A Noble Ruin is a towering endeavour: more than “simply” a biography of Mark Antony, Tatum offers a sweeping tour de force study of the politics and particulars of the late Roman Republic, all with Antony as the central character. Fascination with Antony rarely truly wanes: how could it with an association with such formidable figures as Caesar, Cleopatra, and Octavian and such pivotal historical events such as the Ides of March, Philippi, and Actium? Antony is never far gone from popular culture and the general cultural imagination. One only needs to think of the recent scholarly output on Antony and Cleopatra[1] or the eponymous National Theatre performance with a dazzling Ralph Fiennes to get a picture of the persistent presence of the “Noble Antony” (Julius Caesar III.2.1605).[2] Antony, then, is not difficult to find. What is more complex to paint or even to grasp is an accurate portrait of what may have been the “real” Mark Antony, as unblemished and un-opaque as the source tradition allows, especially with a damnatio memoriae as acerbic as Antony’s (he alone posthumously received a dies vitiosus in the Roman calendar for his birth date).
The aim of complete, unadulterated reconstruction would have been unattainable, but Tatum manages to achieve the next best thing. And so, in his preface, Tatum soberly observes, “in trying to make sense of his career, we can certainly get glimpses of the person who played the part” (xii). In this aim, Tatum excels. He accomplishes this feat over the course of a preface and fourteen chapters ranging from “Beginning” to “Dissolution” and finally “Ending,” the first major scholarly biography on Mark Antony since Eleanor Huzar’s in 1978.[3] The book comes equipped with a number of maps and a family tree starting with M. Antonius (cos. 99) up to Nero—no unnecessary luxury for an era often viewed as a carousel of political marriages and alliances. The catalogue of Antony’s four wives (if we choose to count Cleopatra amongst Antonia, Fulvia, and Octavia) and resulting offspring of Herculean proportions (Plut. Ant. 36.4) shows this complexity. The index is written as a helpful tool; opting for endnotes was a judicious choice to bolster the flow of writing and the reading experience. The latter, too, Tatum achieves with his crisp, elegant prose, excellently edited with but one minor typo (“Parrthians,” 268).
Because of the ambitious aims of the work—to reach a variety of audiences by means of digressions and other excursions—, the beginning of the book may strike some as a little slow. The contextualization of fundamentals of Republican Roman society aimed at non-classicists is extensive. Tatum sets up the moral landscape and Roman ideology by discussing ideals ranging from nobilitas (one of the main focuses of Tatum’s Antony) to dignitas, the plight of the novus homo, and the cursus honorum. After this prelude, we eagerly await Antony’s arrival, though the early Antonians and the more immediate ancestors of Mark Antony (albeit understandably) receive precedence. The sub-chapter “Making Sense of Our Sources: Bias, Misinformation, Disinformation” is crucial for the work: Tatum magisterially demonstrates the impact of Cicero’s invective in his Philippics and Antony’s three major historiographers (Plutarch, Appian, and Dio) with their different agendas and literary flavours. As for his own Life of Antony, Tatum often adopts Plutarchan elements such as “education” and “boyhood” (often most notably in relation to Julia and Curio). While, as we know, Antony was not central to, say, the Catilinarian Conspiracy or the First Triumvirate, Tatum provides overviews of the situations at hand and their impact on Antony’s life and politics. The digression on the Roman military of Chapter 1 fittingly ends with Aulus Gabinius’ invitation to Antony to serve as cavalry prefect in Syria.
This promotion then invites the reader to carry on to Chapter 2 (“Fighting for empire”), starting with Aulus Gabinius (and continuing with Antony’s role in Syria and Judea) but also featuring digressions on Roman Provincial Administration. We learn more about the importance of Antony’s relationship with Antipater and Herod—“pertinent to any attempt at recovering the reality of his exploits in Syria,” resulting in Antony’s representation as a “superlative Roman warrior, a natural predator, which Tatum calls “exciting stuff,” while also cautioning that a “brand of unqualified, indeed hyperbolic, celebration of any man’s exploits must incite scepticism at least equal to the suspicions aroused by accounts animated by invective and vitriol” (43). Tatum delicately engages with the latter, carefully building up to the moment that many a reader may eagerly await: Antony’s exploits in Egypt under Gabinius. Here, Appian claims (though Plutarch does not mention it) that Antony fell in love with Cleopatra when she was just fourteen. While Tatum acknowledges the unease evoked by the situation by contextualising it (“just flirting with the lower limits of the Roman notions of nubility, so this story, by ancient standards, is not quite so creepy as it appears when translated into modern terms,” 52), this claim may still raise an eyebrow.
