Many of his actions were due to a kind of youthful impulsiveness. He gave his cook a fine house in Magnesia—the property, by the way, of somebody else—in reward for a single successful supper. This impetuosity was manifest in other ways, for, by its nature, which allowed of no delay in putting into action the thought dominant in his mind, it must be defined as a kind of impatience. As a young man desiring rapid fame, he had suddenly thrown in his lot with Clodius, “the most insolent and outrageous demagogue of the time,” leading with him a life of violence and disorder; and as suddenly he had severed that partnership, going to Greece to study with enthusiasm the polite arts. In later years his sudden invasion of Media, with such haste that he was obliged to leave behind him all his engines of war, is the most notable example of this impatience. The battle of Actium, which ended his career, was lost by a sudden impulse on his part; and, at the last, the taking of his own life was to some extent the impatient anticipation of the processes of nature.
This trait in his character, combined with an inherent bravery, caused him to cut a very dashing figure in warfare, and when fortune was with him, made of him a brilliant general. He stood in fear of nothing, and dangers seem to have presented themselves to him as pleasant relaxations of the humdrum of life. In the battle which opened the war against Aristobulus he was the first man to scale the enemy’s works; and in a pitched battle he routed a force far larger than his own, took Aristobulus and his son prisoners, and, like an avenging deity, slaughtered almost the entire hostile army. At another time his dash across the desert to Pelusium, and his brilliant capture of that fortress, brought him considerable fame. Again, in the war against Pompey, “there was not one of the many battles,” says Plutarch, “in which he did not signalise himself: twice he stopped the army in its full flight, led them back to a charge, and gained the victory, so that ... his reputation, next to Cæsar’s, was the greatest in the army.” In the disastrous retreat from Media he showed the greatest bravery; and it was no common courage that allowed him, after the horrors of the march back to Armenia, to prepare for a second campaign.
His generalship was not extraordinarily skilful, though it is true that at Pharsalia Cæsar placed him in command of the left wing of the army, himself taking the right; but his great courage, and the confidence and devotion which he inspired in his men, served to make him a trustworthy commander. His popularity amongst his soldiers, as has been said, was unbounded. His magnificent, manly appearance appealed to that sense of the dramatic in which a soldier, by military display, is very properly trained. His familiarity with his men, moreover, introduced a very personal note into their devotion, and each soldier felt that his general’s eye was upon him. He would sometimes go amongst them at the common mess, sit down with them at their tables, and eat or drink with them. He joined with them in their exercises, and seems to have been able to run, wrestle, or box with the best. He jested with high and low, and liked them to answer him back. “His raillery,” says Plutarch, “was sharp and insulting, but the edge of it was taken off by his readiness to submit to any kind of repartee; for he was as well contented to be rallied as he was pleased to rally others.” In a word, he was “the delight and pleasure of the army.”
His eloquence was very marked, a faculty which he seems to have inherited from his grandfather, who was a famous pleader and advocate. As a young man he studied the art at Athens, and took to a style known as the Asiatic, which was somewhat flowery and ostentatious. When Pompey’s power at Rome was at its height, and Cæsar was in eclipse, Antony read his chief’s letters in the Senate with such effect that he obtained many adherents to their cause. His public speech at the funeral of Cæsar led to the downfall of the assassins. When he himself was driven out of Rome he made such an impression by his words upon the army of Lepidus, to which he had fled, that an order was given to sound the trumpets in order to drown his appealing voice. “There was no man of his time like him for addressing a multitude,” says Plutarch, “or for carrying soldiers with him by the force of words.” It was in eloquence, perhaps, that he made his nearest approach to a diversion from the ordinary; though even in this it is possible to find no more than an exalted mediocrity. A fine presence, a frank utterance, and a vigorous delivery make a great impression upon a crowd; and common sincerity is the most electrifying agent in man’s employment.
