Mark Antony and Popular Culture: Masculinity and the Construction of an Icon 9780755694495, 9781780765747

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List of Figures

1 Engraving of Marcus Antonius (c.1880)16 Author’s collection 2 Cleopatra (Elizabeth Taylor) warns Antony (Richard Burton) not to allow himself to be ruled by love (Cleopatra, 1963, dir. Joseph Mankiewicz) 122 Author’s collection 3 Antony (James Purefoy) and Vorenus (Kevin McKidd) in Alexandria (Rome, 2007.9, dir. Steve Shill) 136 Permission sought 4 Cleopatra (Anna Valle) dominates the frame as Mark Antony (Massimo Ghini) lounges in Oriental luxury – (Augustus, 2003, dir. Roger Young) 151 Permission sought 5 Characters who perform paradigm masculinity 160 Author’s diagram 6 Actors playing Caesar and Antony 175 Author’s diagram 7 Rome’s Dyad-versus-Dyad Structure 202 Author’s diagram

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Acknowledgements

This book began life as my doctoral thesis, and owes numerous debts of gratitude, which it is my pleasure to acknowledge here. Many thanks to my supervisors, Maire Messenger Davies and Martin McLoone at the University of Ulster, for their help and guidance in bringing the project to completion, and to Amy Davis, my original first supervisor, whose support and pastoral care has gone above and beyond the call of duty, even after she no longer had any professional obligation towards Marcus Antonius or myself. Originally a mentor, I am pleased to count her now as a friend. I am also indebted to Stanley Black, in his capacity as Head of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Ulster, for his help and advice. Thanks also to Monica Cyrino, whose generosity and encouragement has enriched my research, and to Maria Wyke, whose comments at viva strengthened the initial draft beyond measure. Finally, thanks to my family, and particularly my parents, John and Dee Kelly, for standing behind me at every stage of the journey and keeping me on track when the going got rough.

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Introduction: ‘A Sort of Retrofitting of the Past with the Present’1 The news about the outcome of the naval battle at Actium was to be sure unexpected. But there is no need to draft a new document. Only the name needs changing. There, in the last lines, instead of ‘Having delivered the Romans from that disastrous Octavian, that travesty of a Caesar’, now we can insert ‘Having delivered the Romans from that disastrous Antony’. The entire text fits very nicely. (Cavafy, 2007: 159)

On 2 September 31 bce, on the sea off Actium on the west coast of Greece, a naval battle was fought between the joint forces of Marcus Antonius and Cleopatra, and Antonius’ political rival Octavian, the future Emperor Augustus. Centuries later, the Alexandrian poet Constantine Cavafy neatly encapsulates what the overwhelming majority of fictive and popular cultural reconstructions of the event have since forgotten: that there was an odds-on favourite to emerge victorious, and it was not Octavian. Unexpected as the reversal may have been, popular culture tells a different story in its constructions of the man known to modern audiences as Mark Antony. Instead of a general, we have a hopeless lover. Instead of a statesman, we have a drunkard. Caesar’s right-hand man, a gifted 1

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politician in his own right, is remembered as a sensualist so degraded by bodily excess that Shakespeare sees fit to call him ‘a strumpet’s fool’ (Antony and Cleopatra, 1.1.14). The central premise of this project is that Antony (the pop-culture icon) differs so substantially and so specifically from Antonius (the historical figure) that the mythology itself performs some deeper socio-cultural function. In order to fully examine and engage with this idea, this study will employ a socio-ideological analysis of a series of seven screen texts (below). As I will discuss in Chapter 6, all of these texts enter production during periods in which there was a significant socio-cultural and sociopolitical engagement and interrogation with gender paradigms. The texts are as follows: • Cleopatra (Film: USA, dir. Cecil B DeMille, 1934) • Caesar and Cleopatra (Film: UK, dir. Gabriel Pascal, 1945) • Serpent of the Nile (Film: USA, dir. William Castle, 1953) • Cleopatra (Film: USA, dir. Joseph Mankiewicz, 1963) • Cleopatra (TV: USA, dir. Franc Roddam, 1999) • Julius Caesar (TV: USA/Germany/Italy/Netherlands, dir. Uli Edel, 2002) • Imperium: Augustus (TV: Germany/Italy/France/Spain/Austria/UK, dir. Roger Young, 2003) • Rome2 (TV: USA/UK, dir. Michael Apted, Allen Coulter, Alan Poul, Steve Shill, Timothy van Patten, Alan Taylor, John Maybury, 2005–7) These are, for the most part, screen texts with significant cultural resonance. Cleopatra (1934) was nominated for five Oscars (including Best Picture) and won one for Best Cinematography (imdb.com, ‘Cleopatra, 1934’). Cleopatra (1963) is infamous for its exorbitant budget, the scandalous off-screen love affair between Taylor and Burton, and for almost closing the doors of Twentieth Century Fox for good, but it was also one of the highest-grossing movies of the 1960s and was nominated for nine Oscars, winning four (Best Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume Design and Visual Effects – imdb.com, ‘Cleopatra, 1963’). Cleopatra (1999) may have seen the narrative shifted to the small screen, but it nevertheless attracted a sizeable budget, and was nominated for four

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Emmys (imdb.com, ‘Cleopatra, 1999’). Likewise, Rome was eventually cancelled after Season 2 because its budget was unsustainable (Zap2It. com, ‘Two And Out for Rome’), but nevertheless garnered an average audience of between 3 and 6 million viewers per episode in Season 1 (Deans, 2005 and 2006 [online]). It also received a host of awards including 15 Emmy nominations, with seven wins, and a further five nominations for BAFTAs, and two for Golden Globes (imdb.com, ‘Rome, 2005’). In interrogating these screen texts and their engagement with gender anxiety through the Antony-icon, I will disproportionately focus on aspects of narrative rather than the aesthetics of the screen image. In so doing, I am not attempting to elide the importance of the visual in constructing gender (and, indeed, the aesthetics of male bodily display is critical in positioning Antony’s gender performance, and will be treated as such), simply to recognize the significance of story – and the reproduction of myth – as a key method of encoding meaning into this particular framework for the negotiation of gender ideology. There are elements in the construction of Antony-on-screen that are unique to the screen text (and for which the screen text is uniquely suited) and they will be discussed as appropriate, but within this methodological framework the primary focus will be on the use of narrative in situating and recycling the key tropology of the Antony-icon. As Chapters 1 and 2 will show, the origins of Antony-on-screen are grounded firmly in storytelling, through Plutarch and Shakespeare, both of whom are repeatedly referenced (either directly or obliquely) by the texts in question. Pelling (1988: 8) talks about Plutarch’s search for an historical ‘truth’, and situates his style of historiography as quite separate (and in opposition) to that of Thucydides and Herodotus, in that Plutarch seeks to frame his Lives as fables rather than as narrative history. Moreover, such is the cultural presence of Shakespeare (Chapter 2) that Plutarch, as his source, becomes a means of invoking the same cultural prestige as accompanies the Shakespearean oeuvre: Shakespeare becomes shorthand for ‘culture’, while Plutarch, being perhaps best-known as Shakespeare’s source, becomes shorthand for ‘historicity’. Thus elements of narrative, widely recycled over two millennia, become critical in situating the Antony-icon as a paradigm of gender anxiety.

