The show doesn't mention this but this was a reference to persistent rumors that Antony had been the habitual receptive partner in a gay love affair in his youth. In the Roman aristocracy, as in ancient Greece, it was more or less acceptable for a man to bugger boys if he was so inclined, but to be the one buggered was seen as weak and unworthy of a man, and it became a common slur to use against political opponents.
Cicero has many many sick burns For example, during Servilia and Caesar's relationship (which was real), there were rumors that her son Tertia was Caesar's illegitimate child. One time during a bargain where Caesar received some property at a low price which he was going to give to Servilia. Cicero then said that the bargain was quite good, for there was a third (In Latin Tertia means "third" as well) off.
@@napolien1310 That IMO is nothing compared to what, as far as I can tell, is *the* oldest yo mama joke of all time. Basically some guy from a rich old family kept interrupting his speech by saying "Who was your father, Cicero?" (a way of saying 'your father was a nobody, you don't belong here where all of us have famous daddies). Cicero turned to the guy and said "Sadly, your mother has made that question rather difficult for you."
"When I was a young man, I defended our State. As an old man, I shall not abandon it." ---One of Cicero's most famous accomplishments was his swift handling of the Cataline conspiracy during his year as a Consul. "I give sincere thanks to Mark Antony, who has generously presented me with the most promising theme imaginable." --Cicero was also famous for absolutely railing against those in power he viewed as unworthy, such as Marc Antony, Pompeii, and Bibulus. "Please listen, as if you were sober and intelligent, and not a drink-sodden, sex addled wreck." --Marc Anthony was put in charge of Rome during the Roman Civil War. To call his performance unsatisfactory was a massive understatement and scarred his reputation for life. "You are certainly not without accomplishments. It is a rare man who can boast of becoming a bankrupt before even coming of age." --Antony's early childhood was a life of binging and gang violence. He fled to Greece at age 20 because of his massive debt. "You have brought upon us: war, pestilence, and destruction." --Slightly inaccurate. He didn't so much bring these things upon Rome, more failed to stop them, and more than once even tried to leverage crises to seize power. It's partially why Caesar fired him partway through the Roman Civil War. "You are Rome's Helen of Troy." --Supposedly this is what Lepidus,Caesar's other, far more competant subordinate, often called Antony. Especially insulting since Cicero thought no better of Lepidus, and in fact the only person who seemed to have any faith in him, Julius Caesar, had replaced Antony with Lepidus as his number 2. "But then, a woman's role has always suited you best." --Antony had played second fiddle basically his entire life to someone. This led to a severe inferiority complex and here, Cicero is just dancing all over it.
The last line could also be in reference to Antony's relationship with Gaius Scribonius Curio. The two were close friends and in real life they were rumoured to have been in a gay relationship in their youth. Naturally, Cicero was the one peddling this rumour because the real Cicero hated Antony as much as the HBO depiction of him does. In ancient Rome, it was perfectly acceptable for a man to have sex with another man, but only if he was the one doing the penetration. Willingly letting another man penetrate you was viewed as utterly unmanly, and suggesting that someone likes to bottom or has another free Roman man as a boyfriend was a grave insult. (And a common slander tactic.)
@@FimbongBass yes. Random senator: "Who was your father Cicero?" Cicero: "Sadly, your mother has made that a very difficult question for you" Verified Event, CA 60 BC
"Go on!!" "No! I don't want to!° "GO ON!!" "Okay...but this are the Words of Cicero and not mine. Okay? I'm not Cicero. Don't forget that. Are you reasonable?" "Yes, I am...GO ON!" "...But then a woman's role has always suited you best." "NYAAAAAH!"
ferzy09 The previous senate was massacred under the previous dictator Sulla. A good number of the previous generation of the Senate, those who had backbone for opposition even those from well known families were killed. The Senate who survived were those who were more likely to bend the knee either for fear of losing their life or for profit. This left the Senate with easily bribed corrupt politicians and/or politicians who just wanted to be senators for the prestige of being a part of the Senate. The Senate that Caesar had to deal with had less people willing to die for Political Virtues than previous generations. This was why Cato and Cicero were such interesting figures. Cato was known for being unbending to corruption and championed traditional Republican Roman virtues. On the other hand, Cicero was middle ground, Cicero had integrity but he recognized the need to maneuver in a reality that Rome was a corrupt system. Now this is where Cato gets more interesting. As said, Cato was unbent to corruption, you'd think that Cato that would fall on his face with that kind of unrealistic world view, but he didn't. Cato remained relevant despite not playing into Roman corruption. How? Why? The same spineless cowards that is the Roman Senate actually admired Cato for his unyielding qualities. With Cato as their champion and voice (or sacrificial lamb), a good number of the cowards of the Roman Senate and Roman People still SILENTLY adhered to the traditional Roman Republic Virtues that they they so believed back in the good old days. The likes of Cicero might played ball with Caesar but Cato was their champion. Cowards they definitely may well be, but completely slaves to corruption and tyranny they were not.
