The Life and Times of Marc Antony

The outstanding achievement of modern civilization in any country is the creation of that attitude of mind towards human life which rejects the weapon of war as an instrument of domestic politics. The most truly civilized states today are those in which the home government can be carried on, or changes of government effected, without bloodshed; and, emphatically, the mark now of a backward people is the impatient political use of armed force and the firing-squad. 


Ancient Rome at about the date of the birth of Antony, viewed from this angle, was astonishingly uncivilized; and its political life can find no comparison in modern times save with that of some tragicomic East European or South American state where blustering revolutions are of frequent occurrence, and fights, murders, executions, and hair-raising adventures are the commonplaces of administration. Yet, even so, the comparison is not exact; for Rome conducted its political battles with an indifference to human suffering which is now more or less extinct, and the horror, moreover, is accentuated by the fact that the butchers and the butchered were usually educated men, accustomed to the amenities of a cultured life far more fastidious than that which is associated with political savagery today. The barbarous cruelty of these highly civilized Roman party-leaders provides a paradox which has no parallel in the modern world. 


Antony was born at a time when no Roman except the very obscure could feel sure that he would survive the next change of government: there was always the danger of finding himself upon the defeated side, and in that case the chance of his being put to death was by no means negligible. Active politics, and even the mere holding of an official post, brought that chance to a man's elbow; and the familiar presence of the menace was followed at length by an indifference to it which was less than heroic only because it was no more than normal. Every man who meddled in public affairs staked his head in so doing; and at a crisis he was quick to take his opponent's life in order to safeguard his own...