Marc Antony

Born into an aristocratic family, Mark Antony lost his father at an early age and thus grew up with little parental supervision. He fell into bad company and adopted a profligate lifestyle that resulted in him accumulating an enormous debt.

Blessed with enormous skills in military strategy and oratory, he never lost his affinity for an easy life, drink, and women that often brought him disgrace.

During his lifetime, he married five times; his first wife was Fadia, followed by Antonia, Fulvia, Octavia, and Cleopatra. His love affair with Cleopatra was the cause of his ultimate downfall.

Mark Antony was born on 14 January 83 BC in a family of plebian Antonia gens. His father, Marcus Antonius Creticus, was known to be an ineffective and corrupt military commander and his mother, Julia Antonia, was distantly related to Julius Caesar. His grandfather who had the same name as his father was a consul and orator of considerable repute.

Given the task of battling pirates in the Mediterranean, Mark Antony’s father expired in Crete in 71 BC leaving Mark, and his brothers, Lucius and Gaius, in the care and custody of Julia, who subsequently remarried. Mark’s stepfather, Publius Cornelius Lentulus Sura who belonged to the old Patrician nobility was later executed on the orders of Consul Cicero for his involvement in the second Catilinarian conspiracy.

As befitting a young man of a distinguished family, Mark Antony received an education that focused on skills required for a successful career in politics like the art of public speaking, objective thinking and analysis from multiple angles.

While young Antony displayed all the skills that would serve him good in later life; he was brave, loyal, athletic, and attractive, he was also somewhat lazy, reckless, and too fond of gambling, drinking and carousing as well as scandalous liaisons with the opposite sex.

In 58 BC, in a bid to escape from his creditors, Mark Antony fled to Greece, where he studied military strategy, philosophy, and rhetoric.

At the behest of the Roman general Aulus Gabinius, Mark Antony joined a military expedition against Syria in 57 BC. Proving to be an able cavalry commander, he stayed on with Gabinius to subdue revolts in Egypt against Ptolemy XII.

His military skills having come to prominence, Julius Caesar called on him to join him in 54 BC to fight in Gaul. Though he excelled in battle, his appetite for luxury, drink and carnal excesses estranged him from Caesar as well as other officers.

Mark Antony fiercely supported Caesar and his populist politics in the Senate along with long-time friend, Curio, using his oratory skills to good effect. Rejected and hounded by the Senate, he and Curio, disguised as servants, fled to Gaul in 49 BC to join Caesar. The incensed Caesar marched to Rome and was able to take it without a fight.

Caesar appointed Antony the administrator of Rome while he left to fight Pompey in Spain. Unfortunately, even though Antony was a brilliant military commander, he had neither the skill nor the interest required of an able administrator.

Even though Antony was administratively incompetent, he managed to keep the supply lines to Caesar open for sending reinforcements. In 48 BC, Antony left Rome in the care of Lepidus and went to Greece to join Caesar, where he helped him to defeat Pompey the Great at the Battle of Pharsalus by commanding the left wing of Caesar’s cavalry.

Along with Octavian and Aemilius Lepidus, Mark Antony formed the ‘Second Triumvirate’, a three-man dictatorship to govern Rome. Mark Antony played a critical role in the transformation of the Roman Republic to an autocratic empire.