*These being the words of Marcus Tullius Cicero.* *When I was a young man, I defended our State. As an old man, I shall not abandon it.* *I give sincere thanks to Mark Antony, who has generously presented me with the most promising theme imaginable.* *I address you directly, Antony.* *Please listen, as if you were sober and intelligent, and not a drink-sodden, sex-addled wreck.* *You are certainly not without accomplishments.* *It is a rare man who can boast of becoming a bankrupt before even coming of age.* *You have brought upon us war, pestilence and destruction.* *You are Rome's Helen of Troy. But then a woman's role has always suited you best.*
Leonard Wattimena its drama , the writers are trying to impart the "spirit " of the times , and they have 10 hour long episodes to tell the story of the war in Gaul ,the rivalry between Caesar and Pompey , and the start of the Triumvirate , as well as introduce us to many "plebian " customs and practises , like the importance e of religion and the gods , the roles of slaves , the general precariousness of life . If the scriptwriters took their task too literally , they will have difficulty in compressing the story into manageable episodes , and lose the attention of their audience . quid pro quo
+Leonard Wattimena These are actually paraphrases and quotes from Cicero's second Philippic, a series of speeches against Mark Antony. He read them himself, but Antony had already fled from Rome after Cicero's first Philippic. However, Antony was pissed enough to insist that Cicero be killed when he and Octavian came to terms.
Cicero loved to use muckraking tactics to get his way so even if Cicero didn't say these exact words it was in the Cicero's character to do this sort of thing.
I'm reading Cicero in Latin class... his speeches are really amazing, how you can hear his voice as if he were speaking to us now, even though he's 2000 years dead.
Rhian Hunt Marc Anthony is no better than the men who killed Caesar in the senate, he's actually worse. Caesar became a tyrant, this poor man wasn't even reading his own words. Oh well, you can't scape karma, Marc Anthony got what he deserved later on.
Jack Xin Come on, Jack. Who are the people? The plebes in the streets? The legionnaires that served under Caesar? It's not like the Romans had an election and Caesar won. If you're talking about Julius, he went to war with Pompey, and if you're talking about Octavian, he basically bought himself an army with his daddy's money and by borrowing against his Estate. These men took what they wanted by using force. A coup-de-etat is what they did. I love Roman history, love gladiators, love the politics, but let's tell it like it is.
@@agenttommy1 Who would do that? He has an army to back him - I don't think the Senate had any guards or military capacity of its own. As the Roman Empire developed, senators and even emperors were at the mercy of the Praetorian Guard and later, ordinary soldiers.
He holds it in front of him, perhaps to block a punch from Antony, but Antony tears the scroll staff from him and uses it as a weapon. The senator has no chance.
The Roman's used to send out slaves to gather ice in winter. That ice would then be stored in special wells during warmer seasons, obviously a luxury that only the wealthy could afford. Why am I mentioning this? 'Cause Mark Antony's gonna need ALL the ice in Rome for those epic burns.
The Senate House had actually been burned down by a mob years earlier. When Caesar was stabbed, they were meeting in a theater -which was named after Pompey of all people!
for those wondering, while this exact moment is fictional, Cicero did have speeches read in which he made fun or rightout insulted anthony...14 times! While the reasons differ a bit, the rivalry and hate between cicero and anthony we see in the show is absolutely true
And after having Cicero murdered Antony nailed his head and his hands (because they had physically written the speeches) nailed to the rostra in the forum. Antony's wife Fulvia (who was very sadly left out of the series) reportedly jabbed Cicero's dead tongue with her hairpin as revenge for all those eloquent speeches.
My favorite part of the scene is that many of these lines are actually taken from those speeches and were lines Cicero actually did write in real life.
@@renshiwu305 everyone remembers and invokes caesar, anthony? Not so much if at all and you can't put caesar and antony in the same category caesar despite cicero being his opponent actually respected him quite a lot for his oratory skills and speeches and cicero himself said of that if caesar had taken more oratory lessons to hone his skill instead of branching out to other skills he would have surpassed him
@@SamerAN1985 Antony doesn't get quoted because he winds up being the loser in his own separate struggle with Octavian. That said: the love of Antony and Cleopatra has been a subject of literary fancy, most notably by Shakespeare.
