ANTONY

August, 30 BC. Alexandria. The harbor still works. The palaces still stand. The war is already over. Inside a half-finished mausoleum by the water, a woman and two servants are hauling a dying man up on ropes.

He is fifty-three. He has been consul. He has commanded more legionaries than most men ever see. He has stood in the Forum with a crown in his hand and a corpse on a bier. His name is Marcus Antonius. Plutarch likes a picture. Treat the picture as a picture. The facts under it are ugly enough without the paint.

This is not Shakespeare’s drinker and not Hollywood’s lover. The job is this: he was the last man who could have been the heir of Caesar in the old style — army, veterans, the name of the dead dictator, the eastern treasuries — and he could not become the thing Octavian became. He could win a battle. He could not invent a system.

The film follows the Antonii, Caesar’s staff, Lupercalia as politics, the funeral, Mutina, the second triumvirate, Cicero’s death as one beat, Philippi, Perusia, Cleopatra as a state, the Parthian failure, the Donations, Actium, and what the winner does with the story.