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Parameters and Terminology While this project will interrogate the Antony-myth and its specific filmic and televisual incarnations, it has been bounded by some necessary parameters. Silent Cinema abounds with reproductions of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, as well as numerous alternative reconstructions of the legend (including the famous 1917 film Cleopatra, starring Theda Bara), yet silent texts are notoriously difficult to track down: many (including the 1917 text) are considered to be permanently lost, with no surviving prints, whilst others have simply vanished from the archival record. The names are recorded but nothing else. Moreover, although there have been some high-profile non-English language texts,3 as well as several lower-profile productions,4 the theoretical framework under which the analysis was conducted strongly advised towards omitting these from the study. Since the analyses are based on identifying socio-cultural trends encoded into the texts and linking them to contemporaneous gender ideology, which is culturally (and sometimes nationally) specific, including cultural output from countries other than the US and the UK would require several separate arguments and gradations within each in order to link each text to the specificities of its nation of origin.5 Finally, such is the resonance of the Cleopatra-myth that it has found itself reproduced in a variety of filmic genres. By far the most common format has been the historical epic, the conventions of which will be explored in greater detail below. However, even bounded by the parameters above, we are left with films from the genres of animation (Asterix and Cleopatra, 1968), comedy (Carry on Cleo, 1964) and pornography (Private Gold: Cleopatra, 2004). Whilst the appeal of the original mythology to these genres is certainly worth investigation (it is especially noteworthy, in view of the sexualization of the legend, that it has been translated into a pornographic text), to discuss this in detail within this analysis would be to detract from the original argument. Had the majority of the movies been comedy, it would have made sense to analyse the comedic films in terms of the genre conventions of comedy and omit the variant genres; likewise for animation and pornography; however, coding and decoding conventions vary so markedly between genres that an

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analysis that attempted to account for the differences in characterization between Sid James’ Mark Antony in Carry on Cleo (1964) and Richard Burton’s in Cleopatra (1963) would necessarily be dense and complex to the extent that the original argument would be in danger of being lost. Therefore, while I suspect that the comedy of James’ performance derives in large part from the inverted machismo of the Caesar/Antony dynamic (his Antony is considerably more hegemonically masculine than Kenneth Williams’ Caesar), this remains a suspicion only, in that it is not explored in depth. Rather, the analysis will consider only those films that follow the genre conventions of the historical epic and will consider hegemonic masculinity as it is encoded within this genre. Defining Hegemonic Masculinity As the following chapters will demonstrate, the screen narrative follows a series of iterative tropes, all of them linked – either explicitly or tacitly – to gender performance. As such, I shall interrogate the notion that Antony-as-icon is used to perform and exorcise the spectre of masculinity-gone-wrong, as this is understood according to the historical moment. However, this requires a series of assumptions about the nature of hegemonic masculinity – what might colloquially be termed ‘the real man’. What makes the ‘real’ man ‘real’? This is not a question with a straightforward answer. Masculinity itself is a highly contested term, and, as recent work has evidenced time and time again, it is neither stable across time nor, in fact, singular. The difficulties and pitfalls of describing a discrete category of masculinity that may be termed hegemonic will be considered in detail in Chapter 6, but for now let it suffice to describe the definition of hegemonic masculinity as it will be accepted in this study. ‘Heterosexuality and homophobia are the bedrock of hegemonic masculinity,’ argues Mike Donaldson: A culturally idealized form, it is both a personal and a collective project, and is the common sense about breadwinning and manhood. It is exclusive, anxiety-provoking, internally and hierarchically differentiated, brutal, and violent. It is pseudo-natural, tough, contradictory, crisis-prone, rich, and socially sustained. While centrally connected with the institutions of male

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M ark A ntony A nd P opular C ulture dominance, not all men practice it, though most benefit from it. Although cross-class, it often excludes working-class and black men. It is a lived experience, and an economic and cultural force, and dependent on social arrangements. It is constructed through difficult negotiation over a lifetime (Donaldson, 1993: 646).

Because of its instability, a paradigm definition of Western hegemonic masculinity is difficult to come by: scholars will discuss the mutability of masculinities, their cultural specificity and their links to the construct of power-relations within any given society, but the attributes of the masculine hegemony – the very factors that make the hegemonic masculine hegemonic – are generally afforded to the reader to construct out of general observation and common sense. On one matter, however, masculinity studies are unanimous: as Donaldson indicates above, hegemonic masculinity is heterosexual masculinity. Indeed, as Russell West argues in his introduction to Subverting Masculinity: Hegemonic and Alternative Versions of Masculinity in Contemporary Culture (2000), not only is hegemonic masculinity heterosexual, but it is constituted by Othering homosexual masculinity (p 21). This has important implications both for the bounding of hegemonic masculinity – the hegemonic constitution of homosexual masculinity will define the limits of the hegemonic constitution of heterosexual masculinity – but also, as Chapters 1 and 2 will argue, for the construction of the Antony-icon. Again, this is not to suggest that homosexual masculinity itself is stable or singular, only to highlight that the nature of hegemony is, as Donaldson puts it, ‘to appear “natural”, “ordinary”, “normal” ’ (1993: 645); in other words, to present the illusion that it is an immutable, invisible and ultimately unchallengeable state of being. As such, a hegemonic construct of both homosexual and heterosexual masculinity, whilst being socially and historically specific, appeals to a fundamental ‘truth’ about the fixed and essentialist qualities of masculinity. Therefore if we follow the reasoning that hegemonic homosexual masculinity is constructed as ‘non-male’, or feminized, then we can extrapolate from this that hegemonic heterosexual masculinity positions its Other as effeminate. This Othering-by-effeminacy, moreover, works on a broader scale than sexual Othering: throughout history, charges of effeminacy have

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been levelled on a racial basis by colonizing forces against the occupied population. RW Connell (2005) talks about the feminizing rhetoric employed against the native population by the British Raj in occupied India (p 198); Edward Said locates this same rhetoric within Orientalist doctrine (2003); Todd Reeser discusses the use of effeminacy in tagging a wide range of non-white ethnicities as Other (2010). This practice of defining masculine superiority over colonized Others can be traced back at least as far as tensions within the imperial Roman collective consciousness as to the extent to which it was acceptable to identify with ancient Greek culture – which occupies the unsettling position of both idealized source of Roman learning and colonized client nation (Catharine Edwards, 1993: 92–97). Western hegemonic masculinity, then, can be constituted as white, heterosexual masculinity. To this, we can usefully add that the hegemonic male exhibits emotionality only insofar as it is coded acceptably masculine. As per Brody and Hall’s seminal 1993 study Gender and Emotion in Context, we can list ‘acceptable’ male emotionality as ‘anger, contempt and pride’ – while female emotionality (and, by extension, unacceptable male emotionality) includes ‘happiness, embarrassment, surprise, sadness, fear, shame and guilt’ (1993: 396). Finally, hegemonic masculinity personifies the warrior-hero archetype, which ‘projects strength, virility, control, power and dominance’: In Eastern European art, the hero symbolically represents exaggerated and hyper-idealized masculinity. In American art, however, the male form tends to be less idealized than it is standardized; that is, it has historically been used to create social and cultural norms of manhood, defined by characteristics of race (white), class (wealthy), and physical stature (grand). All of these traits exist in art as ideals of the form to which men of all backgrounds should aspire (Carroll, 2003: 33).

The closing words of the paragraph are crucial: idealized, hegemonic masculinity is aspirational – it is neither substantive nor achievable for the vast majority of men who subscribe to the hegemony. This is one of the most fundamental aspects of its power, and closely informs the construction of the Antony-icon.

