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Mark Anthony- the third man

by Eugenia Salza Prina RicottiI

Mark Anthony parents were Julia, a woman of the Julian family, and Anthony nicknamed the Creticus, and not because at Crethe he had distinguished himself by some heroic act but only because, coming back to Italy, he had been taken ill. The Creticus was a nice man always moved by other people’ s misfortunes and always trying to help them as best as he could.. He was a spendthrift and, notwithstanding the fact that they were not rich, he often lent money to anyone who needed it. That fact was so well known that his wife took care that he never had a single cent in his pocket. Of course not even this succeeded in stopping him, and, once that a friend, who was in a fix, came for a call, he found a way to pass round the obstacle. He called a slave and ordered him to bring him a silver basin full of water. Having it, he washed his cheeks just as if he wanted to shave, then, having sent the servant away, he emptied the basin and gave it to his friend so that selling it he could get some money. However the Creticus had not brought his wife in account, and as Julia controlling all the things in the house discovered that the silver basin had disappeared all hell broke loose. The good woman sent everybody to search for it. Of course the basin was not found. Then she began to inquire very closely what the slaves knew about it. At the end she was just to the point to inflict them very hard punishment, when her desperate husband came forward and told his story. The slaves were left in peace, but I don’t believe that afterward, the Creticus had a single moment of tranquillity.
Mark Anthony was their son. He probably was born around the 82 B.C. From his mother he took the impetuosity and the dash, from his father the custom to spend money like water; a mix that resulted very dangerous for him. . For what we know he grew up as an extremely handsome boy, unluckily he was also very fond of all the kind of expensive worldly goods, and it was always ready to do anything posible toget them. And anything he made. He persuaded all the people he frequented to pay for his costly whims and then he was liable to be at their order for whatever they wanted him to do. To sum it up he prostituted himself. Among his lovers there was one of his friends Curio, who pushed him to the most mad expenses until when Anthony didn’t found himself on his beam ends. At this moment Curio came out and, as his father was very rich, he offered Anthony to keep him in the extravagance to which by now he was accustomed. The young man accepted it right away and obviously from this moment he was obliged to agree with anything Curio wanted.
The story went on until the debt did not became colossal and the creditors began to ask their money back. Then Curio had to go to his father and ask him pay the six millions of sesterces hat he had piled up. When the poor man, who did not suspect anything, was informed of the situation, he had a stroke, fainted and had to be taken to bed. At this moment he got the worst idea he could have had in his life and called the most dedicated gossip of ancient Rome, his friend Cicero who, when later on he attacked Mark Anthony with his Philippics, widely spread all the facts of this story.
“In a first moment “ wrote Cicero as speaking to Anthony in his Philippic” you were only a vulgar prostitute with a fixed price and even a very high one. But very soon young Curio came to save you from prostitution and, as if he had given you a stole (the symbol of a married woman), settled you in a long and stable marriage. Not one of the boys bought with lecherous intents was at his master mercy as you were to Curio......................................................................................................
Do you remember the time when the father of your friend laid desperate in his bed while his son thrown to my feet entrusted you to me? Do you remember when, wanting to ask him the six million of sesterces that he needed to cover the guarantee offered vouching for you,. Curio implored me to protect him from his father ‘s anger......................................................................................”
Then the orator went on telling how he succeeded in persuading Curio’s father to pay his son debts but to keep him away from Anthony, an evil creature who, according to the orator, had been guilty of all the misdeeds.
After this Anthony who had been chased by his father’s house, didn’t know what to do with himself and being obliged to find other living means, associated himself to Clodius’s gang, a bunch of holigans who made every kind of crime, as beating to death their patron’s enemies or carrying out risky missions for their masters, Ceasar and Crassus, (the latter one furnishing the money to pay the gang). However, pretty soon Anthony, who wanted to develop a better livelihood decided to leave Clodius. Really people said that it had been Clodius the one who decided that Anthony must disappear because he had noticed that his enterprising friend was flirting with Fulvia, his beautiful wife. Now, Clodius who was well known for the dea Bona scandal involving Caesar’s wife, was an authority on adulteries and he didn’t like to see Anthony around his house. Thus he didn’t lose any time to send him away. As afterward Fulvia, when Clodius got killed and also Curio whom she married just after having been widowed, died, married again and this time became Anthony’s wife tender looks between them must have existed.
At first the twenty four years old Anthony went to Greece where he began his military career and there he met the proconsul of Syria, Gabinius, who was just starting a military campaign and as he proposed to the young man to came with them Anthony accepted and also received the charge of “Praefectus equium”, He valiantly fought and defeated Aristobolus, then he bravely took part to the Egypt campaign and from there he went to Gallia where he went on in distinguishing himself and in 52 B:C: he obtained the charge of Questor all this contributed to pass the sponge over all his stormy lapses.
Then he came back to Rome and at this moment he became heavily involved in the politic fights. At this moment Rome was divided among Pompeians, to which part all the upper roman class took side, and Caesarian and here Anthony found again his old friend Curio who, being very tied to Cicero had been at Pompey side, but lately had found ten millions of good reason to became an ardent Caesarian, just the ten millions of sesterces that Caesar had given him to pay his debts. Curio was not the kind of person to take offence or get shocked if someone offered him money to change sides, and from this moment on he was all for Caesar. He persuaded Anthony to support the grat general and Anthony did well to do so as from Caesar he obtained the title of Tribune of the Plebs that gave to him the power to veto any Senate’s resolution.
At this moment of the fight the Senate. who was all for Pompey, was on the verge to take away from Caesar his legions while Pompey would have kept his ones. The fight became even harder and the only things that barred. the Senate’s will were Anthony’s and Longinus’s vetoes. Therefore Cato the Uticenses, Caesar’s worst enemy, proposed that both Anthony and Longinus should be expelled from the Senate. It was then that an Anthony’s friend, Lentulus, counseled the Tribunes to flee before the vote because for them things could take a bad turn. Anthony didn’t wait to be told twice and disguised himself as a slave, and with Longinus, Curio and Caelius he boarded an old hackney cab and started to reach Caesar camp in the cisalpine Gallia. Here he told the general what was happening.
It is a sure thing that the arrival of the Tribunes of the Plebs in rags and forced to flee despite the fact that they had a right of immunity gave everyone a shock. The news were speedily circulated and everybody got sure that now anarchy reigned at Rome and that it was necessary to do something about it. Caesar did not wait for anything else. How rightly Plutarch observed that Caesar, with his not easily influenced personality, must have already decided to cross the Rubicon and it could not be the view of Anthony and his colleague in rags and on a hackney cab that could push him to take such a resolve, but Caesar knew very well that if he had come back to Rome as a simple private citizen he would have been processed and condemned by a tribunal that, circled by Pompey troups, would have been forced to obey their orders. Then it was with joy that he accepted the pretext that Anthony offered him.
Cicero, for whom all the faults were ascribed to Anthony, added, to the other accuses thrown at him, that he had pushed Caesar against the Republic. He was really happy to write that if Helen had caused the war of Troy, Anthony was responsible for the civil war.
The war came and was very violent and bloody, but at the end it was Caesar who won and from this moment onward Anthony, that had followed Caesar from the start and that with him had crossed the Rubicon, stood always by him and became his right arm.


BIBLIOGRAPHY
Scientific divulgation
E. SALZA PRINA RICOTTI, Dossier L'amore a Roma in Archeo, VII, 10 (92) October 1992, pp. 54-99

Book
E. SALZA PRINA RICOTTI - Amori ed amanti tra la repubblica ed il principato, Casa editrice. L’Erma di Bretschneider, Rome, 1992