Mark Antony

Marcus Antonius was born in Rome on 14 January 83 BC into the plebeian gens Antonia. His grandfather Marcus Antonius Orator, a famous orator and former consul and censor, was killed in the Marian purges of 87-86 BC. His father, also Marcus, died in disgrace after failing in his command against the Mediterranean pirates around 71 BC. His mother Julia, a cousin of Julius Caesar, then married Publius Cornelius Lentulus Sura, who was executed by the consul Cicero in 63 BC for his part in the Catilinarian conspiracy. That execution seeded the long enmity between Antony and Cicero.

As a young man Antony cultivated a reputation for drinking, gambling and risky friendships with Curio and Clodius. Heavy debt drove him to Athens in 58 BC, where he studied rhetoric and philosophy. In 57 BC he joined Aulus Gabinius in Syria as commander of cavalry, won his first reputation at Alexandrium and Machaerus, and in 55 BC took part in the Egyptian expedition to restore Ptolemy XII; Appian places his first encounter with the young Cleopatra here.

Elected quaestor in 52 BC and tribune in 49 BC, Antony tied himself to Julius Caesar's rising power. As tribune he used his veto to block the senatorial faction, and his expulsion from Rome by the senatus consultum ultimum gave Caesar his pretext for crossing the Rubicon. He commanded the left wing at Pharsalus in 48 BC, and after the battle Caesar made him magister equitum and left him in charge of Italy. A bloody clash with Dolabella's debt-relief mob in Rome and Antony's habitual debauchery briefly cost him Caesar's favour, but he was rehabilitated and chosen as Caesar's fellow consul for 44 BC.

On 15 March 44 BC Caesar was assassinated. Brutus had spared Antony, and as surviving consul he seized the political initiative. At Caesar's funeral he delivered the eulogy that turned the Roman crowd against the assassins, drove them out of Rome, and concentrated power in his own hands. The dead dictator's young grand-nephew Octavian (the future Augustus) arrived to claim his inheritance and the picture became three-cornered. Cicero attacked Antony in the Philippics and engineered his defeat at Mutina in April 43 BC, but the death of the consuls Hirtius and Pansa pulled Octavian away from the senatorial cause.

In November 43 BC Antony, Octavian and Lepidus met at Bononia and created the Second Triumvirate, a five-year commission to restore the Republic. The triumvirs published proscription lists; Cicero was among the most prominent victims, his head and right hand reputedly nailed to the Rostra at Antony's order. At Philippi in 42 BC Antony defeated Brutus and Cassius, eliminating the assassins, and was assigned the eastern provinces.

There he resumed his connection with Cleopatra VII, fathered three children with her, and in 36 BC launched the Parthian campaign that Caesar had planned. Supply problems and rugged Armenian terrain produced a strategic disaster; he lost legionary eagles and a great part of his army. His personal standing in Rome eroded further with the Donations of Alexandria in 34 BC, when he assigned Roman eastern territories to Cleopatra and their children. In 32 BC Octavian seized and published Antony's will, in which he asked to be buried in Alexandria; the Senate then declared war on Cleopatra. On 2 September 31 BC Agrippa's fleet shattered Antony's at Actium, and the couple fled to Egypt.

In August 30 BC, as Octavian approached Alexandria, Antony was misinformed of Cleopatra's suicide and stabbed himself. Carried to her bodily, he died in her arms. About ten days later she too killed herself and Octavian honoured her wish that they share a tomb. With Antony gone the last competitor for Caesar's mantle was removed, and in 27 BC Octavian was named Augustus, the first Roman emperor. Antony survived in cultural memory through Plutarch's Life, Cicero's Philippics and above all Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra and Julius Caesar, fixed for posterity as the soldier whose private passions ate his public discipline.