The reason is because of Shakespeare's work "Antony and Cleopatra" where he anglicized the name to make it more familiar for his audience. In "Julius Caesar" he used Latin names, but kept Antony anglicized because it wouldn't make sense for him to change his character's name. Thus it stuck and so we uniquely give Antony an English name but all the others Latin names.
Actually Marc Anthony is one of the most interesting "tragic" characters of that era. On one side he really was a drunk wreck, but he also had virtues. For example he once promised to reward a soldier with a large amount. The servant who was dispensing the awards, out of malice, pilled up the gold and showed it to Anthony saying something "are you sure you wish to give THIS much to that guy?!", to which Anthony replied "yes, you are right, it's too little, give him double the amount".
Agreed. I think this series was a little bit unfair to Mark Antony. I liked his portrayal in the movie "Cleopatra", ignoring the historical inaccuracies.
Well it also portrays the senate kinda badly, these men more than likely all had military training due to the Roman political system so I doubt that that dude would’ve sat there and taken that
As soon as the speech started to insult Antony you can see the senators scurrying down from their seats and fleeing like rats leaving a sinking ship! And who could blame them with a psychopath like him?
+SilentWingsOfFreedom It certainly doesn't help that the civil wars and the purges that generally followed them had reduced the senate to little more than yesmen and cowards.
@@AverageAlien MINOR anger issues?!?! He just murdered a man in cold blood for speaking the words of another man, who wasn't available to kill at that time. I stick to my original assessment: Psychopath!
Antony in this, and perhaps the historical one too, was Macho Macho Man. Calling Antony a woman was just guaranteeing that Cicero would lose both life and hands.
@@MarcusCato275 that's also part of the point; Helen did not have to do anything to cause disaster. She only had to exist. Theres a few lines from the Canterbury Tales about Virginia that fits. "Allas! too deare boughte sshe her beauté, Wherefore I say, that alle men may se, That giftes of fortune, or of nature, Ben cause of deth of many a creature. Her beaute was hir deth, I dar well sayn, Allas! so piteously as she was slayn." In comparing Mark Antony to Helen, he is not just saying his incompetence brings misfortune, but his very existence by its nature. That's at least how I interpret it.
@@ghanphol I think Cicero just wanted to insult Mark Antony by calling him a woman (a huge insult on a Roman's Viritas) and Helen of Troy was a witty insult that regarded his impact on the political climate of Rome at the time. I don't think Cicero would've wanted us ponder on the supposed felacious nature of femininity and its ability (whether passive or active) to weaken the strength and resolve of the male virtue. And though the view at the time was that female kind was guided by their emotions and base desires whilst men were seen as the more rational of the sexes, Mark Antony is still a man and he is active and the ills that have befallen Rome was due to his actions. He was not passive player in Roman politics and Rome was falling apart due to his own actions and not by the actions of others around him. The insult is even worse for Antony because Cicero is telling him that he is a man but can't act like one despite having a rational faculty therefore he's just an idiot; (to validate your point) at least when a woman does wrong she does it unknowingly and unintentionally.
@@MarcusCato275 I believe that's what ghanphol meant. Drawing a parallel between the two figures. They simply are who they are. Just like Helen and her beauty destroyed an entire nation Mark Anthony and his savagery paired with his incompetence wreaked havoc in Rome. Like the tale of the scorpion that stung the toad that helped him cross the river. It's his nature.
Le Monarchiste No. A Monarchy is a bloodline system where the oldest heir (normally the oldest male) ascends to the throne after the Monarch's death. In contrast, an Emperor can pick anyone as his/her successor.
The roman imperial system was headed by a de-facto monarch. An inherited office with absolute power and the loyalty of the militairy. Call it "First Citizen" all you like, just because they didn't call themselves kings doesn't mean it was a republic.
Attention, trolls: Marcus Tullius Cicero is your forebear. And if you think THIS was a burn, look up the actual series of FOUR (!) speeches against Antony that he wrote IRL and gave in person. Also, his orations against Catiline. The man was a grandmaster of the way of the burn.
