Marcus Antonius

Reading notes

• Ad Atticum 7.8 §4 the speech of Antonius delivered before the assembly

  M. Antonius (Mark Antony), then a tribune-elect and Caesar's quaestor, harangued a public meeting (contio) on 21 December 50 BC attacking Pompey's whole career; Cicero notes Pompey took even this junior assault as a measure of Caesar's intentions.

• Ad Atticum 10.16 §5 whose litter, with an actress inside, is carried among his lictors

  Lictors were the attendants who bore the fasces before a magistrate and marked his official dignity. Antony's parading of his mistress, the actress Cytheris, in a litter amid this solemn escort struck Cicero as a gross profanation of office.

• Ad Atticum 11.7 §2 Then he issued his edict in terms that made an exception of me, and of Laelius by name

  As Caesar's deputy (magister equitum) governing Italy after Pharsalus, Antony issued an edict barring returning Pompeians from the country. Naming Cicero and Decimus Laelius as exempt singled them out conspicuously, which Cicero found dangerous rather than reassuring.

• Ad Atticum 11.9 §1 held as I am by the exceptions made in the edicts

  Antony's edict barring Pompeians from Italy had named Cicero as an exception, so that he could not even withdraw quietly into exile elsewhere. Cicero feels the exemption as a trap rather than a favour, since it ties his fate to Caesar's pleasure.

• Ad Atticum 14.3 §1 all the grain is being carted to Antony's house

  Marcus Antonius (Antony), consul in 44 BC and Caesar's surviving colleague, who as the dominant figure in Rome was widely suspected of seizing public stores and funds for his own ends; Cicero half-dismisses the rumour as panic.

• Ad Atticum 14.3 §2 sound out Antony's frame of mind [Greek: diathesin]

  Greek diathesis, "disposition, state of mind"; Cicero asks Atticus to gauge Antony's intentions, judging him more interested in his banquets than in any deep mischief.

• Ad Atticum 15.1 §2 About Antony

  Mark Antony, consul in 44 BC and Caesar's surviving lieutenant; in these post-Ides weeks Cicero is warily negotiating with him (partly over the Buthrotum land affair) while distrusting his intentions.

• Ad Atticum 15.6 §1 angrier with Antony

  Mark Antony, consul in 44 BC and Caesar's chief political heir; Cicero notes that Hirtius, though a Caesarian, was on bad terms with Antony, which made him a more promising contact for the assassins.

• Ad Atticum 15.8 §1 written to Antony about the embassy

  Cicero was seeking an official "free embassy" (legatio libera) as a pretext to leave Italy lawfully; granting it lay with the consuls Antony and Dolabella, so he wrote to both to avoid offending the touchy Antony.

• Ad Atticum 15.21 §1 to make him dictator

  Marcus Antonius. The young Quintus claims Antony pressed him to help engineer a dictatorship and seize the city garrison, and that his refusal turned Antony against him; the dictatorship had been formally abolished by law shortly after Caesar's death, which sharpens the charge.

• Ad Atticum 15.22 §1 that he is hostile to Antony --- when, or why?

  Mark Antony, consul in 44 BC and Cicero's chief political antagonist after the Ides; the sceptical aside doubts that Pansa's reported enmity toward Antony is real or timely.

• Ad Atticum 15.22 §1 our Cytherian here says that no one will go on living except the victor

  "Our Cytherian" (Cytherius) is a sneering nickname for Antony as the lover of the actress Volumnia Cytheris; Cicero quotes him as predicting that in the coming conflict only the winner will survive, i.e. it will be a fight to the death.

• Ad Atticum 16.7 §1 that Antony would give way

  Mark Antony, consul in 44 BC and Caesar's surviving lieutenant, was the chief obstacle to a settlement between the assassins' party and the Caesarians; the hope that he would yield is what drew Cicero back toward Rome.

• Ad Atticum 16.8 §1 war should be waged with Antony

  Mark Antony, consul in 44 BC and Caesar's chief surviving lieutenant; Octavian's open aim was now armed conflict against him.

• Ad Atticum 16.10 §1 Antony meant to halt at Casilinum

  Mark Antony, the consul, was reportedly moving up from Campania; Cicero, fearing to meet him on the road, changed his route accordingly.

