Mark Antony

Mark Antony was the son and grandson of men of the same name. His father was called Creticus because of his military operations in Crete; his grandfather, one of the leading orators of his day, was a consul and censor who was vividly portrayed as a speaker in Cicero’s De oratore (55). After a somewhat dissipated youth, the future triumvir served with distinction in 57–55 as a cavalry commander under Aulus Gabinius in Judaea and Egypt. He then joined the staff of Julius Caesar, to whom he was related on his mother’s side, and served with him for much of the concluding phase of Caesar’s conquest of central and northern Gaul and its aftermath (54–53 and 52–50). In 52 Antony held the office of quaestor, an office of financial administration that gave him a lifetime place in the Senate. In 50 he was elected to the politically influential priesthood of the augurs, defeating Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus.

In 49, the year the Civil War broke out between Pompey and Caesar, Antony was tribune of the plebs and vigorously supported Caesar. He fled from Rome to Caesar’s headquarters after receiving threats of violence. Antony fought in the brief Italian campaign that forced Pompey to evacuate the Italian peninsula. After this Caesar left him in charge of Italy during the Spanish campaign. He then joined Caesar in Greece, commanded his left wing in the Battle of Pharsalus, and was sent back as master of the horse (a dictator’s second-in-command) in 48 to keep order in Italy. He failed to do this and was probably removed from his post in 47; he was without employment until 44, when he became consul as colleague and later priest (flamen) of Caesar. As consul and lupercus, one of the celebrants of the festival of the Lupercalia (a fertility festival early in the year), he offered Caesar a diadem—a ribbon signifying royalty—which Caesar, pressured by the citizens’ open distaste for monarchy, refused to accept.

After Caesar’s murder, Antony gained possession of the treasury and of Caesar’s papers, which he used (and perhaps supplemented) to his own advantage. For a time he pursued a moderate policy, but when challenged by the 19-year-old Octavian (later the emperor Augustus), Caesar’s adopted son and heir, he turned against Caesar’s assassins. In June 44 the Senate granted him north and central Gaul and northern Italy as his province for five years. Cicero, however, fiercely attacked him in the Philippic orations between September 44 and April 43, and Octavian joined forces with the consuls in 43. Their combined forces twice defeated Antony, who was besieging Brutus Albinus at Mutina (present-day Modena). Antony managed to withdraw into southern Gaul. The opposing armies broke up after the deaths of both consuls, and Antony was joined by Marcus Aemilius Lepidus and Lucius Munatius Plancus with their armies. In early November, Octavian—at this point leading the consular armies—met Antony and Lepidus in Bononia (present-day Bologna). The three entered into a five-year pact, soon ratified by a law, conferring on them a joint autocracy, the triumvirate. More than 200 men were proscribed and (when captured) killed (Cicero was one of them), either because they were enemies of the triumvirs or in order to confiscate their wealth. In 42 Gaius Cassius and Marcus Brutus, defeated in two battles at Philippi (Macedonia) in which Antony distinguished himself as commander, killed themselves and, with these acts, the republican cause.

The triumvirs had agreed to divide the empire, so Antony proceeded to take up the administration of the eastern provinces. He first summoned Cleopatra, the queen of Egypt, to Tarsus (southeastern Asia Minor) to answer reports that she had assisted their enemies. She successfully exonerated herself, and Antony spent the winter of 41–40 as her lover at Alexandria, Egypt. In spite of the romantic accounts of ancient authors, however, he made no move to see her again for more than three years, although he greatly increased her territorial possessions during that interval.

Early in 40 Antony’s brother, the consul Lucius Antonius, supported by Antony’s wife, Fulvia, rebelled against Octavian in Italy. Octavian defeated the rebellion, capturing and destroying Perusia (present-day Perugia). Antony had to return to Italy, leaving his general Ventidius to deal with a Parthian invasion of Asia Minor and Syria. After initial skirmishes, Antony and Octavian were reconciled at Brundisium (present-day Brindisi) and, since Fulvia had died in the meantime, Antony married Octavian’s sister, Octavia. The two men divided the empire between them, Octavian taking everything west of Scodra (present-day Shkodër, Alb.) and Antony everything east. Lepidus, who had earlier been confined to Africa, was allowed to keep it. In 39 Antony and Octavian concluded a treaty with Sextus Pompeius (see Pompeius Magnus Pius, Sextus), who controlled the seas and had been blockading Italy.