+LaStriata Certainly! One time a senator from the Metelli (one of the oldest and wealthiest clans in Rome), Metellus Nepos, tried insulting Cicero's lack of pedigree by continually interrupting his speech with "Who was your father, Cicero?" Cicero turned to the guy and said, "Sadly, your mother has made it difficult for you to answer that same question."
to put this in a historical perspective , this is one of the few occassions the show even downplayed reality. The historical cicero is said to have oppossed anthony's seizing of power with a speech lasting *fourteen* scrolls long. Now I don't exactly know how big or long a scroll of perkament was in 44 BC, but needless to say it was one long middle finger
@@cerdic6867 So, a speech 280 pages long, presumably full of disses. Screw all the barbarian tribes, the real savage of the era was Marcus Tullius Cicero.
I hated him. Such a smug slimy bastard that he probably left a trail everywhere he went. Purefoy did an incredible job playing the character but I found him incredibly unlikeable and I delighted in watching him lose.
oOLightYagamiOo That guy looked pretty dead to me, Anthony whacked him in the head , multiple times, with what it seems to be a wooden rod, the support around the letter was wrapped around.
Kind of proves the point Cicero was trying to make really too. Even though he's pretty funny at times Anthony was a petulant child who couldn't control his emotions, mainly pride
A less ballistic and more controlled Antony might have just laughed and said, "And he did not have the guts to utter these home truths to my face. He had to set you up to do it."
@@kaczynskis5721 Yeah but Cicero and everyone else knows Antony will lose his shit. For example, Cicero would never ever try this against Octavian, because there will be exactly zero reaction except for "Huh Cicero has gone mad."
Cicero was such a coward, sending that messenger to read his speech for him. He didn't have the guts to say it to Antony himself. I do think killing the messenger was going too far though, but then Antony did have a terrible temper.
He also sat and waited stoically knowing he was going to die and accepted his fate without remorse, not sure about his death in real life or if this scene occurred exactly so irl but he was actually far from a coward and willing to die for his ideals or he would not have stood up to Mark Antony while every body else went along with him out of fear, he was the only person who had the balls to criticize him. not every man is achilles... and if they where society would quickly fall apart. Cicero would not have been Cicero if he was a great warrior or a valiant soldier...
@@ANUBASS Exactly. You get it. Cicero knew that he was going to be purged by the new dictator Marcus antonius. So he decided to have some fun with it. You dont need to leave your house to be executed
I know this scene is fiction...but hell this poor Senator :D Should have read it before reading it to Anthony. But Anthony is so funny crazy here: "Go on! Go ON!! NYAAAAHHH!"
The guy who killed Pompey should also have read the letter he delivered to Caesar... But messengers were not supposed to do that. However this senator should have examined the scroll first. Romans were partial to getting down to meat and potatoes some way into the text. When Tiberius turned on Sejanus, the message he sent started off with all sorts of irrelevancies, then a bit further on he suddenly out of the blue accused Sejanus of treason, and senators began to make themselves scarce just like here.
IDK, it seemed to me he enjoyed being on top a bit too much, & didn't grasp the situation correctly. Always boasting of how he saved the republic from the Catiline conspirators to always extolling his exploits. A really great figure doesn't have to advertise it, but then again he had to build up his name in the absence of an illustrious family history.
LOL! one of the few world leaders in history would could honestly be labeled as 'trans' (or gender-dysphoric, to the Right) in the Current Year. The classical age did yield a lot of full-on homosexuals, but Elagabalus was something beyond what the classical age was prepared for.
Purefoy owned this series! He got all the best lines. Although I must say I loved this scene where they say something about "drink addled"...makes me laugh every time! Almost as good as "Now THAT is an exit!" when Servilia offed herself.
In history class I remember reading that when Octavian was an old man, he caught one of his grandchildren reading Cicero, but he didn't punish him, and he told him that Cicero was a great Roman.
There's a point in reading such a document that one should feign thirst and hand over the speech directly to the person on your left and exit the room-thanks for posting this clip...
Bro, it's not the readers fault, Mark Anthony probably lowered himself with that impulse alone. Still my favorite character in this whole show and probably one of my favorite historical figures.
I suddenly heard the Senators begin singing "Fuck this shit, I'm out - MM-HMM! Fuck this, shit, I'm out. NO THANKS! Don't mind me, Imma just grab my stuff and leave - 'scuse me please!"
So was Herman Goering. On paper he looked ideal to be in charge of the Luftwaffe, having been a WW1 ace with 22 confirmed victories and leader of the ex-Red Baron squadron. He was 2nd in command and loved to collect art. Powerful doesn't spell "competent". As for Cleopatra's choice. Her only option was to make Caesarion (something which many historians doubt actually was the son of Caesar, seeing as he only had one daughter from all his marriages) heir to Rome. That wasn't going to work >>