Yet another of the causes of his popularity both amongst his troops and with his friends was the sympathy which he always showed with the intrigues and troubles of lovers. “In love affairs,” says Plutarch, “he was very agreeable; he gained friends by the assistance he gave them in theirs, and took other people’s raillery upon his own with good-humour.” He used to lose his heart to women with the utmost ease and the greatest frequency; and they, by reason of his splendid physique and noble bearing, not infrequently followed suit. Amongst serious-minded people he had an ill name for familiarity with other men’s wives; but the domestic habits of the age were very irregular, and his own wife Antonia had carried on an intrigue with his friend Dolabella for which Antony had divorced her, thereafter marrying the strong-minded Fulvia. Antony was a full-blooded, virile man, unrestrained by any strong principles of morality and possessed of no standard of domestic constancy either by education or by inclination. He was not ashamed of the consequences of his promiscuous amours, but allowed nature to have her will with him. Like his ancestor Hercules, he was so proud of his stock that he wished it multiplied in many lands, and he never confined his hopes of progeny to any one woman.
There was a certain brutality in his nature, and of this the particular instance is the murder of Cicero. The orator had incurred his bitter hostility in the first place by putting to death, and perhaps denying burial to Antony’s stepfather, Cornelius Lentulus. Later he was the cause of Antony’s ejection from Rome and of his privations while making the passage of the Alps. The traitorous Dolabella was Cicero’s son-in-law, which must have added something to the family feud. Moreover, Cicero’s orations and writings against Antony were continuous and full of invective. It is perhaps not to be wondered at, therefore, that when Octavian, Antony, and Lepidus decided to rid the State of certain undesirable persons, as we have already seen, Cicero was proscribed and put to death. Plutarch tells us that his head and right hand were hung up above the speaker’s place in the Forum, and that Antony laughed when he saw them, perhaps because, in his simple way, he did not know what else to do to carry off a situation of which he was somewhat ashamed.
As a rule, however, Antony was kind-hearted and humane, and, as has already been shown, was seldom severe or cruel to his enemies. To many people he embodied and personified good-nature, jollity, and strength: he seemed to them to be a blending of Bacchus with Hercules; and if his morals were not of a lofty character, it may be said in his defence that they were consistent with the part for which nature had cast him.
Little is known as to his attitude towards religion, and one cannot tell whether he entertained any of the atheistic doctrines which were then so widely preached, nor does the fact that he allowed himself to be worshipped as Bacchus help us to form an opinion in this regard. It is probable, however, that his faith was of a simple kind in conformity with his character; and it is known that he was superstitious and aware of the presence of the supernatural. A certain Egyptian diviner made a profound impression upon him by foreshadowing the future events of his life and warning him against the power of Octavian. And again, when he set out upon his Parthian campaign, he carried with him a vessel containing the water of the Clepsydra, an oracle having urged him to do so, while, at the same time, he took with him a wreath made of the leaves of the sacred olive-tree. He believed implicitly in the divine nature of dreams, and we are told of one occasion upon which he dreamed that his right hand was thunderstruck, and thereupon discovered a plot against his life. Such superstitions, however, were very general, even amongst educated people; and Antony’s belief in omens has only to be noted here because it played some part in his career. Until the last year of his life he was attended with good luck, and a friendly fortune helped him out of many difficult situations into which his impetuosity had led him. It seemed to many that Bacchus had really identified himself with Antony, bringing to his aid the powers of his godhead; and when at the end his downfall was complete, several persons declared that they actually heard the clatter and the processional music which marked the departure of the deity from the destinies of the fallen giant. The historian cannot but find extenuating circumstances in the majority of the culpable acts of the “colossal child”; and amongst these excuses there is none so urgent as this continuous presence of a smiling fortune. “Antony in misfortune,” says Plutarch, “was most nearly a virtuous man”; and if we wish to form a true estimate of his character we must give prominence to his hardy and noble attitude in the days of his flight from Rome or of his retreat from Media. It was then that he had done with his boyish inconsequence and played the man. At all other times he was the spoilt child of fortune, rollicking on his triumphant way; jesting, drinking, loving, and fighting; careless of public opinion; and, like a god, sporting at will with the ball of the world.
When Dellius came to bring Cleopatra to him he was at the height of his power. Absolute master of the East, he was courted by kings and princes, who saw in him the future ruler of the entire Roman Empire. Cæsar must have often told the Queen of his faults and abilities, and she herself must have noticed the frank simplicity of his character. She set out, therefore, prepared to meet not with a complex genius, but with an ordinary man, representative, in a monstrous manner, of the victories and the blunders of common human nature, and, incidentally, a man somewhat plagued by an emancipated wife.