Antony and Octavia went to Athens, where they were deified; Antony was declared the New Dionysus, mystic god of wine, happiness, and immortality. Antony then organized the East. Ventidius, meanwhile, pushed the Parthians out of Asia Minor in 40 and drove them back beyond the Euphrates River (39–38). Herod—the son of a prominent Palestinian Jewish friend of Rome, Antipater—was set up in Jerusalem as king of Judaea in 37. When Octavian had problems in Italy and the West in 37, Antony met him at Tarentum, supplied him with ships, and agreed to renew the triumvirate for another five years. Lepidus was perhaps not included. In 36 Octavian’s general Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa defeated Sextus Pompeius. Then Lepidus and Octavian annexed Africa. Octavia, having been in Rome since 37, was sent to Antony by Octavian in 35. Antony sent her back because she arrived with almost none of the troops Antony had lent Octavian. A long-prepared attack on Parthia in 36 failed, with heavy losses—it was Antony’s first military failure. At this point he turned again to Cleopatra, who had borne him two children and given him full political and financial support.

Religious propaganda declared Cleopatra the New Isis or Aphrodite (mythic goddess of love and beauty) to his New Dionysus, and it is possible (but unlikely) that they contracted an Egyptian marriage; it would not have been valid in Roman law since Romans could not marry foreigners. Apart from their undoubted mutual affection, Cleopatra needed Antony in order to revive the old boundaries of the Ptolemaic kingdom (though her efforts to convince him to give her Herod’s Judaea failed), and Antony needed Egypt as a source of supplies and funds for his planned attack on Parthia. He made Alexandria his headquarters and in 34 celebrated there a successful expedition to Armenia by appearing in a triumphal procession that some Romans were persuaded to view (i.e., through propaganda) as an impious parody of their traditional triumph. A few days later he staged a ceremony at which Cleopatra was pronounced Queen of Kings, and her son and joint monarch Ptolemy XV Caesar (Caesarion, now recognized by Antony as the son of Cleopatra and Julius Caesar) was declared King of Kings; the two sons and one daughter that Cleopatra had by this time borne to Antony were also given imposing royal titles. In Rome these moves were depicted by Octavian as involving the transfer of Roman territories into Greek hands. In 33 Octavian began a series of savage political attacks on Antony, which culminated with the production of a document deposited with the Vestal Virgins that was said to be Antony’s will; it left large territories to Cleopatra and her children and provided for his burial in Alexandria.

The triumvirate may have formally ended in late 32, although Antony continued to call himself triumvir on his coins. Both consuls at Rome, however, happened to support Antony, and now, threatened by Octavian, they left for his headquarters, bringing numerous—probably more than 200—Roman senators with them. After Antony had officially divorced Octavia, her brother formally broke off the ties of personal friendship with him and declared war, not against him but against Cleopatra. Antony successively established his headquarters at Ephesus (Selçuk), Athens, and Patras (Pátrai) and marshalled his principal fleet in the gulf of Ambracia (northwestern Greece). More naval detachments occupied a long line of posts along the west coast of Greece. But Octavian’s admiral Agrippa, and then Octavian himself, succeeded in sailing from Italy across the Ionian Sea and effecting landings, and Agrippa captured decisive points on and off the coasts of Macedonia and Greece.

As Antony lost more ground, the morale of his advisers and fighting forces deteriorated, a process aided by Cleopatra’s insistence on being present at his headquarters against the wishes of many of his leading Roman supporters. Most of them gradually left him and were received by Octavian. The decisive battle took place off Actium, outside the Ambracian Gulf, on Sept. 2, 31. When Octavian’s fleet under Agrippa gained the upper hand, Cleopatra broke through with her 60 ships and returned to Alexandria. Antony, having lost the battle and the war, joined her there. When Octavian arrived (summer 30), first Antony and then Cleopatra committed suicide.

Antony was a man of considerable ability and impressive appearance, far more genial than his adversary but not quite equal to Octavian’s exceptional efficiency, energy, and political skill. Nevertheless, he was an outstanding leader of men and a competent general, though, in the end, not such a successful admiral as the experienced Agrippa. As a politician, he was astute enough—aided by a talent for florid oratory—but gradually lost touch with Roman feeling and fatally lacked the cold deliberateness of Octavian. Since the latter proved victorious in his struggle for power, it is his interpretation of events, rather than Antony’s, that has remained lodged in the history books. Cicero had earlier depicted Antony as a drunken, lustful debauchee—though his adulteries may have been less extensive than Octavian’s. More significantly for history, the outcome of the battle off Actium made certain that Octavian’s Roman-Italian policy prevailed throughout the empire, and the Antonian theme of Greco-Roman collaboration was not given a trial until the emperor Constantine captured Byzantium three centuries later.