Antony, Mark

Antony, Mark (Latin, Marcus Antonius) (c. 83-30 bc), Roman statesman and general, who defeated the assassins of Julius Caesar and, with Octavian (later Emperor Augustus) and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, formed the Second Triumvirate, which governed with practically absolute power in the late Roman Republic.

Antony was born in Rome and educated for a short time in Greece. From 58 to 56 bc he served as a cavalry officer in the Roman campaigns in Palestine and Egypt, and from 54 to 50 bc in Gaul under Julius Caesar. Subsequently, with Caesar's aid, he attained the offices of quaestor, augur, and tribune of the people. At the outbreak of the civil war between Caesar and the Roman soldier and statesman Pompey the Great, Antony was appointed Caesar's commander in chief in Italy. He commanded the left wing of Caesar's army at the Battle of Pharsalus in 48 bc, and in 44 bc he shared the consulship with Caesar.

After Caesar's assassination in 44 bc, Antony's funeral speech, immortalized by Shakespeare in the play Julius Caesar, turned the Roman people against the conspirators, leaving Antony virtually supreme in Rome. A rival soon appeared, however, in Octavian, who was the grandnephew of Caesar and his designated heir. For a time the two were reconciled, and together with the Roman general Marcus Aemilius Lepidus formed the Second Triumvirate, agreeing to divide the Roman Empire among themselves.

In 42 bc, at Philippi, the triumvirate crushed the forces of Caesar's two assassins, Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus, who sought to restore the Roman Republic. Later in the same year, Antony summoned the Egyptian queen Cleopatra to meet him in the city of Tarsus, in Cilicia (now in Turkey), and explain her refusal to help the triumvirate in the civil war. Instead of punishing Cleopatra, however, Antony fell in love with her and returned with her to Egypt in 41 bc. In 40 bc he attended meetings of the triumvirate in Italy, at which a new division of the Roman world was arranged, with Antony receiving the eastern portion, from the Adriatic Sea to the Euphrates River; in the same year he attempted to cement his relations with Octavian by marrying the latter's sister Octavia. Nevertheless, Antony soon returned to Egypt and resumed his life with Cleopatra. Octavian made use of this fact to excite the indignation of the Roman people against Antony. When, in 36 bc, Antony was defeated in a military expedition against the Parthians, popular disapproval of his conduct deepened in Rome. In 34 bc he declared Caesarion (Cleopatra's son allegedly by Julius Caesar) as Caesar's heir in Octavian's place and divided the east among Cleopatra and their children. War inevitably followed. In 31 bc the forces of Antony and Cleopatra were defeated by those of Octavian at the naval Battle of Actium. The couple returned to Egypt, deserted by the Egyptian fleet and leaving behind most of Antony's own army. In 30 bc, besieged by the troops of Octavian in Alexandria and deceived by a false report of Cleopatra's suicide, Antony killed himself by falling on his sword.