shake hands. The men had clashing personalities and interests, and didn't particularly like each other. But they recognized the value of their positions and Octavian was even willing to marry his sister to Antony. The marriage doesn't seem like a move he would ever make if he found Antony completely vile.