• Ad Atticum 16.14 §1 false about Antony

  Mark Antony, consul in 44 BC and Caesar's surviving lieutenant, now Cicero's chief antagonist as he maneuvers for power against both the assassins and Octavian.

• Ad M. Brutum 1.1 §1 He has been advanced by a kindness of Antony's

  Antony, as consul in 44 BC, had wide powers of patronage and appointment; Clodius owed his tribunate to Antony's backing, which made his loyalty to the republican cause potentially suspect in Brutus's eyes.

• Ad M. Brutum 1.2 §2 Antony's flight

  At the battle of Mutina (21 April 43 BC) Antony was defeated and forced to withdraw westward; Cicero is referring to news of his flight from Italy as the decisive turn of events.

• Ad M. Brutum 1.3 §3 the cause of the three brothers is one and the same

  The "three brothers" are Marcus Antonius (Mark Antony), Lucius Antonius, and Gaius Antonius; Cicero argues that Brutus's leniency toward Gaius (his prisoner) is inconsistent with prosecuting the other two as enemies of the state.

• Ad M. Brutum 1.4 §2 the three Antonii

  The three Antonii are Marcus Antonius (the triumvir), his brother Lucius Antonius, and his brother Gaius Antonius; all three had been declared public enemies by the Senate in 43 BC, and Brutus held Gaius prisoner.

• Ad M. Brutum 1.10 §4 shook Antony

  Cicero refers to his Philippic orations, the series of speeches delivered from September 44 BC onward attacking Antony; the First Philippic was delivered in the Senate on 2 September 44 BC.

• Ad M. Brutum 1.18 §2 a commander who came through it whole --- adorned with the highest honours and greatest fortunes, with a wife, with children, with you for in-laws --- has declared war on the state

  Cicero refers to Mark Antony: though the consular armies defeated Antony at Mutina in April 43 BC (the battles of Forum Gallorum and Mutina), Antony survived and fled northwest with his forces, and was being joined by Lepidus. "With you for in-laws" refers to the fact that Antony had married Antonia (a relative of the Atia/Octavia family), but here more likely alludes to Antony's long political connection to the republican faction before his rupture with the Senate.

• Ad M. Brutum 2.3 §2 Antonius is still with us

  This is not Mark Antony but almost certainly Gaius Antonius, Mark Antony's brother, whom Brutus had captured in Macedonia; Brutus held him as a bargaining piece, aware that executing him might spark reprisals.

• Ad M. Brutum 2.5 §3 ANTONIUS PROCONSUL

  The title proconsul (procos.) was a claim to legitimate imperium over a province; Antony had issued this to himself after the Lex Antonia assigned him the Gallic provinces, but the Senate had not confirmed it — hence the astonishment.

• Ad M. Brutum 2.5 §5 the three Antonii

  The three brothers: Marcus Antonius (Mark Antony), Gaius Antonius (held by Brutus in Macedonia), and Lucius Antonius (tribune 44, consul 41 BC); Cicero argues that clemency toward any one of them undermines the condemnation of Dolabella.

• Ad Familiares 6.2 §2 Marcus Antonius, that most prudent of men

  The heavy irony is almost certain: Mark Antony (cos. 44 BC) was not widely regarded as prudentissimus; Cicero may be citing a specific occasion when Antony (perhaps as Caesar's legate) had warned of the dangers of prolonged civil war, or the praise is sarcastic. The identity is not in doubt but the occasion of Antony's prescient fear is unrecoverable.

• Ad Familiares 10.2 §1 in such utter impunity of swords

  Antony, consul in 44 BC, had packed Rome with armed bodyguards after the Ides of March; Cicero portrays the Senate as cowed by soldiers who hear and intimidate the speakers at close range.

• Ad Familiares 10.5 §3 brigands excepted

  "Brigands" (latrones) is Cicero's standing term of abuse for Antony and his armed partisans, casting them as outlaws rather than legitimate magistrates.

• Ad Familiares 10.14 §1 the best-known of those brigand chiefs are reported to have fled from the field at Mutina

  The "brigand chiefs" (latronum duces) are Antony and his lieutenants, whom Cicero throughout the Philippics and these letters denies the dignity of public enemies, casting them instead as bandits; Antony fled westward after the defeat to seek Lepidus and Plancus.

