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Antonia, the Bastard's daughter

by Eugenia Salza Prina Ricotti

The second wife of Anthony was a relative, a cousin who belonged to family of noble origin but of dubious reputation.. Antonia, this was her name, was the daughter of Caius Antonius a man of ill repute who was nicknamed Hybrida, a Greek word which means “Bastard”. This name could also be reported to the dark origins of his birth, but it is more probable that they were related to all his misdeeds and to his practically nonexistent moral.
Mark Anthony was often absent and Antonia, as the daughter of such a father didn’t have strong values and certainly not a spotless sense of honor. It was quite normal that she ended in the arms of Dolabella, Cicero’s small son in law who was such a diminutive young man that once seeing him around armed with a sword Cicero could not refrain from exclaiming “My god! Who has tied my son in law to a sword?.”
The young man supplied his reduced dimension by an excess of amorous activity and it was with enthusiasm that he threw himself in the affair with the attractive Antonia. Maybe if he hadn’t tried , with an incredible impudence, to fix a political accord with Anthony he could even had the possibility to escape the consequence of this act. However Antonia’s husband, interested in the proposal, was considering what to do, when some of his friends who didn’t approve the program decided to put a stop to it informing him what was happening at his back.
Their plan was an immediate success. Anthony, who had never abstained to corrupt other men wives, when he saw that some one was trying to give him tit for tat, went mad and during the Senate’s session furiously attacked Dolabella, giving a vast diffusion to a kind of things that had been better discussed in private. Certainly it was not something to make public in such a place and moreover not by yelling at the top of one’s voice. After this violent scene the accord through Anthony and Dolabella sank to the bottom. Antonia was immediately repudiated and Cicero, wounded by the fact that Anthony had accused of adultery his precious son of law, avenged himself expatiating upon it in his Philippics. In addition, to better cover Anthony with shame he depicted the Bastard as a poor blameless old man broken by the shame that his son in law had piled over his white head.
In this attack Cicero sustained that Anthony had repudiated the “innocent” Antonia only because he wanted to marry Fulvia, the gorgeous mother of Clodia. Fulvia - the first Roman woman to have her portrait on the coins, also if in these she had only personified the victory of the Antonian party in Orient – had probably a bad temper, but was an interesting and fascinating woman and overall she was very rich, At this time she already was Mark Anthony mistress, but she was not the only one: Her lover was still keeping his relation with Cytheris, the mime, and probably if Antonia and Dolabella scandal had not burst out, he would have kept the three women together and would not have divorced. But once that he was free, pressed not only by Fulvia who wanted to regularise her position but also by Caesar who wanted to put a brake to his dissolute life, Anthony didn’t have any choice and he married his hard headed mistress.


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