Who they were
Mark Antony was a Roman general and politician of the late Republic. He rose as Julius Caesar’s cavalry commander and most trusted lieutenant, serving as consul alongside him in 44 BC.
What they did
After Caesar’s assassination in 44 BC, Antony rallied Rome against the conspirators, then formed the Second Triumvirate with Octavian and Lepidus in 43 BC and crushed Brutus and Cassius at Philippi in 42 BC. Governing the East, he allied with Cleopatra VII of Egypt, who bore him three children. His partnership with Octavian collapsed into civil war, and after his fleet was defeated at Actium in 31 BC he died by suicide in Alexandria in 30 BC as Octavian’s forces took the city.
Legacy
Octavian’s propaganda painted him as a Roman undone by a foreign queen, and the ancient sources remain colored by that hostility. His defeat ended the Republic’s civil wars and left Octavian — soon Augustus — sole master of Rome, while Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra fixed his story in the imagination of later ages.