The contrast of Antony’s career.
The Parthians.
These successes in the Western provinces, combined with such costly improvements in the city, impressed (as it was intended that they should) the minds of the people in Rome with the feeling that Cæsar’s name was the best guarantee for the era of peace and prosperity which seemed at last to be succeeding the ruin and horror of civil war. In strong contrast—carefully emphasized by Cæsar and his friends—were the military expeditions in the East, and the extravagance of Antony’s infatuation for Cleopatra in Egypt. In B.C. 40 he had been roused from the intoxication of love and revelry in Alexandria to find Syria in the hands of the Parthian Pacorus, son of Orodes, and of Labienus, son of the old legate of Iulius, who had joined the enemy after the battle of Philippi. They had defeated and killed his legate, Decidius Saxa, and taken possession of the province. It is true that next year, B.C. 39, P. Ventidius drove away Labienus, and in B.C. 38 defeated the Parthians and killed Pacorus. But Antony was jealous of Ventidius, deposed him from his command, and went in person to besiege the remains of the Parthian army in Samosata, where they had been received by Antiochus, king of Commagene. He failed to take the town, and though in his despatch he took all the credit of previous successes, the truth was well known in Rome. After his failure at Samosata he made somewhat inglorious terms with Antiochus, and going off to meet Cæsar at Tarentum left C. Sosius in charge of Syria. Sosius put down an insurrection in Judæa and established Herod as king (B.C. 38-7). But in B.C. 36 Antony suffered severe reverses in an expedition against Phraates, who had just succeeded his father Orodes as king of Parthia. One success, however, in the course of an inglorious campaign enabled him to send home laurelled despatches, the real value of which Cæsar and his friends took care should be known. In B.C. 35 he began carving out a kingdom for his elder son by Cleopatra, and making preparations for an expedition against the king of Armenia, whom he accused of failing in his duty of supporting him in the previous year. Having first made a treaty of friendship with the king of Media, in B.C. 34 he invaded Armenia, and getting possession of the person of the king by an act of treachery which shocked Roman sentiment—not very scrupulous in such matters—he brought him in silver chains to Alexandria.
Cleopatra.
Thus Antony’s career as an administrator and defender of the Empire was rightly or wrongly looked upon as comparing unfavourably with that of Cæsar. But still more shocking to Roman feeling was his position in Cleopatra’s court. Though the moral standard at Rome was far from high, it was rigid in regard to certain details. Just as a valid marriage could only be contracted with a woman who was a civis, so for a man in high position to live openly with a foreign mistress, however high her rank, was peculiarly scandalous. The beloved Emperor Titus, a hundred years later, had to give way to this sentiment and dismiss his Idumæan mistress. But that a Roman imperator should not only have such a connection with a “barbarous” queen, but should act as her officer and courtier; that she should have a bodyguard of Roman soldiers; should give the watchword to them as their sovereign; and should even employ them to deal with what in one sense or another was Roman territory—this seemed an outrage of the worst kind. In a poem written it seems while the campaign at Actium was still undecided, but when rumours of Antony’s defeat were reaching Rome, Horace well expresses the disgust with which the position conceded to Cleopatra by Antony’s fondness was regarded:
False, false the tale our grandsons will declare—
That Romans to a woman fealty sware;
Shouldered their pikes; presented arms; and did
Whate’er her wrinkled eunuchs deigned to bid:
Or that among our Roman flags were seen