Marcus Antonius

Before them neither Lucius Crassus will defend you nor Marcus Antonius, nor — since the case will be tried before Greek judges — will you be able to call in Demosthenes;

By Hercules, I have seen Marcus Antonius, when he was pleading earnestly for himself under the Varian law, touch the ground with his knee.

but Cinna ordered the head of his colleague the consul Gnaeus Octavius to be cut off, and of Publius Crassus, Lucius Caesar, most noble men, whose virtue had been known at home and in war, of Marcus Antonius, the most eloquent of all whom I have heard, of Gaius Caesar, in whom there seems to me to have been a pattern of humanity, of wit, of charm, of grace.

At the very time when Marcus Antonius sat as arbiter of the life and death of his fellow citizens, the brother of Marcus Antonius was being led to execution!

Marcus Antonius, my grandfather, second to no man save the one by whom he was conquered, at the time when he was setting the commonwealth in order and, endowed with triumviral power, saw nothing above himself, and—save for his two colleagues—beheld all things beneath him, heard that his brother had been slain.

1 Excellently, it seems to me, does Marcus Antonius speak in the poet Rabirius, when he sees his fortune passing over to another and nothing left him save the right of death, and that too if he seize it quickly, crying out: