A Noble Ruin: Mark Antony, Civil War, and the Collapse of the Roman Republic

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 show more 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 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). show less