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Masculinity, and the performance of masculinity, is an important signifier in the genre conventions of the historical epic. Chapter 2 will consider the configuration of ‘deficient’ masculinity within the genre’s conventions, particularly as regards the famous ‘Oysters and Snails’ scene in Spartacus (1960), which has rightly been considered by several scholars to be supremely indicative of gender paradigms within Roman mythic space. For now, I want to note that part of the appeal of the historical film in general, and the historical epic in particular, is an appeal to the unambiguous morals of a vanished past. Plurality and complexity are elided in favour of ‘simplicity’, which allows for issues of gender liminality to be denied as a modern concern. Within this ideological framework, then, a rhetoric of historical ‘accuracy’ is discursively invoked in order to justify an insistence on hegemonic gender paradigms. Chapters 3, 4 and 5 will investigate the impact of this framework on the construction and maintenance of the Antony-icon as an avatar of deficient masculinity, but I want to note here that the historical mythic space is ideally placed to play out issues of masculine performance and to underline the threats to hegemony embodied in a plethora of socio-cultural anxieties, including (but not limited to) the erosion of national-cultural identity, the incursion of the Other, the blurring of defined gender roles and the failure to police the hegemonic. Politico-Cultural Anxiety and the Historical Epic Film With this in mind, it is important to understand the construction and uses of the historical epic, and particularly the modern consumption of the ancient world. Scholars such as Maria Wyke (1997), William Fitzgerald (2001) and Monica S Cyrino (2005) have noted that antiquity has provided a convenient point of reference from which to explore and/or exorcise a host of modern notions that are too ephemeral or too controversial to address directly. Ancient Rome in particular has proved to be a particularly fertile mythic space from which to explore concepts of gender and identity within a couple of hundred years of its disappearance from living memory. Moreover, Wyke (2007) discusses the uses to which the mythology of Julius Caesar has been put in popular culture, describing how the Emperor Trajan, in the second century ce, appealed

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to the resonance of Caesar’s name ‘not just [as] a crucial pivot between Republican and monarchical systems of government, but also [as] the divine founder of empire and of an imperial dynasty which bore his name’ (2007: 8). As Christianity grew and evolved, so did the cultural function of Caesar, from ‘the apogee of pagan pride’ (p 9) to one of ‘the Western world’s greatest military heroes’ (2007: 11). I will look more closely at Caesar’s function in the Antony-myth in Chapter 5; for now, suffice it to say that Caesar, as he is handed down to us by two millennia of mythogenesis, is merely a sign, or an evocation of ancient Rome and how we understand Romanness. The process by which this mythogenesis occurs, and the complex process of identification/disidentification that has evolved into the tangled web of signs and symbolism that evokes ‘Rome’ in the Western popular consciousness, varies subtly across cultural experience. Thus, for example, Rome, as a sign system, may provoke a different decoding process in the US – where Republican Rome served as a unifying vector in the earliest days of the new state (Wyke, 1997: 15) – and in Britain, where symbols of Roman occupation and assimilation are widely available even today, from geographical features through to the evolution of the English language. This has important repercussions for the relative positioning of Rome/Romanness in British and American popular culture. To begin with, it is important to understand the way in which Romanness, or romanitas, has been woven into the fabric of the American cultural psyche since the days of the Founding Fathers. As a fledgling nation, the United States, comprised of a diverse, immigrant populace, sought to articulate a common identity by appealing to an idealized Republican Rome for what Maria Wyke has described as ‘a useable past – instant, communal history and cultural legitimacy in the eyes of Europe’ (Wyke, 1997: 15). Some of the tropes of this identification are obvious: the US system of government is based on the Roman Republican model, and elements of the nomenclature (Senate, Senator) have been borrowed from Rome. However, American romanitas also comprises a less tangible set of behavioural, discursive ideals such as liberty, civic responsibility, valour, patriotism and so on. These are reified in the American collective psyche as particularly ‘Roman’ traits worthy of emulating in the new American state, and thus form the basis of the new American

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identity – separate to the early American notion of the British imperial identity (the vilified Other) which is associated with the worst excesses of imperial Rome. ‘The Roman Empire has been and continues to be an enabling device for comment on the present,’ say Joshel, Malamud and Wyke (2001) in their introduction to Imperial Projections: Ancient Rome in Modern Popular Culture (Joshel, Malamud and McGuire, 2001): By displacing contemporary concerns into a recognizable and familiar past, and by projecting modern empires back onto an ancient one, popular representations allow audiences simultaneously to distance themselves from the past and to identify with it. Popular representations of the Roman Empire can conveniently exhibit the greatest extremes of political power, material life, and sexual behaviour. They can supply explanatory origins for modern social structures, validate or challenge their procedures, and make them the culmination of an ineluctable history, while audiences of these representations are shaped as knowing participants in a seemingly shared and prestigious cultural tradition (2001: 4).

Romanitas, as a discursive mechanism, is highly adaptable to contemporary socio-political need: it was used, for example, in the nineteenth century as a vehicle for expressing concerns over American expansion westward and the geopolitical spectre of imperialism that it was liable to invoke. Winkler, moreover, situates American identification with Republican Rome as the basis for the anxieties enacted in the historical epic movie of the mid-twentieth century: ‘Since the Silent Era, Hollywood has seen the Roman Empire as an ancient parallel to modern military or totalitarian empires in general,’ he says. ‘But after the experiences of World War II, the portrayal of ancient Rome in the films of the 1950s and early 1960s bears closer and more specific resemblances to Hitler’s Germany than to Mussolini’s Italy or the Soviet Union’ (2001: 51). This is critical for understanding the connotative position of Rome in American screen texts: it is a mechanism for expressing and negotiating contemporary socio-cultural or socio-political concerns, safely displaced onto antiquity and thus, effectively, allowing their allegorical

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intent to be disavowed. To be clear: in situating these films as allegory, I am not attempting to deny their appeal as spectacle,6 simply to stress the fact that cycles of toga epics tend to coincide with periods of socio- or politico-cultural anxiety, in which the core identity of the American psyche is fundamentally challenged. Just as film noir negotiates masculine anxiety around postwar female economic independence, so the postwar toga epic explores issues of empire-building, economic excess, religious faith, militarism, tyranny, and emerging female economic and social autonomy. As Joshel, Malamud and Wyke argue: ‘the ancient past itself becomes a screen for the projection of contemporary concerns in ancient garb – a sort of retrofitting of the past with the present’ (2001: 3). A very clear example of the impact of socio-cultural conditions on the adaptation of literary text to screen text can be seen in Ruth Scodel and Anya Bettenworth’s 2009 study of Quo Vadis, the 1895 novel by Polish author Henryk Sienkiewicz that has been adapted five times for the screen (1912, 1925, 1951 for the cinema; 1985 and 2001 for television). Although the source material remains the same (and is itself a product of its social, politico-geographical and cultural moment), the adaptations reveal the changing cultural imperatives of the various moments within the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Attitudes to gender and performance of gender shift so that Lygia, the central female character, is played as damsel-in-distress in earlier versions, subtly gaining agency as the decades progress. Similarly, attitudes to masculinity – and particularly what is considered acceptable or indeed laudable in masculine performance – vary from the postwar, militant male, as embodied in Robert Taylor’s Marcus Vinicius, versus the effeminate, cowardly Nero (Peter Ustinov) in 1951, to the more introspective and receptive masculinity of 1985’s Vinicius, who gradually learns to question the validity of blind conformity to the state. Likewise, attitudes towards the state itself, though constructed around a central premise of Rome as an avatar of decadence and tyranny, are extremely mutable, reflecting, unsurprisingly, the relationship of the producing country to the concept of ‘Rome’. 1951’s Quo Vadis was a lavish Hollywood production, and falls into line with the cycle of Hollywood toga epics of the 1950s and early 1960s, in which imperial Rome stands in for the totalitarian, persecutory regimes that have recently been overthrown in World War

