Unforgettable exploits of Antony

We can mention some of the better and unforgettable feats of Mark Antony. Once he started service under the supervision of Aulus Gabinius at the age of 26, in 57 BCE he suppressed the rise of the Judaeans under the leadership of Aristobulus, he went from Jerusalem to Pelusium, what no one expected, he defeated his old friend Archaelos, and then put on throne Ptolemy XII Auletes.

Ten years later, in 47 CE, he had the pleasure of driving a chariot drawn by lions, what mentioned a hundred years later Pliny the Elder: “Mark Antony broke lions to the yoke and was the first person at Rome to harness them to a chariot, and this in fact during the civil war, after the decisive battlea in the plains of Pharsalia, not without some intention of exhibiting the position of affairs, the portentous feat signifying that generous spirits can bow to a yoke. For his riding in this fashion with the actress Cytheris at his side was a thing that outdid even the portentous occurrences of that disastrous period”. Two years earlier, just after crossing Rubicon, when the people of Pompey fled, he managed 7 litters for friends, actors and mother(!). It was criticized by Cicero in Philippics.

A year before Caesar’s death, Antony returned suddenly from Spain to Rome. In the guise of a servant, Plutarch mentions, he handed the letter to his wife Fulvia, who started crying. Only then did he show off his face. In the next 5 years, when Antony was already a triumvir and won the battle of Philippi, in Ephesus, the Greek delegation, in order to please him, offered him a marriage with… the goddess Athena. Antony agreed, on condition that the Greeks pay a dowry worthy of the goddess.