Chapter 3 (“Quaestor, tribune, and guardian of Italy”) investigates Antony’s rise to power further, including his first marriage to Antonia and his preliminary service with Caesar in Gaul. Tatum provides a helpful overview of the chaotic years 53-52 with Cicero, Milo, Clodius, and Pompey’s gains in prominence, without losing sight of Antony, who keeps climbing the senatorial ladder as tribune and augur through 50-49 BCE. The turbulent civil war years continue to dominate Chapter 4 (“Caesar’s master of the horse”) with its focus on Pharsalus, Dolabella’s reforms (as well as Antony’s complicated relationship with the latter, more often than not his enemy) and Fulvia, herself an anomalous figure. Of particular interest here as well is Tatum’s view on what could be seen as Antony’s exclusion by Caesar, as the triumvir did not include Antony in his service in 45. Antony’s financial difficulties and his personal concerns (“divorcing Antonia, separating from Volumnia, and marrying Fulvia,” 98) in that period serve as the bulk of Tatum’s explanation, though he stresses that the latter need not have resulted in Caesar’s entire dismissal of Antony, briefly fallen out of favour as he may have been.
Chapter 5 (“the Ides of March”) indicates this but temporary distance between Caesar and Antony, as the latter, as consul in 44, features prominently in Caesar’s final plans and first appearance of Octavian (at this juncture fairly inconsequential), the infamous Lupercalia incident, and Caesar’s assassination and its aftermath. Many would benefit from this complete and insightful overview of Antony’s crucial role in the crisis management of those early days after the Ides. Tatum meticulously traces Antony’s public appearances and his need to consider not only the faction of Liberators with Brutus and Cassius at its helm but also Lepidus and Cicero in order to maintain whatever civic concord possible now that the Republic, shaken to its core, was in need of restoration: “for this achievement, a truly historic success, Antony was rightly praised” (127). Not even Cicero shied away from acknowledging Antony’s exemplary behaviour and government in those early post-Ides days, though the orator would soon irrevocably turn against Antony.
Chapter 6 (“A consul and an Antony”) further follows Antony’s consulship and his prominent role in managing Caesar’s will and delivering Caesar’s funeral oration (“this was the most important speech of Antony’s career, and it remains the most famous,” 131). Indeed, Tatum’s Antony is first and foremost “a busy man,” as numerous repetitions of the phrase pervade the book. The latter, Tatum demonstrates by considering the Amnesty of 17 March and the various legislative motions Antony carried out in those days, many based on Caesar’s acta. Chapter 6 seamlessly sets up the antagonism between Antony and Cicero: the statesman’s strategy to discredit and vilify Antony initially occupies a substantial part of Chapter 7 (“Civil fury and civil war”), which Tatum lets culminate in the gruesome proscriptions in Chapter 8 (“The domination of the triumvirs). Chapters 7 and 8 work well in tandem with Tatum’s considerations of Octavian’s march on Rome, the battles of Forum Gallorum, Mutina, and eventually Philippi on the one hand and the wavering senatorial support of Antony contrasted with the formation of the second triumvirate on the other. These chapters show just how readily reversible public opinion and private fortune were in this tumultuous period, for, during this fleeting moment “triple pillar of the world, Antony no longer believed his supremacy could be challenged” (196).
This global consideration mirrors the geographical scope of Chapter 9 (“Athens to Alexandria”), where we meet the Philhellene Antony. Tatum uses this occasion to apply some particularly insightful source work by considering the historicity of Plutarch’s so-called ‘games of the goddess’—possibly Athena or potentially more likely the Panathenaea of Antony, though Antony’s self-identification as the New Dionysus is certain. Here, too, we return to Antony’s persisting Eastern interests (ranging from Syria to Parthia), an occasion to summon Cleopatra once again, climaxing in the “stuff of legend”: Aphrodite-Cleopatra’s “epiphany” before the eyes of Antony on the river Cydnus in Tarsus in 41 and their subsequent winter in Alexandria. Though generally sympathetic towards his Antony, Tatum makes no excuses for the laxity Antony displayed in neglecting his Roman duties: “if the winter of 41 resulted in a setback for the triumvir, the fault was entirely his” (226) and “whatever Antony’s reasoning, and however deep his optimism, subsequent events revealed him to be unwise” (227).