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II, while simultaneously acting as a vehicle for contemporaneous anxieties about US imperialism in the face of the country’s new-found status as a superpower. The 1985 mini-series, however, is an Italian production, and the process of identification/distancing with concepts of Rome and Romanness is different. In Projecting the Past (1997), Maria Wyke discusses at length the appeals to ancient Rome in Italy’s political history: as a cohesive force after unification, as a rallying cry for Fascist imperial policy, and as a complicated focus of disidentification for the neorealist movement in the postwar period. Scodel and Bettenworth situate the 1985 television adaptation of Quo Vadis as a commentary on excessive state intervention at a time of heightened security, such as was the case in the run-up to the series’ production. Imperial Rome is not so much rejected as challenged, and is explored as a site of polysemous identification for the audience. I will eliminate some of the chaos of cultural plurality in situating ‘Rome’ within the cultural lexicon by focusing, as I have outlined above, only on English-language screen texts, which narrows the focus to products from the UK and the US alone.7 Although this assumes that British and American are broadly similar, if not identical, cultural affiliations, which is an assumption that is not borne out by anything more rigorous than the most superficial interrogation of the two filmmaking traditions, it remains a useful aggregate in that it is stable and inclusive enough to provide a subject group of meaningful size over a meaningful period of time. That said, the films that will be covered in this analysis do not adhere exactly to the paradigm of Rome and Romanness outlined above – the presence of Cleopatra profoundly complicates matters. For one thing, she refuses to conform to the gender ideals expected of players in the ancient epic: for all that they appear to pay lip service to late twentieth-century feminism even the latest cycle of movies invokes a feminine ideal, defined by her gender and occupying a world in which gender roles are essentialized and rigorously maintained. This is, as I have argued above, in fact part of the appeal of the epic set in antiquity: a kind of throwback yearning for a time of simpler sexual politics, where issues of sexism and female emancipation need not – and indeed must not – be addressed, for reasons of historical ‘accuracy’, that marvellous carte blanche employed by epic filmmakers since the earliest days of cinema.

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For another, Cleopatra’s presence invokes a discourse of Orientalism. In fact, as Royster (2003) argues, much of Cleopatra’s filmic output in the earliest days of Silent Cinema is representative of the tail end of the Victorian fashion for ‘Egyptianalia’ (p 60). Indeed, this Egypto-mania marks Cleopatra’s segue from sexual Other to sexual and racial Other: Renaissance and baroque paintings like Giambattista Tiepolo’s frescoes in Palazzo Labia, Cagnacci’s ‘Death of Cleopatra’, and Jean-Baptiste Regnault’s portrait of Cleopatra usually fashioned her according to the standards of ideal beauty of their own geography, most often with long blond hair and blue eyes…. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, however, Cleopatra becomes associated with foreignness for Europeans, following Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt in 1798 (Royster, 2003: 60).

Theda Bara, who played Cleopatra in the eponymous 1917 movie, famously had her familial origins re-written by Fox Studios to reframe her as an exotic Oriental. Born Theodosia Goodman to a middle-class Jewish family in Cincinnati, the public relations department at Fox determined that their retinue of performers lacked a player of Arabic descent, and transformed Goodman into Bara: putative daughter of a Parisian actress and an Egyptian Arab (Royster, 2003: 72). It is significant that this fascination with all things Egyptian originates with Napoleon’s conquest of Egypt, and is resurrected by British Egyptologist Howard Carter’s discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamen in 1922. Both are moments of white supremacy and appropriation of Eastern territory and heritage. While the historical Cleopatra may be considered as part of this tradition of Euro-centric domination of the east, her assimilation as Other during this period of Egyptian reception affiliates her with easternness, which her fictive incarnations perform peerlessly. Indeed, I would argue, her racial whiteness, combined with her Orientalized positioning, combine to locate her as monstrous: unknowable and liminal, neither white nor black, feminine nor masculine, uncategorizable and hovering around the margins of any comfortable classificatory system. These screen Cleopatras, then, are the product of a system informed by what we can now identify as Saidean Orientalism (from Edward Said’s canonical 1978 Orientalism, which paved the academic ground for all

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later discussions of the function of ‘the Orient’ in Western discourse). Their purpose is to personify and perform the spectacle of Eastern Otherness. In other words, they are a world away from the non-Roman protagonists of their contemporary toga epics – the Christians of Quo Vadis (1912, 1925 and 1951), the Jews of Ben-Hur (1925 and 1959), and the slaves of Spartacus (1960, 2004 and the 2010 television series). This problematizes the positioning of Rome within the subset of the Cleopatramovies. Most notably, it allows for a fluidity of identification not offered by the traditional Roman paradigm in the toga genre: the audience is invited to alternately identify and disidentify with both the Romans and (because the movies are, after all, named for her) Cleopatra herself. In other toga epics, identification with Roman characters is precarious until they disavow their Romanness (see Marcellus in The Robe, 1953, as well as Vinicius in the many adaptations of Quo Vadis). This disavowal is not required for identification to be possible with the Roman characters in the Cleopatra-movies; indeed, Antony’s rejection of/by Rome is actively critiqued by the texts. The fact of this bi-polar system of identification, moreover, evidences an older functionality in the representation of Cleopatra, one which can be traced back to the imperatives of Roman political propaganda during her own lifetime. This may partially account for the possibility of identification with the Roman players: the original story is handed down to us through Roman accounts, which unquestionably privileges the Roman position. As I shall argue in Chapter 1, it also allows both Cleopatra and Antony to be configured according to the niceties of Roman oratory and invective, which is at best problematically mapped onto modern discourse, and which has contributed greatly to the essential iconography of Antony-on-screen. Conclusion There are discourses within the historical epic that are so entrenched within Western gender and identity construction that they are essentially invisible to the audience. Work on unpacking these discourses has been a project of the second half of the twentieth century and the early twentyfirst, and continues to be capricious: feminism remains a contested term,

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and, in the past 20 years, the study of masculinities has begun to take gender studies in a new direction by investigating the function and limitations of hegemonic masculinity within Western cultural and political discourse. Particularly in the past 50 or so years, gender terminology within the historical epic appeals to an earlier – and, it is implied, simpler – rhetoric of gender embodied by the strictly observed mores of antiquity. As I will argue throughout, Antony-on-screen performs a spectre of non-hegemonic masculinity, designed to fall explicitly below the paradigm evidenced by his peers. The reasons why Antony specifically should be so suitable to this project are, as I shall examine in the following chapter, rooted in Roman propaganda: since Antonius the historical figure can never be truly ‘knowable’ to a modern audience, we are left to decode a host of Roman metaphors which have been corrupted by translation from Latin and by time. In much the same way that a civilization 2,000 years from now might ponder our contemporary colloquialisms (who knows, for example, how the phrase born with a silver spoon in his mouth will come across to a generation with no semantic frame of reference from which to decode it, or whether or not the niceties of differentiating between the invective crooked and bent – both of which literally mean the same, but have widely divergent vernacular applications – will be lost in translation), Roman political writings that have come down through antiquity are coded in such a way that their intended audiences will have been able to interpret the colourful language as rhetoric, but later societies have tended to miss the propagandistic intent. Thus the Augustan invective feeds the fictive interpretations, which in turn further entrenches the Augustan invective in the popular consciousness. I now want to consider the ways in which the Antonian mythography has been translated into the complex semiological system that is Antony-on-screen.

