Imaginary interview with Mark Antony
by Charactorium · Mark Antony (82 av. J.-C. — 29 av. J.-C.) · Military · 6 min read
It is in the royal palace of Alexandria, by the sea, that Queen Cleopatra meets Mark Antony at the end of the year 35 BCE, shortly after the return from the disastrous campaign against the Parthians. The evening light glides over the golden cups of a banquet barely finished; in the distance, the musicians of the society of the Inimitables can still be heard. They have known each other since Tarsus, four years of alliance and intimacy intertwined, and the queen, tonight, comes not as a sovereign but as a woman who wants to understand the man hidden behind the triumvir. She questions him, he answers — and that is all.
—Antony, before I knew you, you were just a cavalryman for Caesar in Gaul. What did that old master teach you that you still carry within you?
You touch on the beginning of everything, my queen. I was barely twenty-five when Caesar took me onto his staff, in 54 BCE, and made me his legate. He didn't just teach me to charge at the head of the cavalry — that, I knew by instinct. He taught me to feed my men before myself, to sleep under the same tent as them, to know every centurion by name. A general who eats the legionary's bread is followed to the death; the one who hides behind his cuirass is abandoned at the first setback. Caesar made me what I am: a soldier that soldiers recognize. The rest — the imperium, the purple cloak — is merely the uniform of that trade.
A general who eats the legionary's bread is followed to the death.
—They say you turned Rome upside down in a few words, on the Ides of March. You who speak so well, what did you really do before that people, that day?
That day, Cleopatra, Rome trembled between two hands. Caesar's murderers thought they had killed a tyrant; the people did not yet know whether to weep or rejoice. At the Forum, on March 15, 44 BCE, I had his will read — he bequeathed his gardens to the people — then I took his toga and held it high, pierced, stiff with dried blood. I didn't need to shout that it was a crime: the toga shouted it for me. In an instant, pity turned to anger, and Brutus, Cassius, all those noble daggers had to flee the city. A well-delivered speech is worth a legion.
I didn't need to shout that it was a crime: the toga shouted it for me.
—When you formed the Triumvirate with Octavian and Lepidus, the proscription lists cost thousands their lives. Do you regret it, my friend?
You ask the question I do not ask myself at night, and you are wrong to think I sleep badly. Yes, in 43 BCE, we drew up the lists — Octavian, Lepidus, and I — and yes, men lost their heads, Cicero first, he whose tongue had so insulted me in his Philippics. But understand me: whoever holds imperium without striking gets struck. Caesar wanted to forgive his enemies; his enemies assassinated him. I did not repeat that mistake. It was not gratuitous cruelty; it was the price of power shared among three. The Republic was already dying; we only chose who would survive its fall.
Whoever holds imperium without striking gets struck.
—Do you remember Tarsus, in 41, when I came to you on my ship with purple sails? Tell me frankly what you thought when you saw me.
How could I forget it? I had summoned you as one summons a vassal who owes accounts — and you received me. That ship with gilded oars, those perfumes spread on the waters of the Cydnus, that music: you did not come to justify yourself, you came to reign. I thought I was inviting a queen to dinner; the next day, she was inviting me, and I understood I was no longer in control. Since then, we founded our Inimitables, that society of pleasures that Rome so reproaches me for. They call me philhellene, softened, lost to the West. Let them say it. At Tarsus, I met a sovereign, not a conquest — and that, my detractors will never forgive.
I thought I was inviting a queen to dinner; the next day, she was inviting me.
—Our enemies whisper that I have bewitched you, that you are nothing more than a Roman lost in Eastern luxury. What do you say to that?
I say that austere Romans have never understood that a man can love wine, feasts, and a queen without ceasing to be a soldier. Yes, I love our evenings in Alexandria, the golden cups, the fish from the Nile, the wines of Greece and Italy. Yes, they say I have come drunk to the Senate — Cicero made a big deal of it. But whoever thinks me softened forgets that these same hands conquered at Philippi and held the East for ten years. Octavian, for his part, drinks only water and calculates in the shadows; he will turn my joy of living into an accusation. You alone know that the man who laughs loudly at the banquet is the same one who rises before dawn to inspect his legions.
