1. So called – first by Cicero himself, as a joke – in imitation of the speeches which, in the fourth century B.C., the Athenian orator Demosthenes had delivered against King Philip II of Macedon. For Cicero’s motives in attacking Antony, see above, p. 10.
1. Juvenal, translated by William Gifford (1802). For another version of Cicero’s much ridiculed line, see p. 60.
2. Catiline fell in battle as a rebel in 62 B.C., and Cicero may also refer to his other enemy Publius Clodius, who was murdered in 52: he mentions both in the next paragraph.
1. A certain Sicca, with whom Cicero sometimes stayed at Vibo Valentia. Against Sicca, Antony had put up a tribune to interpose his veto.
1. His daughter Fadia had been Antony’s first wife, but Fadius’s connexion with this obscure business is unknown.
2. This sneer alleging Curio’s undue influence over Antony is explained later (p. 122).
3. For this office and the tribes see Appendix C. Cicero became an augur in 53 B.C., Antony in 50, while his friend Curio was quaestor in Asia (western Asia Minor).
4. When Cicero arrived there in October 48 B.C., after the defeat of the Pompeians at the battle of Pharsalus.
1. Caesar spared Brutus and Cassius after Pharsalus.
2. In the First Philippic against Antony (p. 101).
3. Antony had established a land commission which, contrary to the Licinian (c. 145 B.C.) and other laws, included among its members his own relatives.
4. The triumvir (killed at Carrhae, 53 B.C.) : Crassus had believed that Cicero suspected him of complicity in the Catilinarian plot, and Cicero had suspected Crassus, perhaps of intriguing for his exile, certainly of obstructing his recall.
1. Antony had brought back from exile Sextus Cloelius, an ex-slave of the late Publius Clodius, and had first sought and received from Cicero a letter indicating his agreement.
2. A reference to Antony’s production of forged decrees purporting to have been drawn up by Caesar.
1. Fulvia, successively the wife of Publius Clodius, Curio, and Antony.
2. Because of Cicero’s action against the supporters of Catiline in 63 B.C.
3. Cicero’s opponent in the case against Verrei (Chapter 1); Manius Acilius Glabrio presided over the judges in the same case. Decimus Junius Silanus, consul-elect, had declared himself in favour of the death-penalty for Catiline’s supporters, but after hearing a speech by Caesar urging moderation he had changed his mind. As regards Pompey, at the time Cicero had complained of his wounding failure to praise (p. 61).
4. The meeting of 3 December 63 B.C., at which the Senate approved the arrest of the conspirators.
5. Related to Caesar’s mother. Author of the law of 70 B.C. depriving the Senate of their monopoly of the courts. In 57 he expressed the view that, since Cicero had not been legally banished, no law was necessary for his recall.
1. Publius Cornelius Lentulus Sura, one of the Catilinarians who was subsequently put to death.
2. Phormio and Gnatho were parasites in the Phormio and Eunuch respectively, comedies by Terence (c. 195–159 B.C.). Ballio was the pimp in The Cheat by Plautus (c. 254–184 B.C.).
1. Archers from the region north-east of the Sea of Galilee, conquered by Pompey in 63 B.C.
2. A reference to Antony’s mistress, Volumnia (ex-slave of Volumnius Eutrapelus); her stage-name was Cytheris.
3. A quotation from Cicero’s much maligned poem On his Consulate. The verse went on: ‘let laurel yield to honest worth.’
1. 52 B.C., in a brawl on the Appian Way. Cicero defended Milo (with less vigour than he-had intended, owing to threats of force), but he was condemned and went into exile at Massilia (thanking Cicero for thus allowing him to enjoy the mullets there). In 48 he was executed at Cosa for creating disorders with Marcus Caelius Rufus.
2. The Pompeian Law concerning violence.
3. Caesar’s conservative fellow-consul and ineffective political opponent in 59 B.C.
1. Caesar’s five-year command in Gaul and Illyricum, due to terminate in 54 B.C., was renewed by the Pompeian–Licinian Law of 55 (sponsored by his fellow-triumvirs): the date which the law fixed for the termination of this command – a question on which (constitutionally speaking) the responsibility for the subsequent Civil War largely hinges – was, and still is, highly controversial.
2. It was necessary for Caesar to stand in absentia in 49 B.C., since otherwise in order to become consul again (which he regarded as a necessity) he would have had to come to Rome as an unprivileged private individual and run the risk of prosecution by his political enemies. Cicero may to some extent be misrepresenting his own part in these events, on which he had written in different terms to Caesar himself (p. 82).
3. Perhaps Cicero is referring, with exaggeration, to a legion which Pompey had lent Caesar during the winter of 54/53 B.C.