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1 Marcus Antonius: A Life in Invective

Figure 1 Engraving of Marcus Antonius (c.1880)

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Introduction: Historiography and Ideology Marcus Antonius was born in the 80s bce, rose to prominence under Julius Caesar in the 50s, and died in Alexandria on 1 August 30 bce, apparently by his own hand. Thereafter begins the legend. Throughout this analysis, I will be describing the discrepancies between the screen and historical narratives in order to illustrate the extent to which Antony’s deficiencies are manifested. Yet many of these screen narratives, either explicitly or implicitly, invoke historiographical authenticity as their imperative in constructing Antony as deficient. Moreover, although the dictates of commercial filmmaking sit uneasily alongside the practice of historiography, and the screen texts regularly employ a wide degree of artistic license in translating the narrative into a consumable cultural artefact, the ‘truth claims’ invoked by these texts are not necessarily without merit. Plutarch’s Life of Antony is a study of a great man’s ruin by his own hand, while Cicero’s Philippics catalogues a litany of vices and deviance so appalling that the writer himself is obliged at one point to demur from further enumeration: ‘about Antony’s degradations and sex-crimes that is as far as I will go,’ says Cicero. ‘For there are some things which it would be indecent for me to describe’ (Phil. 2.19). How, then, is it possible to reconcile the project of this study, which is predicated on the notion that the Antony-icon is a functional misreading of history, with an historical record that appears to support the very reading that I seek to challenge? The answer to that question will be the central theme of this chapter. To understand the function of the Antonyicon in western popular culture, it is necessary to understand its function in the Roman discursive practice that created it. Inasmuch as it is ever possible to create an ideologically neutral historiography, a timeline of the basic facts of Antonius’ life can be found in the Appendix. This is intended to function as a guide to readers unfamiliar with the history of the period, in order to facilitate the discussion in this chapter, which assumes a degree of historical knowledge. However, in keeping with the chapter’s central premise, this project acknowledges the fact that there can be no such thing as a definitive characterization of Marcus Antonius the man, and that any attempt to reconstruct

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the historical figure from the fragments of surviving information – ideologically positioned as all these accounts must be – can, at best, be considered simply another reception of Mark Antony. What follows below is a detailed account of the discursive interpretation of these facts – or, to put it another way, the use that was made of various (disputed) facts of Antonius’ life by his political enemies. I shall offer examples of Roman discursive practice that would appear to problematize a straightforward acceptance of these accounts, and use this discursive practice to offer a possible explanation as to why the figure of Mark Antony has been so well established as an avatar of problematic masculine performance in the pre-cinematic era’s socio-cultural receptions of his mythology. Simply put, this chapter will examine the sources from which the mythographization of Antonius has created the Antony-icon, and attempt to situate them within a larger sphere of Roman discursive custom. Maria Wyke has noted the specific caution that should be adopted by scholars attempting to piece together an ideologically informed reading of Augustan consensus-building efforts in the early years of the principate. She discusses Augustan uses of Cleopatra, interrogating it alongside modern feminist attempts to unpack the invective and arrive at a ‘neutral’ appraisal of Cleopatra, and argues that: …this redefined critical practice also draws attention to its own potential as propaganda, its capacity to control our perceptions of literature. Disinterested scholarship is declared a myth and our aesthetic judgements are placed firmly within their own historical context. Thus we may read into Augustan texts and their poetic Cleopatras a stance for or against Augustus according to our twentieth century views on autocracy, imperialism, female power and the process of first-person narrative… (Wyke, 2004: 100).

We must adopt a similar caveat when approaching the historiography of Marcus Antonius, acknowledging the impossibility of inscribing an ‘authoritative’ history of the man himself, even as we attempt to discern the probable from the invective. It is therefore exigent to address the historical record not as a history of Antonius, but as a history of Antonian historiography. This chapter will consider the forces shaping the manner in which Antony-as-avatar was

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created by Roman socio-political discourse in the late Republican period and beyond, discussing the form and intent of Roman gender invective, Augustan imperative, and evaluating the availability to the Augustan propaganda machine of certain key events in Antonius’ life. By formatting the study in this way, I aim to avoid positioning an idealized Antonius as the baseline for the study as a whole, and instead ground the tropology of Antony-as-avatar in verifiable Roman discursive practice. Key to understanding the construction of the Antony-icon is the fact that it relies so heavily either upon sources directly hostile to Marcus Antonius (Ciceronian invective is a particularly rich basis for Antony’s iconography) or strongly influenced by a socio-political backdrop that can be broadly categorized as anti-Antonian. Since it is impossible to divorce the semantics of anti-Antonian invective from their socio-political moment, I will start by situating these texts within the discursive framework of late Republican and early imperial Rome, before moving on to a specific consideration of the operation of ideology and invective within the ancient sources themselves. Roman Masculinity as a Representational Strategy Arguably the most significant theoretical contribution of gender studies to our understanding of the semantics of hegemony is the positioning of gender as a discursive construct. Situated outside of biological sexual difference, ‘gender’ becomes an ontological device for defining and managing the body and its function within a wider societal whole. If we imagine gender as a tool for policing difference – for defining the ‘me’ as well as the ‘not me’ – many otherwise naturalized practices, including an almost invisible language of domination (hegemony), are brought sharply into focus. Hegemony and its function in the regulation of masculinity will be explored in detail in Chapter 6. For now, I want to note that masculinity – its construction, performance and rhetorical significance – was a discursive preoccupation in ancient Rome. It could not be otherwise, perhaps, in an imperialist culture in which language and the semantics of identity were mobilized in support of territorial expansionism and a policy of domination and subordination to a Roman ideal. While

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there is clearly no ineluctable link between the biological fact of maleness and the philosophy of domination (and it is manifestly outside the scope of this project to explore the pervasive and axiomatic connection between male and superior), it is nevertheless the case that post-colonialist studies of the mechanics of colonial justification repeatedly find the necessity of colonial governance articulated in gendered terms.1 Domination/subordination is reified in terms of masculine/feminine: the imperialist culture is gendered masculine, the colonized culture feminine, and the superiority of the former over the latter is rationalized, to a significant extent, on these grounds. Indeed, as Catharine Edwards has observed, this is precisely the strategy adopted to defuse the anxiety inherent in the Roman subjugation of Greece: Roman intellectual identity acknowledged its debt to ancient Greek philosophy, but required a rhetorical justification for the seizure of Greek territory. Edwards situates the tension embodied in the semantics of philhellenism as the expression of this anxiety: For many educated Romans, familiarity with Greek literature, Greek art and Greek customs (as well as the purchase and consumption of Greek goods) was a crucial source of prestige, of cultural capital… For that reason, ‘Greece’ posed a threat to the stability of Roman elite society. Gendering Greek culture as ‘feminine’ and philhellenes as ‘effeminate’ can be seen both in general terms as a strategy to defuse the threat to Rome’s cultural identity and, in terms of conflicts between individuals, as a strategy to limit the value of Greek sophistication to those Romans who possessed it to an unusual degree (1993: 95).

Whether Roman imperial expansionism was fed by a doctrine of masculine superiority manifested in the sharply gendered division of Roman society, or the gendered division was reinforced by the language of colonialism, is not my concern here. Instead, I want to explore the ways in which this gendered language is used to express notions of dominance and power, and to examine the implications of this discursive framework in terms of the genesis of the Antony-icon. To be clear: I am specifically focusing on masculinity as it is deployed within the Roman political elite – as a mechanism for discursively

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permitting or denying entry to the public sphere, which, in keeping with the domination/subordination paradigm expounded above, is gendered male. In Roman Homosexuality: Ideologies of Masculinity In Classical Antiquity, Craig A Williams explicitly links the public/political to the masculine: ‘The Roman conceptualization of masculinity as being embodied in restraint and control, over others and oneself, informs two concepts basic to Roman masculinity: virtus and imperium,’ he says. ‘The first of these two words displays a significantly gendered quality. Derived from vir and thus etymologically meaning “manliness”, virtus came to be used of a variety of moral traits considered admirable in men – concepts that might be translated as “valor” or “virtue”. Effeminate men, of course, failed to live up to this standard’ (1999: 132). He continues: Virtus could also be related to the concept of imperium, the rule or dominion that magistrates exercised over the Roman people, generals over their armies, the Roman people as a whole over their subjects, and Roman men over women and slaves. If a Roman writer wished to wax philosophical, he could even use the imagery of imperium to describe the dominion that reason ought to exercise over emotions (Williams, 1999: 133–134).

