Mark Antony

Mark Antony was Caesar's most capable lieutenant and lost the empire to a man half his age. Born around 83 BC into a distinguished but impoverished family — his father was an unsuccessful commander, his stepfather executed in the Catilinarian conspiracy — he spent a dissolute youth in debt before serving as a cavalry commander in Judaea and Egypt. He joined Caesar in Gaul, became his quaestor and then his deputy, and as tribune in 49 BC vetoed the Senate's decree against him, fleeing to Caesar's camp and giving him a pretext for crossing the Rubicon. He commanded the left wing at Pharsalus and governed Italy while Caesar campaigned. He was consul with Caesar in 44 BC and offered him a diadem at the Lupercalia, which Caesar refused publicly. After the murder he obtained the state papers and the will, and his funeral oration turned the crowd against the assassins — the act that made everything afterwards possible. He was outmanoeuvred at Mutina and then formed the triumvirate with Octavian and Lepidus, insisting on Cicero's name in the proscriptions. He and Octavian destroyed Brutus and Cassius at Philippi in 42 BC, where Antony did the fighting. He took the east, met Cleopatra at Tarsus in 41 BC, and married Octavian's sister Octavia in 40 BC as a political settlement. His Parthian campaign in 36 BC lost a third of his army. He returned to Cleopatra, and the Donations of Alexandria in 34 BC gave Octavian the material to present him as a man who had gone native. He lost at Actium in 31 BC and killed himself the following year.

• Lived: 83 BCE – 30 BCE
• Nationality: Roman
• Roles: general, ruler