Marcus Antonius was born in Rome in 83 B.C., After a largely misspent youth, he was sent east as a cavalry officer, where he won important victories in Palestine and Egypt. In 54 B.C. he went to Gaul to join his mother’s cousin Julius Caesar as a staff officer. In 49 B.C. he was elected a tribune and served as a staunch defender of Caesar against his rivals in the Senate.
In 41 B.C. Antony began an affair with the Egyptian queen Cleopatra, who had been Caesar’s lover in the last years of his life. The queen gave birth to twins, Alexander Helios and Cleopatra Selene, but Antony was forced to return to Rome to deal with the aftermath of his wife and brother-in-law’s failed rebellion against Octavian. The Senate pushed for conciliation between the triumvirs, pressing the recently widowed Antony to marry Octavian’s sister Octavia Minor in 40 B.C.

As Octavian entered Alexandria, both Antony and Cleopatra resolved to commit suicide. Antony, thinking his lover already dead, stabbed himself with a sword but was then brought to die in Cleopatra’s arms. Cleopatra was captured but managed to kill herself via a poisonous snakebite. After Antony’s death his honors were all revoked, his statues removed. Cicero, Antony’s great rival in the senate, decreed that no one in the dead general’s family would ever bear the name Mark Antony again. Octavian was now emperor in all but name. Three years later he was granted a new honorific, Augustus, and ruled Rome for the next four decades

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