• Ad Familiares 10.19 §2 whoever crushes Antony will have brought this most foul and most dangerous war to its end

  After the relief of Mutina (April 43) Antony had retreated across the Alps toward Lepidus's province; Cicero presses Plancus to be the man who finishes him off, the recurring refrain of his book-10 letters.

• Ad Familiares 10.24 §3 the parricides

  Parricidae ("parricides," murderers of the fatherland) is the standard invective of the Ciceronian party for Antony and his followers, casting their war against the state as an attack on the patria itself.

• Ad Familiares 10.27 §1 a ruined man into possession of an utterly intolerable despotism

  The "ruined man" (perditus homo) is Antony, whom Cicero casts as a desperate would-be tyrant; restoring him to power would mean dominatio (autocratic mastery) over the state.

• Ad Familiares 10.28 §1 this plague is still alive --- because he was drawn aside by you

  Cicero reproaches Trebonius for sparing Antony: by detaining him outside on the Ides, Trebonius kept him clear of the daggers, leaving "leftovers" of the conspiracy for Cicero to clear up in 43.

• Ad Familiares 10.34 §1 facing the Antonii

  "The Antonii" are the two brothers acting together — Marcus Antonius and Lucius Antonius — whose combined forces had entered Lepidus's province of Narbonese Gaul.

• Ad Familiares 11.12 §2 he will have finished the war who crushes Antonius

  A pointed maxim warning that whoever finally destroys Antony will reap the war's whole credit and power. Cicero leaves Decimus to weigh the implication for himself rather than commit it openly to a letter that might be intercepted.

• Ad Familiares 12.2 §1 the gladiator

  A standard term of abuse Cicero hurls at Antony throughout the Philippics, branding him a brawler and cutthroat rather than a statesman.

• Ad Familiares 12.3 §1 Your friend's frenzy

  "Your friend" is sarcasm for Antony, Cassius's bitter enemy; furor (frenzy) is a recurring charge in the Philippics.

• Ad Familiares 12.10 §3 had not Lepidus taken Antonius in --- stripped, unarmed, in flight

  After his defeat at Mutina Antony fled westward over the Alps; Lepidus received him and merged their armies in late May 43 BC, reviving a war Cicero thought already won.

• Ad Familiares 12.22 §1 waging war with a gladiator

  "Gladiator" was a standard term of abuse in Cicero's invective against Antony, casting him as a brutal, low hireling; the war is the political struggle of late 44 BC, fought "words against arms" (Cicero's speeches against Antony's troops).

• Ad Familiares 12.22 §1 our own colleague Antonius

  Antony was Cicero's colleague in the college of augurs (conlega), a priestly tie that sharpens the insult of calling him a gladiator.

• Ad Familiares 16.23 §1 what Antony has done about the law

  Mark Antony's legislative program of 44 BC, much of it pushed through after Caesar's death; Cicero watches it warily from his country retreat.

• Ad Familiares 16.27 §2 that bandit

  Mark Antony, who in late 44 BC was marching on Decimus Brutus in Cisalpine Gaul; Quintus fears he will win the consuls over through shared vices.

• Thirteenth Philippic §2 Can there be peace with the Antonii?

  Mark Antony, consul 44 BC, declared a public enemy by the Senate; "the Antonii" sweeps in his brothers Lucius and Gaius. The whole speech argues that no reconciliation with him is possible.

• Fourth Philippic §1 Antony has not yet been called an enemy by the Senate in word, but in fact he has already been so judged

  Mark Antony, consul of 44 BC, whom Cicero treats as a public enemy though no formal declaration of hostis had yet been passed. The whole speech argues that the Senate's honours to Octavian and the legions amount to such a declaration in substance.

• Fifth Philippic §3 Marcus Antonius

  Mark Antony, consul of 44 BC, now besieging Decimus Brutus in Mutina; the target of all fourteen Philippics. Cicero argues he is already in effect a public enemy and that negotiating with him is madness.

• Fifth Philippic §7 our modest augur

  Antony was a member of the college of augurs; Cicero sarcastically calls him "modest" while accusing him of ignoring the auspices (Jupiter's thunder forbade legislative assemblies).

• Eighth Philippic §27 his judiciary law

  Antony's lex iudiciaria added new panels of jurors, including foreigners and discreditable men (Cydas, Lysiades, Curius). Cicero says the law's survival would let Antony's followers escape conviction.