Searching for “Antonius”

Remember that this which pulls the strings is the thing which is hidden within: this is the power of persuasion, this is life, this, if one may so say, is man. In contemplating thyself never include the vessel which surrounds thee and these instruments which are attached about it. For they are like to an axe, differing only in this, that they grow to the body. For indeed there is no more use in these parts without the cause which moves and checks them, than in the weaver’s shuttle, and the writer’s pen and the driver’s whip.

When, however, the author of the story was sought, none could be found, but it eluded all pursuit from one man to another, and finally disappeared in the limitless throng, as in a yawning sea, and was seen to have no sure source. This rumour, then, quickly melted away in the city; but when Domitian was setting out with an army for the war and was already on the march, messages and letters announcing the victory came to meet him. And the success itself was gained on the day when the rumour of it came to Rome, although the distance between the places was more than twenty thousand furlongs. These facts are known to every one of our time.

Antony took the matter much to heart, drove his wife from his house (she was his cousin, being a daughter of the Caius Antonius who was Cicero’s colleague in the consulship), made common cause with Asinius and Trebellius, and waged war upon Dolabella. For Dolabella had occupied the forum in order to force the passage of his law; so Antony, after the senate had voted that arms must be employed against Dolabella, came up against him, joined battle, slew some of his men, and lost some of his own.

Now, Antony associated himself with Heracles in lineage, and with Dionysus in the mode of life which he adopted, as I have said, and he was called the New Dionysus. The same tempest fell upon the colossal figures of Eumenes and Attalus at Athens, on which the name of Antony had been inscribed, and prostrated them, and them alone out of many. Moreover the admiral’s ship of Cleopatra was called Antonius, and a dire sign was given with regard to it. Some swallows, namely, made their nest under its stern; but other swallows attacked these, drove them out and destroyed their nestlings.

When Caius Antonius drew near Apollonia, he summoned the soldiers who were in the vicinity. These, however, went to Brutus, and Caius perceived also that the people of Apollonia favoured the cause of Brutus. He therefore left the city behind and set out for Buthrotum. To begin with, he lost three cohorts on the march, which were cut to pieces by Brutus; next, when he tried to force the positions near Byllis which his opponents had earlier occupied, and joined battle, he was defeated by Cicero.

Accordingly, when tidings of these events were brought to Macedonia, Brutus felt compelled to write to Hortensius commanding him to kill Caius Antonius, on the plea that he was thus avenging Cicero and Brutus Albinus, one of whom was his friend, and the other his kinsman. For this reason, at a later time, when Antony had captured Hortensius at the battle of Philippi, he slew him on the tomb of his brother.

After his return to Rome he impeached Dolabella for maladministration of his province, and many of the cities of Greece supplied him with testimony. Dolabella, it is true, was acquitted, but Caesar, in return for the zealous efforts of the Greeks in his behalf, served as their advocate when they prosecuted Publius Antonius for corruption before Marcus Lucullus, the praetor of Macedonia.

And he was so effective that Antonius appealed to the tribunes at Rome, alleging that he could not have a fair trial in Greece against Greeks. At Rome, moreover, Caesar won a great and brilliant popularity by his eloquence as an advocate, and much good will from the common people for the friendliness of his manners in intercourse with them, since he was ingratiating beyond his years.

However, Catiline wished to obtain first a strong base of operations, and therefore sued for the consulship; and he had bright hopes that he would share the consulship with Caius Antonius, a man who, of himself, would probably not take the lead either for good or for bad, but would add strength to another who took the lead.

Most of the better class of citizens were aware of this, and therefore put forward Cicero for the consulship, and as the people readily accepted him, Catiline was defeated, and Cicero and Caius Antonius were elected. And yet Cicero was the only one of the candidates who was the son, not of a senator, but of a knight.

Therefore many of the prominent men also were in favour of the law, and foremost among them Antonius the colleague of Cicero, who expected to be one of the ten. It was thought also that he knew about the conspiracy of Catiline and was not averse to it, owing to the magnitude of his debts; and this was what gave most alarm to the nobles. ¶

Catiline, accordingly, left the city at once with three hundred armed followers, assumed the fasces and axes as though he were a magistrate, raised standards, and marched to join Manlius; and since about twenty thousand men altogether had been collected, he marched round to the various cities endeavouring to persuade them to revolt, so that there was now open war, and Antonius was sent off to fight it out.

For it was not his preventing their schemes and punishing the schemers which seemed so wonderful, but his quenching the greatest of all revolutions with the fewest possible evils, without sedition and commotion. For most of those who had flocked to the standard of Catiline, as soon as they learned the fate of Lentulus and Cethegus, deserted him and went away; and Catiline, after a conflict with his remaining forces against Antonius, perished himself and his army with him.

It was decided, therefore, to bring Nymphidius into the camp about midnight and proclaim him emperor. But when it was evening, the leading military tribune, Antonius Honoratus, calling together the soldiers under his command, reviled himself, and reviled them for changing about so often in so short a time, not according to any plan or choice of better things, but because some evil spirit drove them from one treachery to another.

Marcus Antonius also, the orator, found a faithful friend, but it did not save him. For this friend, who was a poor plebeian and had received into his house a leading man of Rome, whom he wished to entertain as well as he could, sent a slave to a neighbouring innkeeper to get some wine. As the slave tasted the wine more carefully than usual and ordered some of better quality, the innkeeper asked him what was the reason that he did not buy the new and ordinary wine as usual, instead of wanting some that was choice and expensive.