They never understood that a man can love a queen without ceasing to be a soldier.
—Last year, in Alexandria, you proclaimed Caesarion king of kings and gave lands to our children. Do you realize what Octavian will make of that?
I realize it better than you think, and I did it with open eyes. In 34 BCE, during those Donations, I recognized Caesarion as the legitimate son of Caesar — which makes Octavian, a mere adopted son, a usurper of the name. I gave our children kingdoms because the East is governed by kings, not by praetors from Rome. Octavian will cry treason, say I sold Roman lands to a foreign woman. Let him cry. But between us: this act is also a challenge I throw at him. One of us will rule the Roman world, not both. I chose to strike first, by ceremony rather than by the sword.
Between Octavian and me, one will rule the Roman world — not both.
—When I watch you put on your cuirass and your purple cloak, I see the general. But what truly makes a leader that men follow?
It is not the bronze, my queen, even if the lorica molded to the chest impresses at the parade. Nor is it the scarlet paludamentum, that cloak worn only by the one who holds imperium. All that are signs — useful, because the soldier needs to recognize his commander from afar in the dust. But what makes men follow a man to their deaths is that he shares the danger. At Philippi, I did not command from the rear: I was in the fray, gladius in hand. A general is judged in the moment when everything wavers. It is there, and nowhere else, that loyalty is won — loyalty that no pay can buy.
What makes men follow a man to their deaths is that he shares the danger.
—You return from the Parthians with a marked face. That campaign was to avenge Carrhae — what happened out there, tell me true?
I owe you the truth, you who financed so many of my ships. In 36 BCE, I set out to avenge Carrhae, that disgrace of 53 where the Parthians took our eagles. I had the best legions in the world, and at first I won. Then everything conspired against me: the immense distances, the betrayal of the king of Armenia, the loss of my siege train, the winter that killed my men by the thousands on the roads. I brought back a decimated army, not by the enemy in battle, but by hunger and cold. Octavian, meanwhile, paraded in Rome as an easy victor. A setback does not make a coward — but it gives weapons to those who wait for me around the corner.
A setback does not make a coward, but it gives weapons to those who wait.
—When you married Octavia, Octavian's sister, at the Treaty of Brundisium, did you truly believe that peace could last between you two?
No. I hoped for a time, but never fully believed. In 40 BCE, at Brundisium, the Roman world was bleeding from a new civil war, and we preferred division: the East for me, the West for Octavian, Africa for Lepidus. Octavia, given to me as a wife, was the seal of that agreement — a worthy and noble woman, I will not deny it. But a treaty sealed by marriage holds only as long as both men find it advantageous. Octavian is patient as stone; I am made of fire. Two ambitions of that size do not fit in the same empire. Brundisium did not make peace: it merely chose the date of the next war.
Brundisium did not make peace: it merely chose the date of the next war.
—Antony, let us talk about the future I dread. If one day, at sea, you saw me flee the battle, what would you do? Would you stay?
You ask a question that chills me more than any battle. I am a man of the land, Cleopatra — I know what a cavalry charge is worth, less what a trireme is worth against the cunning of an Agrippa. If I saw you leave, my heart would leave before my reason, I will not lie to you. And yet a general must never abandon his men in the midst of battle: they would see it as betrayal, and they would be right. That is my torment: I carry within me the soldier that Caesar forged and the man you conquered, and I do not know which would prevail at the hour of steel. Let us pray to the gods that that hour never comes to confront you and me with such a choice.
I carry within me the soldier that Caesar forged and the man you conquered.
This imaginary interview was generated by artificial intelligence from sources documented in Mark Antony's profile. It dramatises what the figure might have said based on what we know about them, but does not constitute attested historical testimony. For primary sources and factual documentation, refer to the full profile.