4. A feature of the tactics of Cicero’s opponents in the case against Verres (p. 36).
1. The (? mythical) expeller of King Tarquin the Proud and founder of the Roman Republic, allegedly consul in 509 B.C. Gaius Servilius Ahala was said to have saved the Republic in 439 B.C. by killing the usurper Spurius Maelius.
2. Cassius, the assassin of Caesar. The reference is to Spurius Cassius Vecellinus, believed to have been consul in 503, 492, and 486 B.C., and to have been put to death at his own father’s instance for aiming at tyranny. The alleged incident on the Cydnus should probably be dated to 47 B.C., when Caesar had pardoned Cassius for fighting on Pompey’s side.
3. Son of Lucius who had capitulated at Corfinium (p. 78) and been killed by Antony in the pursuit after Pharsalus; nephew of Cato on his mother’s side, Gnaeus had, in fact, been pardoned by Caesar, but did not re-enter public life.
1. Publius Servilius Casca, who struck the first blow against Caesar, and his brother Gaius. For Ahala see above, p. 114.
1. Caesar was hailed as this (as Cicero himself had been, less formally, after the Catilinarian conspiracy).
2. As city-praetor he was not allowed to be away from Rome for more than ten nights.
3. For the Games of Apollo, see above, p. 95.
4. After being assigned corn-commissionerships’in June 44 B.C. (p. 94), in August Brutus was made governor of Crete and Cassius of Cyrene. But they left instead for Macedonia and Syria respectively, and collected the armies which were defeated in 42 B.C. at Philippi by Anton Octavian.
1. Apparently during Caesar’s return march from Spain in 45 B.C. Plutarch records that Antony did not respond to the suggestion but omitted to inform Caesar.
2. Antony had gradually made use of Caesar’s funds deposited in this temple on the Capitoline Hill.
1. In Cyprus; Pompey’s last port of call after the battle of Pharsalus on his way to Egypt, where he was murdered (48 B.C.).
1. It was regarded as a slight not to be mentioned in a friend’s will. Lawyers, who were not allowed to accept fees, particularly expected this sort of reward.
1. Probably the meaning is that Antony’s father Marcus Antonius Creticui left an estate too heavily encumbered with debt for the guardians of Antony (who was eleven at the time) to accept it on his behalf. Non-acceptance of an inheritance cast a slur on the family name.
2. Marcus Antonius the Orator, consul 99 B.C., killed in 87. He and Lucius Licinius Crassus, the principal spokesmen in Cicero’s On the Orator, had been the foremost speakers of their generation.
1. This law assigned the fourteen front rows in the theatre to the knights (67 B.C.). There is no other evidence that it also made special provision for bankrupts.
1. Probably Cicero refers to the fact that Fulvia was Clodius’s wife before she was Antony’s.
2. On a mission (in defiance of the Sibylline Books as well as the Senate) to restore King Ptolemy XII ‘the Flute-Player’ to the Egyptian throne (55 B.C.).
3. Vermilion (cinnabar) mines in southern Spain.
1. Probably the reference is to Antony’s friendship with Publius Clodius.
2. Antony’s quaestorship was in 52 or 51 B.C.
3. Curio who, while tribune in 50 B.C., had strongly supported Caesar.
4. 49 B.C. On I January Curio handed the Senate Caesar’s ultimatum.
1. ‘Let the consuls [and other officials] ensure that the state suffers no harm’, an emergency conferment of dictatorial powers.
2. On 2 January 49 B.C., Antony and another tribune had vetoed a proposal In the Senate that unless Caesar disbanded his army before a named date he should be declared a public enemy. Caesar crossed the Rubicon eight days later.
1. At Pharsalus (48 B.C.), Thapsus (46), and Munda (45).
2. The spendthrift Gaius Antonius Hybrida, expelled from the Senate in 70 B.C, Cicero’s fellow-consul in 63, exiled for extortion after governing Macedonia (62–60), censor in 42.
1. Cicero left Italy on 7 June 49 B.C.; Caesar had left Rome for Spain on 7 April.
1. There is an uncommunicable pun on the derivation of the name Hippias (Greek hippos – horse), presumably with some reference to Antony’s office of Master of the Horse (deputy to the dictator). The exiled tyrant of Athens, son of Pisistratus, had been called Hippias (527–510 B.C.). The meaning of the subsequent reference to race-horses is obscure.
2. At Roman auctions a spear was fastened in the ground.
1. Naevius.
2. Whirlpool or maelstrom (later identified with Straits of Messina), personified as voracious daughter of Earth and Poseidon.
