Year: Day to Day Men: January 14

Shades of Black and Green

The fourteenth of January in 83 BC marks the birth date of Marcus Antonius who played a critical role in the transformation of the Roman Republic from a constitutional republic into the autocratic Roman Empire. 

Born in Rome, Marcus Antonius was the son of Marcus Antonius Creticus and Julia, the daughter of Consul Lucius Julius Caesar and the third-cousin of Gaius Julius Caesar, dictator of the Empire until his assassination in 44 BC. Antonius was a relative and supporter of Julius Caesar and served as a general during the conquest of Gaul and the Civil War of the late Roman Republic. He was appointed administrator to Italy while Caesar eliminated his political opponents in Spain, North Africa and Greece. 

There is little reliable information on his younger years. It is known, however, that he was an associate of Publius Clodius Pulcher, a populist Roman politician and street agitator during the First Triumvirate. By the age of twenty, Antonius had accumulated enormous debt and fled to Greece to escape his creditors; during his stay in Greece, he studied philosophy and rhetoric at Athens. Antonius began his military career in 57 BC by joining the military staff of the Proconsul of Syria, Aulus Gabinius, as commander of the calvary. He achieved his first military honors after securing important victories at Alexandrium and Machaerus, both in Jordan.

Antonius’s association with Publius Clodius Pulcher enabled him to achieve prominence in his career. Clodius secured Antonius a position on Caesar’s military staff in 54 BC. Demonstrating military leadership under Caesar, Antonius and Caesar developed a friendship that would last until Caesar’s assassination. It was Antonius who persuaded Proconsul Aulus Gabinius to restore the Ptolemaic pharaoh Ptolemy XII Auletes to the throne of Egypt after Ptolemy’s defeat in a rebellion. With Ptolemy restored as Rome’s client king, Rome exercised considerable power over the kingdom’s affairs. It was during this campaign that Antonius met Ptolemy’s then fourteen year-old daughter Cleopatra.

After a year of military service in Gaul, Caesar sent Antonius to Rome to formally begin his political career as a quaester, or public official, in 52 BC. After a year in office, Antonius was promoted by Caesar to the rank of Legate and was given command of two legions, about seventy-five hundred soldiers. After Caesar’s assassination in 44 BC, Antonius joined with General Marcus Aemilius  Lepidus and Galus Octavius, Caesar’s great-nephew, to form the three-man dictatorship known as the Second Triumvirate. This group defeated Caesar’s killers in 42 BC and divided the Republic’s government between themselves. Antonius was assigned Rome’s eastern provinces which included the kingdom of Egypt, ruled then by Cleopatra VII Thea Philopator.

As the members of the Triumvirate sought individual power, relations became strained. Octavius and Antonius averted war in 40 BC when Antonius married Octavia, Octavius’s sister. However despite this marriage, relations were further strained as Antonius continued his love affair with Cleopatra. In 36 BC, Lepidus was expelled from the Triumvirate and a split developed between Antonius and Octavius. This hostility erupted into civil war in 31 BC as the Roman Senate under Octavius declared war on Egypt and proclaimed Antonius a traitor. Later that year, Octavius’s forces defeated Antonius at the Battle of Actium. Cleopatra and Marcus Antonius fled to Egypt where, after losing the Battle at Alexandria in 30 BC, these two historic figures committed suicide. 

Roman statesman and orator Cicero Minor, a leading figure of the Roman Republic, announced Antonius’s death to the Senate. Antonius’s honors were revoked and his statues removed; however he was not subject to a complete condemnation of memory, damnatio memoriae. A decree was made that no member of the Antonii family would ever bear the name of Marcus again. Married four times, Marcus Antonius had many descendants and was ancestor to several famous Roman statesmen. Through his lover, Cleopatra VII, he had two sons and a daughter Cleopatra Selene II through whom Antonius was ancestor to the royal family of Mauretania, another Roman client kingdom. 

Notes:Cleopatra VII Thea Philopator was Queen of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt from 51 to 30 BC and its last active ruler. She was a descendant of its founder Ptolemy I Soter, a Macedonian Greek general and companion of Alexander the Great. The Ptolemaic pharaohs, crowned by the Egyptian high priest of Ptah at Memphis, resided in the multicultural and largely Greek city of Alexandria founded by Alexander the Great. Previous Ptolemaic pharaohs spoke only Greek and ruled as Hellenistic monarchs. Cleopatra could speak multiple languages by adulthood and was the first Ptolemaic ruler known to have learned the Egyptian language. Contrary to popular belief, Cleopatra VII did not commit suicide by a bite from an asp but rather through poison.