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Eleanor Goltz Huzar "Mark Antony: A Biography"

Summary: Definitive Biography On Mark Antony

Rating: 5

I read this book for a graduate course in Roman history.

Eleanor Goltz Huzar's very insightful biography of Mark Antony described him as a great general who was also chivalrous but politically outwitted and trapped. Within hours of Caesar's murder, Mark Antony moved to grasp the reins of power. However, Mark Antony was politically caught off guard by Caesar's will. The will named Caesar's grandnephew Octavian his heir apparent. Mark Antony, who was twenty years Octavians' senior, decided that this eighteen-year-old boy would be a minor nuisance and would not pose much of a threat to the leadership of the Caesarean party. Mark Antony, who learned well from Caesar, realized that if he wanted to keep political control in Rome he needed the support of the army. Mark Antony moved quickly to buy 6,000 veterans as a bodyguard and a nucleus to build an army. In the meantime, Octavian was shrewdly making political moves of his own.

Huzar viewed Octavian as a young revolutionary full of ambition. Octavian courted leaders of the Caesarian party as well as the rich supporters of Caesar. Octavian also made good on Caesar's promise in his will to give every citizen a payment of 300 sesterces. Octavian did this by hocking all his processions since Mark Antony had kept Caesar's monetary inheritance from him. Within three months, Octavian effectively raised a bodyguard of his own from Caesar's veterans and brokered a compromise with the Senate to gain their support as well. Octavian also learned well from his education and from Caesar how to gain and maintain power. Thus, Mark Antony, like Pompey, severely underestimated his rival.

Octavian made the first overture to Mark Antony and Lepidus and offered to share power. The three men agreed, and in 42 BCE they formed Rome's Second Triumvirate. With their proscription on their political enemies of between 100 to 300 senators and possibly thousands of knights, the Triumvirate not only began a political revolution but a social revolution in Rome as well. This Triumvirate was to last for five years. They divided control of the Empire as well as sixty legions among themselves, with all three men possessing a portion of Italy. The triumvirs defeated the last vestiges of the Roman Republic in the battle of Phillipi.

With no common enemy, the triumvirs would start to turn on themselves. Mark Antony had just started his amorous affair with Cleopatra, the Queen of Egypt. She supported Mark Antony's ambitions to rule Rome, which would solidify her political ambitions for Egypt as well. Huzar called Mark Antony's marriage to Cleopatra a mere "ritual marriage" even though she gave birth to his twin children. Huzar claimed that, "there is no sign of infatuation here," and that their marriage "left no political consequences" and that "Mark Antony was compelled to stand by Cleopatra to the end by honour and by principle as well as by the necessities of war." When one considers Mark Antony's many years spent in Cleopatra's court, his actions in Egypt which led up to his defeat at the battle of Actium in 31 BCE, and his ultimate suicide, he was either in love with Cleopatra or she truly was a "siren" as Roman propaganda described her. In either case, it meant that she duped Mark Antony. Regardless, the Roman Empire could not suffer by having one of its leaders under the spell of a foreign queen. Mark Antony's defeat and suicide meant Octavian would become Augustus and become Rome's first Emperor.

Recommended reading for those interested in Roman history, military history.

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Rating:
2.5 out of 5 by Book123