Chapter 10 (“My brother’s keeper”) shows the other side of the coin: what was becoming of Rome with an important third of the triumvirate more ensconced in the company of the amimetobioi than in the Perusine war or the war against Sextus Pompey? The latter befell Octavian and Lepidus, while Antony’s brother, Lucius, and wife, Fulvia, addressed the management of Rome in Antony’s absence—Tatum treats this “parallel life” set in great detail: the rise of Octavian’s influence and the resulting intensified rivalry and fluctuating rapport between the triumvirs (Chapter 11: “Enforce no further the griefs between ye”), too, become increasingly clear. Tatum carefully considers the various facets of the Pacts of Brundisium, Misenum, and Tarentum with the former’s political and private implications (re-arrangement of the territory and a marriage alliance between Octavian’s sister Octavia Minor and Antony) with a much-appreciated poetic interlude on the differing tones of Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue and Horace’s Epode 7. This chapter sets up the crucial issue of slander on the Octavian front, often attributed to young Octavian’s fierce “jingoism,” by which the latter obscured how a stabilised and allied East (and especially Egypt) was in the interest of Rome. As throughout the work, Tatum soberly considers the impact of Augustan propaganda and insightfully remarks how subtleties of Roman morality and society colour Antony’s liaison with Cleopatra, especially when contrasted with Octavian’s sexual attitude towards Roman matrons.
Chapter 12 (“Fierce wars and faithful loves”) tracks Antony’s movements throughout the East (ranging from Antioch to Alexandria with important stops throughout Parthia and Armenia). Here, Tatum investigates two main questions in the Antony tradition. One is that of the marriage with Cleopatra, which also involves his divorce with Octavia and the resulting impact on his relationship with Octavian. Tatum answers in two parts: first, “we may, then, safely lay aside any suggestion that, in any sense of the word, Antony and Cleopatra were married at Antioch” (298), and secondly, “the Donations of Alexandria were not a wedding, nor is there any indication that Antony and Cleopatra ever underwent marriage rites of any kind” (316). What Tatum does not question, however, is that there must have been some affection between the two and that Antony increasingly assumed the role of an Eastern ruler, “although neither king nor consort, Antony was now a fixture in Alexandrian society” (317). The other major question of the chapter is the actual outcome of the wars with Parthia and Armenia; Tatum provides a thoughtful overview of the retreat and overall non-success of Antony in Parthia. While Tatum is ready to admit Antony’s mistakes (particularly in his overconfidence at Actium), the work overall strikes a mostly sympathetic tone towards Antony. Tatum brings this sympathy, which reveals itself as admiration, for Antony to full circle in Chapter 14, where Tatum crowns this monumental endeavour with a eulogy as a valediction to his Antony, one too excellent and all-encompassing (yet still nuanced) not to quote in full:
“But what a legacy! Passion, sensuality, hedonism, vigorous masculinity—all these thrumming in a personality also capable of reasoned senatorial debate, statesmanship, diplomacy, and military discipline. And a doomed love affair with a glamorous, powerful Egyptian queen. … It is Antony and Cleopatra—not Octavian, not even Augustus–who captivate poets and playwrights and filmmakers. And for one very obvious reason: Antony was and is a kind of guilty pleasure.
That, however, is a reflex of art, much of it originally Plutarch’s art.”
(page 349-50)
Tatum’s final points about Antony, his noble ruin, manage to reconstruct an impressive portion of that most turbulent of times as much as the sources allow: Tatum equates the end of his Antony with the end of the Roman Republic, a ruin that Octavian repurposed into the first stones of the construction of the early principate. Tatum’s A Noble Ruin will likely occupy a similar fundamental position in the landscape of biographies of the Roman Republic and Early Empire, but certainly when it comes to biographies of Mark Antony, the noble ruin himself.
Notes
[1] Kelly, Rachael. 2014. Mark Antony and Popular Culture Masculinity and the Construction of an Icon. First edition. London: I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd
Arshad, Yasmin. 2019. Imagining Cleopatra: Performing Gender and Power in Early Modern England. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
[2] https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/productions/antony-and-cleopatra/
[3] Huzar, Eleanor Goltz. Mark Antony: A Biography. NED-New edition. University of Minnesota Press, 1978.