1. Captured by Pompey in his campaign against the pirates in 67 B.C.
1. For the campaign of Thapsus (46 B.C.).
2. It had been a blow for Antony when Caesar’s published will reserved this distinction for Octavian, appointing Antony as one of the secondary heirs only.
1. For the campaign of Munda.
1. Gnacus the younger, killed after Munda, and Sextus (p. 91).
3. Even much later it was a solecism to wear sandals in the street. Cloaks were probably a novelty in Rome at this time; Augustus forbade their use in the Forum.
2. Fulvia. She was his wife, but Romans found this urgency frivolous.
3. See p. 98; one of six (or eight) Prefects to whom Caesar officially entrusted Rome during his absence in Spain.
4. The joke was that Antony was notoriously impoverished, a disgrace according to Roman ideas.
1. ? correct text: the right of a magistrate to prohibit business in this way had been abolished in 58 B.C., at least for legislative Assemblies. Here Cicero accepts the abolition for electoral Assemblies also (though elsewhere he takes a different view just as his own attitude towards omens and auspices varies from intellectual disbelief to acceptance as a national institution). Antony’s preference here for acting as an augur was probably due to the greater acceptability of this procedure to public opinion. The meeting was then declared to be adjourned on the grounds that the omens were unfavourable. For the Assembly and its centuries and tribes, and for the augurs and auspices, see Appendix C.
1. 15 February 44 B.C. At this ancient pastoral and prop’tiatory festival, young men called Luperci – wearing the skins of sacrificed goats, with whose blood their foreheads were smeared – ran round the foot of the Palatine striking any women they met with strips of these skins, as a fertility charm. Antony was one of ihese I.uperci.
1. See above, p. 114. Marcus Manlius Capitolinus saved the Capitol from the invading Gauls (c. 390 B.C.), but later, after accusing the Senate of embezzlement, was imprisoned and executed.
2. i.e., would Antony have opposed Caesar, or would he have declared Dola-bella duly elected?
1. On 17 March 44 B.C., Antony withdrew his opposition to Dolabella’s consulship.
2. Earth: on the Esquiline Hill. Meeting here on 17 March the Senate adopted a compromise, granting an amnesty to Caesar’s murderers but confirming his official acts (including ‘those which could be found among his papers’).
3. The father of Antony’s wife Fulvia. Bambalio means ’stammerer’.
1. The earliest contemporary evidence does not suggest, with Shakespeare, that Antony – who was still attempting to be conciliatory – delivered a passionate and provocative speech. However, the crowd broke loose and burned Caesar’s body in the Forum; and the Liberators barricaded themselves in their houses.
1. A monarch in Galatia who had been defended by Cicero on charges of acting against Caesar.
2. One of the most powerful city-states of the day until, having sided with Pompey, it had been compelled to surrender to Caesar in 49 B.C.
1. Perhaps the Sicilian rhetorician Sextus Clodius (p. 121) – or Sextus Cloelius, restored from exile (p. 106).
2. Caesar’s acts had been officially confirmed on 17 March (p. 91).
1. C. Antonius Hybrida finally became censor in 42 (p. 126).
2. Antony’s second wife (his wives were (1) Fadia, (2) Antonia, (3) Fulvia, (4) Octavia (40 B.C.), and ?(5) (if married according to Egyptian – though certainly not Roman – law) Cleopatra). See Appendix B.
1. The arrival of the new colonists was resented by the inhabitants, and Antony was roughly handled.
2. During Caesar’s consulship in 59 B.C.
1. From an unknown tragedy.
1. Dolabella, now consul. After the construction, in honour of Caesar, of this altar and column (by a demagogue of shady origins known as Herophilus 01 Amatius), participants in the accompanying demonstrations were executed by Dolabella without trial (Amatius himself was executed on about 13 April). Cicero’s attitude to Dolabella, who had gravely maltreated his daughter (p. 84) and was suspected by him of embezzling from the Temple of Ops, was strangely ambivalent: the Eleventh Philippic in mid-March 43 contains a violent attack on him for the murder of Trebonius.
2. In control of Rome while Sulla was in the east (87–84 B.C.), Cinna was killed in a mutiny at Brundisium. His daughter was Caesar’s first wife (see Genealogical Table, p. 255).
1. At the rite of the lectisternium, borrowed from Greece (399 B.C.), images of the gods were placed on cushioned couches and tables of food were set before them. “The image’ perhaps refers in general terms to statues implying that Caesar was superhuman (he was not ‘deified’ by the state until 42 B.C. and the extent to which, according to Hellenistic custom, he was treated as a god during his lifetime is disputed). ‘The gable’ – characteristic mark of a temple. ‘The priest’ – Plutarch says that Antony assumed this office in 40 B.C.