The subordination of emotions as signifier of masculinity is a concept that will be revisited in detail in Chapter 4, as it is repeatedly and conspicuously employed in the construction of the Antony-icon. For now, however, I want to investigate the specific devices by which this hermeneutic construct of public/masculine is mobilized into the form of a challenge to political authority. Roman Political Invective While it is possible to discern the broad details of Antonius’ life from contemporary or near-contemporary historiographical accounts, it remains the case that much of this information is derived from sources either explicitly hostile towards him or else written after he had passed from living memory, and, therefore, based on pro-Augustan sources. When Shakespeare’s Caesar calls ‘Th’ abstract of all faults, that all men follow’ (Antony and Cleopatra, 1.4.9–10), for example, he is drawing from

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Plutarch’s Life of Marcus Antonius, written in second-century Roman Greece some 150 years after Antonius’ death settled the propaganda war in Augustus’ favour. Moreover, as Edwards argues, the catalogue of vices by which modern audiences know Antony are very much in keeping with Roman oratorical convention, suggesting that they might more properly be read as political artefacts. ‘Such claims functioned as vivid and highly entertaining assertions about the general character of their victims,’ she says. ‘They also served to display the orator’s mastery of the traditional vocabulary of invective. Rhetorical tradition emphasises the importance of inventio, “elaboration”, in all branches of the orator’s art’ (Edwards, 1993: 10). Edwards goes on to point out that the very flaws that Cicero levels against his political opponents (not only, we should note, Antonius) were, in fact, elsewhere laid against Cicero himself. ‘In Cicero’s case we are happy to dismiss these lurid allegations of adultery, gluttony, luxury and avarice as false or exaggerated,’ says Edwards (1993: 10). Perhaps if Antonius had triumphed at Actium, Shakespeare might have had Antony, restored to the paradigm, musing on the nature of Cicero’s flawed masculinity. Historical legacy might not quite be a craps shoot, but it very much depends on who finishes in first place. Chapters 5 and 6 will examine in detail where Augustus leaves off and modern additions to the Antony-myth begin, but for now I want to examine how the parent narrative uses Roman invective to construct the Antony that has been handed down to us. Edwards talks at length about the oratorical devices of incontinentia, which loosely translates as a lack of self-control, and mollitia, which connotes an effeminacy of person or behaviour, and I want to begin by exploring these ideas. Mollitia is, to some extent, an easier concept to absorb, although its rhetorical application does not always translate well from Roman mores into contemporary behaviours. Edwards quotes Plutarch’s account of Julius Caesar, in which Cicero comforts his own concerns about Caesar’s early ambition with the fact he observed Caesar ‘scratching his head with one finger’ (Life of Julius Caesar, 4.4, in Edwards, 1993: 63). The significance, argues Edwards, is that the gesture, in Roman discourse, is indicative of mollitia, in much the same way that a modern speaker might talk pejoratively about a ‘limp wrist’. There is no literal

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connection between the action and the interpretation, but cultural context fills in the blanks. ‘Mollitia in a man was sometimes taken to imply an inclination to submit oneself sexually to other men, sometimes an inability to act in a forceful “manly” way,’ explains Edwards (1993: 63–64). ‘Power and sexual passivity seemed, for Cicero and many other Romans, incompatible.’ Incontinentia is an extension of this idea of effeminacy, but more precisely defined. Incontinentia is coded feminizing because the subjection of bodily desires to rational will was considered by the Romans to be a singularly male quality. ‘In the eyes of Roman moralists, the effeminate were like women in playing a “passive” sexual role but at the same time they were like women in having an excessive interest in sex,’ says Edwards (1993: 81). ‘The appetites of the effeminate were uncontrollable. They were adulterers as well as catamites.’ This ‘excessive interest’ need not only apply to sex: alcoholic or sumptuary excess, or a penchant for excessive luxury, would also qualify a man for castigation in these terms. Edwards even cites the invective used against Pompey, who was accused of incontinentia on the grounds that he was immoderately in love with his fourth wife, Julia Caesaris (1993: 85). A man who could not govern his own desires, according to Roman rhetorical mores, could not be trusted to govern others. Both mollitia and incontinentia, by invoking the gendered division of public: masculine and private: feminine in Ancient Rome, were used to imply that the subject was unfit to hold political office. If the public sphere was an exclusively male space, a challenge to one’s masculinity was, by definition, a challenge to one’s ability to govern. It is therefore of great significance that much of the language of Antony’s iconography is essentially gendered, and follows these specific, feminizing codes of attack. As I will show, much of Antony’s parent narrative adheres to this device. The Sources There are, of course, a plethora of sources from which historians have sought to piece together a picture of Antonius/Antony. Many, if not all, are explicitly hostile towards Antonius, perhaps because they are ideologically opposed to him, because they are writing in a period in which it is

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inadvisable to be other than ideologically opposed to him, or because they are writing in a period in which the benefits of the Augustan regime have been amply demonstrated. I will, however, focus attention disproportionately on two sources in particular: Cicero and Plutarch. In doing so, I am not attempting to deny or elide the contribution of the multiplicity of other contemporaneous sources to the cultural construction of the Antony-icon. Cassius Dio, Flavius Josephus, Suetonius et al – all these accounts are critical in building an historiographical portrait of Marcus Antonius. An historiographical portrait, however, is not the intention of this chapter or this project. I am not attempting to evaluate all the available ancient sources for their contribution to the historiography of Marcus Antonius; rather, I am specifically concerned with situating the evolution of the Antonymyth in terms of the cultural currency afforded to it by certain privileged sources, and attempting to offer a metonymical alternative reading for these sources in line with Roman discursive practice. Therefore, while I concur that the works of Josephus and Cassius Dio et al are certainly of incalculable value to a modern-day biographer of Marcus Antonius, and that their opinions and ideological agenda have certainly shaped the formation of the Antony-icon, certain socio-cultural conditions – largely beyond the aegis of this project – have afforded greater value to the Antony of writers such as Cicero and Plutarch, lending their characterizations a familiarity that has effectively ‘ghosted’ the Antony-icon on screen. This is not to say that the Antonius of Caesar’s Civil War makes no appearance on screen (indeed, I would argue that we have Caesar to thank for Antony’s – incongruously – rare appearances as a soldier, where he is often able to acquit himself well), and it would clearly be nonsensical to argue in favour of the cultural privilege afforded to the works of Cicero but deny that such privilege similarly reifies Caesar’s writings. Caesar’s work, however, makes no reference to Antonius the man, eliding his personality in favour of his actions, in keeping with Caesar’s authorial style. As such, it is much less useful in terms of constructing the Antonyicon, and can be safely set to one side – not ignored, but not foregrounded either – when evaluating the sources of Antony’s iconography and their discursive motivation.

