Mark Antony and the Enemy Who Wrote Him

History remembers a swaggering drunk undone by a queen, but that portrait was painted by the man who beat him. Who was the soldier underneath Octavian's propaganda, and how close did he come to ruling Rome?

4 chapters · 8 sourcesBy AxiosPublished November 7, 2026

Questions about this story

Who was Mark Antony in ancient Rome?

Mark Antony was a Roman general, Julius Caesar's top lieutenant, and a ruler of the Roman Republic who formed the Second Triumvirate alongside Octavian and Lepidus. After Caesar's assassination in 44 BC, Antony almost gained control of Rome and later ruled the Roman East. He ultimately lost a civil war to Octavian, dying by suicide in Egypt alongside Queen Cleopatra.

What happened to Cicero under the Second Triumvirate?

Marcus Tullius Cicero was assassinated and mutilated after Mark Antony demanded his inclusion on the Second Triumvirate's proscription lists. Cicero had attacked Antony in fourteen Senate speeches called the Philippics. Following his murder, assassins nailed Cicero's head and hand to the speaker's platform in Rome, and Antony's wife Fulvia pierced the dead orator's tongue with golden hairpins.

How did Octavian turn the Roman public against Mark Antony?

Octavian used Antony's relationship with Cleopatra and the Donations of Alexandria, which distributed Roman and foreign territories to her children, to turn public opinion. He also publicized a will-whose authenticity remains uncertain-claiming Antony planned to move Rome's capital to the east. Framing the conflict as a patriotic duty, Octavian declared war on Cleopatra alone rather than directly on Antony.

Which Roman emperors were descended from Mark Antony?

Three Roman emperors-Caligula, Claudius, and Nero-were direct descendants of Mark Antony. Although Antony lost his war against Octavian and died by suicide in 30 BC, his bloodline survived through the daughters he had with Octavian's sister, Octavia. This lineage endured long after the fall of the Roman Republic and the establishment of the Roman Empire.

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Period: 48 BC - 31 BC · 5 minutes · English · one narrator

Late Roman Republic

Antony at Caesar's Funeral

20 March 44 BC, the Roman Forum
Antony displays the blood-soaked toga
The eulogy sparks a riot against the assassins

Narrator: Picture the Roman Forum on the twentieth of March, forty-four years before Christ. A body lies on a bier, surrounded by torches, and a big man with a broken, hooked nose steps up to speak. He holds Caesar's toga in his hands, and when he lifts it, the crowd sees the slits where twenty-three knives went in. He raises a wax effigy showing every wound. By the time he finishes, the people are tearing up benches to burn in the street, and the men who killed Caesar are running for their lives. That man was Marcus Antonius, and this was the moment he nearly inherited Rome. We know him as Mark Antony, the soldier who drank, who loved a queen, who lost. But that is the version his enemy wrote. I'm your narrator, Axios, and welcome to Historai. The man under that nose was tougher, cleverer, and far harder to kill than the legend lets on. He had been Caesar's strong right arm for years before this.¹

Caesar's Civil War

From Debtor to Second Man

Cavalry and infantry service in Gaul under Caesar
Commanded the left wing at Pharsalus, 48 BC
Made Master of the Horse, then disgraced

Narrator: Antony was born into a noble but broke family, a third cousin of Julius Caesar through his mother. As a young man he ran up debts of two hundred and fifty talents and fled Rome for Greece, where he learned soldiering and a florid, emotional style of speaking. He fought in Syria and Egypt, then joined Caesar in Gaul and became his boldest officer, holding the outer lines at the great siege of Alesia. When Caesar crossed the Rubicon, it was partly Antony, a tribune of the people, who gave him the excuse. At Pharsalus, Caesar handed him the left wing against Pompey. Caesar made him Master of the Horse, second man in the Roman world. Antony promptly botched it, sending soldiers into the Forum who killed around eight hundred citizens during debt riots. Caesar was so disgusted he stopped speaking to him for two years. They reconciled only in forty-four, just in time for Antony to stand beside Caesar as co-consul, and then to watch him stabbed to death.¹⁸

Second Triumvirate

Revenge at Philippi

Second Triumvirate formed near Bologna, 43 BC
Cicero proscribed and killed, December 43 BC
Brutus and Cassius defeated at Philippi, 42 BC

Narrator: After the funeral, a cold eighteen-year-old arrived in Rome: Caesar's great-nephew and adopted heir, Octavian. Antony treated the boy with contempt and refused him Caesar's money. Meanwhile Cicero rose in the Senate and delivered fourteen savage speeches, the Philippics, calling Antony a drunk, a gladiator, a public menace. It nearly worked. Antony was beaten at Mutina and led his starving army over the Alps, sharing bark and foul water with his men. Then he turned the tables. He joined with Lepidus, raised twenty-two legions, and forced Octavian to deal. On an islet near Bologna the three men carved up the state and posted proscription lists: three hundred senators, two thousand knights, marked for death. Antony demanded Cicero. The assassins nailed Cicero's head and hand to the speaker's platform, and Antony's wife Fulvia drove golden hairpins through the dead orator's tongue. At Philippi, Antony crushed the armies of Caesar's killers. Cassius killed himself, Brutus killed himself, and Antony wrapped Brutus's body in his own purple cloak.¹⁸

Fall of the Republic

Actium and Alexandria

Cleopatra at Tarsus, 41 BC
Parthian disaster and the Donations of Alexandria
Defeat at Actium, 31 BC; suicides, 30 BC

Narrator: Antony took the rich Roman East, and in forty-one summoned Cleopatra to Tarsus. She sailed up the river with purple sails and silver oars, dressed as a goddess, and he was finished. He wintered in Alexandria, married Octavian's sister Octavia for politics, then returned east to Cleopatra and their children. His great Parthian invasion ended in catastrophe: betrayed by his Armenian ally, his siege engines destroyed, he lost perhaps a third of a hundred thousand men in a brutal winter retreat. Then, in the Donations of Alexandria, he handed Roman and foreign lands to Cleopatra's children. Octavian used that, and a will of doubtful authenticity, to convince Rome that Antony meant to move the capital east. Whether that will was genuine, we cannot be sure. War was declared, cleverly, against Cleopatra alone. At Actium in thirty-one, Octavian's admiral Agrippa bottled up Antony's fleet; Cleopatra broke out under purple sails and Antony followed her, abandoning everything. Afterward he sat three days at the bow, face in his hands. The next year, hearing a false rumor she was dead, he stabbed himself, then was hauled dying through a tomb window to die in her arms. He was fifty-three. Octavian became Augustus, and four centuries of the Republic ended. Yet Antony's blood ran on, through his daughters by Octavia, into three emperors: Caligula, Claudius, Nero. The drunken fool of the legend was in truth a resilient soldier buried under his enemy's propaganda. And remember, you can stop any episode and ask us whatever you like. Thank you for sitting with this one, Axios. This was Historai, where history answers back.¹³

Research record

Sources

Plutarch • Life of AntonyAcademic
The Internet Classics Archive | Antony by PlutarchAcademic
Mark Antony - WikipediaEncyclopedia
Marcus Antonius | BritannicaEncyclopedia
ANTONIO, Marco - Enciclopedia - TreccaniEncyclopedia
Mark Antony | BritannicaEncyclopedia
Mark Antony Roman triumvir | BritannicaEncyclopedia
Antònio, Marco, il triumviro - Enciclopedia - TreccaniEncyclopedia