General Notes

submitted by DEBORAH LYNNE FOX B.1-13-1960

Roman statesman and general, who defeated the assassins of Julius Caesar
and, with Gaius Octavius and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, formed the Second
Triumvirate, which ultimately secured the end of the Roman Republic.
Antony was born in Rome and educated for a short time in Greece. From 58
to 56 BC he served as a leader of cavalry in Roman campaigns in Palestine
and Egypt, and from 54 to 50 BC he served 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 the assassination of Caesar in 44 BC, Antony's skillful oratory,
immortalized by Shakespeare in the play Julius Caesar, turned the Roman
people against the conspirators, leaving Antony for a time with almost
absolute power in Rome. A rival soon appeared, however, in the person of
Gaius Octavius, later the Roman emperor Augustus, who was grandnephew of
Caesar and Caesar's designated heir. A struggle for power broke out when
Antony, Octavius, and a third contender for the throne, the Roman general
Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, formed the Second Triumvirate and agreed to
divide the Roman Empire among themselves.
In 42 BC, at Philippi, the triumvirate crushed the forces led by two
assassins of Caesar, the Roman statesmen 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 attend him in
the city of Tarsus, in Cilicia (now in Turkey), and explain her refusal
to aid 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
Octavius by marrying the latter's sister Octavia. Nevertheless, Antony
soon returned to Egypt and resumed his life with Cleopatra. Octavius 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, and a new civil war became inevitable. In 31 BC the forces of
Antony and Cleopatra were decisively defeated by those of Octavius in a
naval engagement near Actium.
The couple returned to Egypt, deserted by the Egyptian fleet and by most
of Antony's own army. In the following year, besieged by the troops of
Octavius in Alexandria and deceived by a false report of Cleopatra's
suicide, Antony killed himself by falling on his sword.
Microsoft Encarta 98 Encyclopedia.