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Cicero The antagonism that existed between Cicero and Antonius is abundantly testified in the former’s surviving works, most notably the Philippics, which were explicitly written to discredit Antonius at the height of his power in the early 40s bce. Their importance to the cultural construction of the Antony-icon can hardly be overstated, for several reasons – some obvious, and others more covert. In the first instance, as stated above, we must consider the enormous cultural and pedagogical privilege afforded to Cicero as an ancient source. In his Preface to Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome’s Greatest Politician (2001), Anthony Everitt argues that, although the decline of Latin as a scholastic discipline has lately begun to impact Cicero’s celebrity, his influence in Western politico-cultural civilization remains both profound and readily identifiable. ‘For the founding fathers of the United States and their political counterparts in Great Britain, the writings of Tully (as his name was Anglicized) were the foundation of their education,’ he argues. ‘John Adams’s first book and proudest possession was his Cicero’ (Everitt, 2001: vii). Given the significance of romanitas in defining and delineating the national identity of the nascent United States of America – and its continuing influence, especially as manifested in the mythic space of the Hollywood historical epic in which the Antony-icon of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries is himself circumscribed – the impact of Cicero’s works on modern discursive practice becomes clear. Everitt continues: For the Christian Fathers, he was a model of the good pagan. St. Jerome, ashamed of what he felt was an excessive partiality for a heathen author, would undertake a fast, so that he could study Cicero afterwards. Petrarch’s rediscovery of his works gave a powerful steer to the Renaissance and by the age of sixteen Queen Elizabeth had read nearly all his works. Cicero’s prose style left its mark on Dr. Johnson and Edward Gibbon. The cadences of his oratory can be heard in the speeches of Thomas Jefferson and William Pitt (not to mention Abraham Lincoln and, only half a century ago, Winston Churchill) (Everitt, 2001: viii).

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This history of cultural celebrity has had the effect of dogmatizing Cicero’s characterizations of his peers. Moreover, part of the issue in using his writings to construct an account of Marcus Antonius is that Antonius’ refutations do not survive, essentially allowing Cicero’s invective the authoritative voice. However, I would also suggest that the problematic mapping of incontinentia and mollitia onto non-Roman discourse is a key factor in defining Cicero’s influence on the construction of the Antony-icon. I will expand on this notion below, but for the time being I want to note that, while the pejorative intention of Cicero’s Philippics is immediately evident, their allegorical nature is obfuscated by socio-cultural variance between the intended audience and a modern reader. John T Ramsey, in his Commentary on Philippics I-II, characterizes the Second Philippic (from which, as I will argue, much of the Ciceronian contribution to the Antony-icon is drawn) as an epideictic, and explains: ‘The goal of such an oration is primarily to impress upon the audience a certain point of view, usually one involving the praise or blame of a particular figure’ (2003: 159). Furthermore, he argues: ‘C[icero]’s main goal in this speech is to present a highly negative picture of Mark Antony, and of the ten topoi identified by [Wilhelm] Süss [1910] 245–267 as commonly occurring in invective (nine of which he illustrates in his analysis of C[icero]’s In Pisonem), six are found in the Second Philippic: (1) oddities of physical appearance, including eccentricity of clothing, demeanour, and deportment… (2) immorality, including prostitution and homosexual activities… (3) avarice and thievery… (4) extravagance and prodigality… (5) enmity towards family… and (6) cowardice in battle’ (2003: 159–160). Gesrine Manuwald reiterates these topoi and adds: ‘In political invective these reproaches are put forward as assertions or, perhaps more frequently, as ironic remarks, when the orator ridicules the deficiencies of his opponent and thereby increases his discredit’ (2007: 107). I will examine these in detail as they arise in Cicero’s account of Antonius’ life, but for now I want to note that they are here defined as a rhetorical device, habitually used in invective of the period. While this does not, of course, preclude the possibility that Cicero’s accusations are based on fact, that they conform so neatly to established oratorical

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convention makes it more difficult to regard the Second Philippic as an outpouring of genuine grievance. However, a problematization of this more straightforward reading of the Philippics as a fact-based accusation requires a specialized knowledge of Roman political invective that is likely to be outside the scope of the casual reader. Therefore, while the animosity between Antonius and Cicero was undoubtedly rooted in both the personal and the political (Plutarch cites as an early causative factor Cicero’s role in condemning to death Antonius’ stepfather for his part in the Catiline conspiracy), the political motivation behind accusations of gluttony, lust and other bodily excess does not translate clearly as such, and is more readily identifiable as a commentary on Cicero’s distaste for Antonius’ personal habits. Given the authority afforded to Cicero’s characterizations, a politically motivated rhetorical attack achieves lasting fame as a personal assessment of Antonius’ profligate tendencies. In this respect, Cicero’s biographizing of Antonius is of key consideration when unpacking the Antonian metonymy in popular culture. Plutarch The rationale behind examining Cicero’s characterization of Antonius/ Antony should be clear, given the prolificacy of the former’s writings and the fact that the two men were contemporaries and interacted repeatedly during their respective careers. However, a reliance on Plutarch – a secondary source – may appear to be more difficult to justify in a project of this nature. For one thing, while he is distant enough from the screen age to qualify as an ancient source, he is by no means contemporaneous to the period of Antonius’ life, being born around 75 years after Antonius’ death (Pelling, 1999: 1). This raises a second key concern: since the object of this chapter is to determine the extent to which invective against Antonius, which has been critical in evolving his screen iconography, can be positioned as, if not quite metaphorical, at least ideologically informed, how can we argue that Plutarch – a Greek, living in the second century ce – will follow the same norms and rhetorical devices as a late Republican/early imperial Roman source? The answer is, of course, that we cannot.

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Yet this does not mean that we should disregard Plutarch’s usefulness to this study; quite the contrary, in fact. Plutarch may be a secondary source, but his reception of the sources at his disposal is, arguably, sufficient to include his Life of Antony as, if not itself a piece of invective, then a reproduction of Roman political invective, albeit for didactic rather than specifically pejorative purposes. This much is evident simply in his selection of Antonius as a suitable subject for his moralizing project. Moreover, many of Plutarch’s sources will have understood and utilized the same rhetorical devices as Cicero (and, indeed, Cicero himself was certainly one of the sources Plutarch used) in producing their accounts of Antonius – and a number of these sources have been otherwise lost to posterity: the Histories of Asinius Pollio, and, tantalizingly, the autobiography of Augustus himself (Pelling, 1999: 26–29; Scott-Kilvert and Pelling, 2010: 323). Finally, of course, there is the fact that Plutarch’s Antony is, largely unedited, the source for Shakespeare’s Antony, which, as I will argue in Chapter 3, is the template for the Antony of the screen age. While this is not necessarily a factor in electing to analyse the patterns of Roman political invective in Plutarch’s text, it certainly makes a compelling case for investigating the rhetorical and discursive function of the Antony he portrays. Simply put, it is difficult to overstate the importance of Plutarch in the construction of Antony’s screen iconography. It may be true that ‘Screenwriters almost never read Plutarch’ (Daughtery, 2008: 144), but they certainly reference him: the Life of Marcus Antonius is explicitly cited by two of the texts under analysis in this study: Cleopatra (1963) and Rome (2005–7), which is arguably the text making the most strident truth claims, as I shall discuss in later chapters. Furthermore, Margaret George, author of The Memoirs of Cleopatra, on which Cleopatra (1999) is loosely based, says she used Plutarch’s Life of Antony as one of her ‘sources for a personal feeling about [Antony, Cleopatra and Julius Caesar]’ (1997: 1136). This is, at least in part, because the cultural veneration of Shakespeare has afforded a level of meta-fame to his sources. ‘Plutarch’ (as a signifying concept, rather than as a source or an historical entity), therefore, has been reified as a metonym for ‘historical validity’, by invoking the name of a reasonably recognizable ancient source which, through Shakespeare,

