Roman soldier, consul, Julius Caesar's protégé, lover of Cleopatra, and one of the most important figures during the last days of Rome as a Republic.
Son of a not-so-successful admiral, Marc Anthony lost his father when he was very young. He was brought up by his step-father who was, when Antony was twenty, strangled to death for political reasons.
Antony made a successful career for himself as a cavalry commander. His gift was spotted by Julius Caesar, whose staff, and champion, he soon became. He returned to Rome with Julius Caesar during the Civil Wars, and was given command of the left wing of Caesar's forces at the Battle of Phasalus, where Pompey was defeated. In 44 BC he was made co-consul with Caesar. His career path was threatened by Caesar's murder in March the same year. Those murderers made the mistake of not taking him out as well. Marc Antony seized the opportunity, turned on the murders making them state enemies instead of the liberators they thought of themselves. In the ensuring civil war, Antony found his own ambitions threatened by Octavian who had been named heir in Caesar's will.
When Caesar's murderers had finally been vanquished, Antony entered into a power-sharing pact, known as the Second Triumvirate, with Octavian and Lepidus, in which Antony was given control of the eastern, and richest, part of the Roman Empire. There he met, and succumbed to, Cleopatra. The pact soon broke up, first with the ousting of Lepidus, and the fight came down to Octavian and Antony.
The relationship between the two men was worstened by Antony's divorce from his wife Octavia (Octavian's sister) in 33 BC. Octavian recognized the importance of gaining the support of the Roman people, which he swayed by publishing (quite illegally) Antony's will and suggesting that Antony was pushing the Empire in favour of Egypt. The climax of their power struggle came in 31 BC when the two sides met in battle at Atium, off the west coast of Greece. For reasons that still remain a mystery, Cleopatra's forces chose suddenly to leave the scene. Antony followed, leaving his forces behind to face Octavian. As Octavian neared Alexandria for the coup de grâce, Antony and Cleopatra decided to take their own lives, opening the way for Octavian to become the sole ruler of Rome, the end of Rome as a Republic and the beginning of Empire.
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