Mark Antony was born in 83 BC, shortly before Sulla marched an army on Rome. His father failed in a campaign against Mediterranean pirates and died, and his stepfather Lentulus was executed without trial by Cicero for joining the Catilinarian conspiracy. Deep in debt, Antony fled Rome, studied rhetoric in Greece and in 57 BC became a cavalry commander in Syria, winning in Judea and helping restore a deposed pharaoh in Egypt. Through the gang leader Clodius he joined Julius Caesar in Gaul and led his cavalry at Alesia. As tribune in 49 BC he fled Rome in disguise after the Senate ignored his veto, giving Caesar his pretext, and he commanded Caesar’s left wing at Pharsalus.
Left to govern Italy, he set soldiers on crowds in the Forum during Dolabella’s debt crisis and lost his posts for two years. At the Lupercalia in 44 BC he offered Caesar a diadem. After the Ides of March he secured Caesar’s papers and treasury and turned the funeral into a riot, but Caesar’s will named 19-year-old Octavian heir. With Octavian and Lepidus he formed the Second Triumvirate, put Cicero on the proscription lists, and won at Philippi in 42 BC. He took the East, allied with Cleopatra, lost about 80,000 men invading Parthia in 36 BC, staged the Donations of Alexandria, and after defeat at Actium in 31 BC fell on his sword in 30 BC.
- He drove a chariot pulled by lions through Rome to advertise his family’s claimed descent from Heracles.
- At Caesar’s funeral he read out the bequests to citizens and held up the bloody, torn toga, and the crowd drove the assassins from the city.
- Cicero’s head and hands were nailed to the speaker’s platform in the Forum.
- The Parthian campaign failed after horse archers burned his separated baggage train and siege engines.
- Through his daughters with Octavia he became an ancestor of the emperors Caligula, Claudius and Nero.
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