Anthony’s Failure
Although the characters of Antony indicates that he was a good soldier due to the good relationship with his troops, he was recklessly extravagant he had inherited the traits that are responsible for generosity, extravagance, a pleasing desire and submission to women. He was also docile and was easily misled by the people who had knowledge of flattering him. Al these attributes played an important role in his failure. Antony was an important and courageous general in Caesar’s army and he gained an important position as a close colleague of Caesar. After the death of Caesar through assassination, he assumed the position of struggling to control Rome and he was bitter about the assassination of Caesar as he indicated at the time of his funeral. Antony worked in a close collaboration with Octavian who was an adopted heir of Caesar through the formation of Second Triumvirate in the company of General Marcus leading to the division of the empire and Antony was assigned to control Egypt (Pelling, 67-9). This is the situation that facilitated the encounter with Cleopatra, an Egyptian queen who became his lover. An association associated with goddess Venus characterized by a barge that was decorated in a lavish manner. Their joining of hands led to the dissolution of triumvirate and Octavian was resourceful in the routing of their naval forces in Actinium battle. They fled the battle before its completion which was one of the greatest blunders in their history. At the time that the forces of Octavian were approaching Alexandria, Antony fell on his sword which was an act of committing suicide. This prompted Cleopatra to inflict a bite of a snake that was poisonous aiming to kill herself leaving Octavian to control Egypt as well as Rome. This was a tragic end to the life of Antony. One of the most conspicuous failures of Antony was based on leading parallel life since Cleopatra was initially Caesar’s love before he became Antony’s lover. The negative relationships Octavian resulted to the initiation of treason charges against Antony. This surrounded the issues of the retaining of the provinces in addition to the initiation of war against nations such as Armenia as well as Parthia that were foreign while disregarding the fact that there was a need to consult the senate first. This was a step that also contributed significantly to the failure of Antony (Jones, 254-67).
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The habits that were associated with Antony were responsible for the escalation of factional schism resulting to the encouragement of the troops o resume to actions that were associated with terrible violence in addition to rapacity. This led to the pardoning of Dolabella by Caesar who later chose Lepidus in place of Antony to act in place of his colleague. Antony decided to purchase the house of Pompey at the time that it was set for sale but his payment was associated with indignation. Caesar had taken an action of eradicating most of the inane as well as dissolute habits that were associated with Antony. This resulted to a change in the lifestyles of Antony through turning to marriage (Weigall, 145-56). This led to a situation that Antony was engaged in a succession of marriages with Fadia, Antonia, Fulvia, Octavia and finally Cleopatra. The marriages left behind several children and his daughter who was Octavia, he was empowered to become an ancestor of Roman Emperors the Caligula, the Claudius as well as the Nero.
The association with Cleopatra was especially of a significant contribution to the failure of Antony. They shared some common characteristics that accelerated the failure in the performance that was required of the position of power that was held by Antony. As much as they were lovers, they were also heavy drinkers, great soldiers, generous givers as well as spenders in addition to being outrageous. They had similar fortunes that resulted to their great extent success as well as failure at the same time. The chances of new beginnings were equal to chances of new disasters and a sense of moderation was absent among them. The education background of Antony was also poor and this was another contributing factor to his failure (Bengtson, 156-76).