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retains strong pop-culture links to Antony, as evidence of historical verisimilitude. As such, The Life of Marcus Antonius has entered Antony’s popular cultural lexicon so pervasively that it has become his most readily recognizable source of reference. All of which, of course, ignores Plutarch’s original moralistic objective and assumes a level of ideological neutrality that the text does not necessarily support. Plutarch’s intention may not have been to distort historical fact (and, indeed, Pelling states that, although Plutarch’s intentions were moralistic rather than precisely historiographical, he certainly did not believe that he was distorting the essence of his characters’ personalities – Pelling, 1999: viii), but his imperative was to lay bare the flaws he perceived in Antonius’ conduct by way of illustrating to his readers the perils inherent in making similar choices. ‘Plutarch… shapes his material to underscore the moral judgements that inform his biographical narrative,’ says A.B. Bosworth in History and Artifice in Plutarch’s Eumenes. ‘The moral criteria also determine the selection of sources. Plutarch may include material not for its intrinsic plausibility, but because it has the right emphasis for his general interpretation’ (1992: 65). Pelling concurs: ‘P[lutarch] had thought hard about how history should be written, criticizing Herodotus on clearly elaborated historical principles, and writing a work on “how to discover historical truth” ’ (1999: 8). The construction of ‘historical truth’ as something that needs to be ‘discovered’ is in itself revealing. It assumes that the standard histories of the day – of, for example, Thucydides or indeed Herodotus – which prefer to frame history as a chronological sequence of events, in some way miss or obfuscate this ‘truth’. In this sense, the ‘truth’ to which Plutarch refers is conceived of in terms of fundamental tropes of human nature. This is not to argue that there is anything essentially more ‘true’ in a politicohistorical narrative than in a purely biographical account, only to situate Plutarch’s imperative as essentially agenda-led. ‘P[lutarch]’s moral points centre on individual virtue and vice, wisdom and moderation, lessons which would be useful in any sort of public or private life,’ says Pelling: He is much less interested than Tacitus, Appian, or Dio in analyzing the way politics in a great nation really work. That sort of point is more suited to narrative history than to biography, and he leaves it for a different type of writer and audience (1999: 9).

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The decision to write the Life of Antonius is, therefore, predicated on the assumption that it is rife with misconduct, errors of judgement and vice. The net result is that the reader is handed an ideological position without even opening the text. Moreover, Pelling notes that ‘P[lutarch] had plenty of material, but it did not always give him what he wanted. The problem might be simply a gap, notably the gap of A[ntonius]’s youth. More often the material might not suit the portrait of A[ntonius] which he was developing’ (1999: 33). In such circumstances, Pelling suggests, Plutarch was content to economize on the truth, pass off his own conclusions as fact, or quote out of context (1999: 33–36) in order to ‘sharpen contrasts to a crude chiaroscuro’ (1999: 34). In short, Plutarch himself was aware that the history he was providing was not strictly attributable to the historical record, but was in fact carefully stacked in order to present Antonius as a paradigm of power corrupted by fundamental personal flaws. ‘In this type of historical discourse it was certainly true that the verisimilitude of the narration was more important than the bald truth,’ says Luis A Garcia Moreno. He continues: We must not forget, either, that [the ancient sources’] criteria for verisimilitude were quite a bit wider than ours. Plutarch, as a good Aristotelian, also believed in the superiority of poetry over history since the former was closer to the essence of things and further from contingency and chance. And to bring as close as possible the second to the first it was obvious that it was necessary to abandon the narrative forms inaugurated by Thucydides and Polybius in historiography and return to the traditional ones, in which, instead of political analyses, anecdote and particulars would occupy the greater part of the discourse. The anecdotes should generally reveal the authentic nature of their psyche, their vices or virtues (1992: 143).

When we consider his importance to the Antonian iconography, it becomes clear that divorcing Plutarch from his ideological position and invoking his name as an historiographical truth claim, while it may be innocently done, has important repercussions for the positioning of Antony-on-screen.

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A Life in Invective The rest of this chapter will be used to establish an historicized basis for the tropes that will be discussed at length in Chapter 4. As such, their detailed application in establishing a metonymy of gendered invective will be investigated more fully in that chapter, and this present discussion will serve to reference their inception within the ancient sources. Broadly following Ramsey’s enumeration of the topoi of invective, I want to categorize these tropes according to a wider taxonomy of rhetoric that maps more closely onto the iconography of Antony-on-screen. This encompasses the following: • Bodily excess (gluttony, lust, decadence) • Gender reversal (vanity, clothing, emotionality) • Specifically political output (ineptitude, un-Roman behaviour) These can be viewed as a hierarchy of symbolism: bodily excess infers gender reversal, while gender reversal and bodily excess both imply political ineptitude and un-Romanness. The analysis will be divided into two categories – pre-prominence and post-prominence. This may be in some ways misleading, in that it implies that the sources from which it is drawn date from separate periods of Antonius’ life, which is not the case: all of the sources considered below are a response to his rise to prominence. Therefore, the information we have concerning Antonius’ early life is filtered through the lens of rhetorical imperative and is necessarily reflexive. For the sake of clarity, however, I have elected to employ this temporal subdivision in order to demonstrate the rhetoric of fundamental corruption that has been deployed against Antonius/Antony. This is not a political attack as we might understand it in a contemporary sense, although the language used is, in Roman terms, unquestionably political: these sources seek to position him as unfit-to-rule on the grounds that his very nature tends towards the dissolute and depraved. This is, to a greater or lesser extent, the policy adopted in the construction of Antony-on-screen.

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Pre-prominence Of the scant information we have concerning Antonius’ youth, much of it is derived from Cicero’s Philippics. It is Cicero alone who intimates that Antonius was married and/or had children prior to his first marriage to his cousin Antonia. Gesrine Manuwald’s translation of Philippics 3–9 suggests that the wording of Cicero’s allusions to Fadia, daughter of the freedman Quintus Fadius, implies that they were not formally married, but that Antonius acknowledged their children as his own (2007: 385). Eleanor Goltz Huzar concedes the point but specifically refers to a marriage (1978: 25). Whatever the case, Goltz Huzar states that ‘Cicero’s references suggest that Fadia and the children were all dead at the latest by 44 bce’ (1978: 25). It is also from Cicero that we first have the information that Antonius and his close friend, Caius Scribonius Curio, were lovers. Whilst this accusation does not find its way into Antony’s iconography (which is, in itself, noteworthy, and will be examined in detail in Chapter 2), it is nevertheless critically important in constituting the Antony-icon. Cicero situates the origins of the affair in Antonius’ fiscal problems as a young man: Your bankruptcy, in early adolescence – do you remember that? Your father’s fault, you will say. Certainly; and what a truly filial self-defence! …Then you graduated to man’s clothing – or rather it was woman’s as far as you were concerned. At first you were just a public prostitute with a fixed price: quite a high one, too. But very soon Curio intervened and took you off the streets, promoting you, one might say, to wifely status, and making a sound, steady, married woman of you (Cic. Phil. 2.18).

Antonius, according to Cicero, had found himself in debt to the tune of 6 million sesterces (approximately equivalent to $9,000,0002), for which Curio had stood surety. The burden of the debt eventually fell on Curio’s father, who forbade his son from further association with Antonius (Cic. Phil. 2.18).

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Cicero continues: No boy bought for sensual purposes was ever so completely in his master’s power as you were in Curio’s. On countless occasions his father threw you out of his house. He even stationed guards to keep you out! Nevertheless, helped by nocturnal darkness, urged on by sensuality, compelled by the promised fee – in, through the roof, you climbed. The household found these repulsive goings on completely unendurable. I wonder if you realize that I have a very thorough knowledge of what I am speaking about. Cast your mind back to the time when Curio’s father lay weeping in his bed. The son, likewise in tears, threw himself at my feet and begged me to help you… The young man loved you so passionately that he swore he would leave the country because he could not bear to be kept apart from you (Cic. Phil. 2.18).

Certainly, as Everitt has pointed out, ‘Cicero should have known what he was talking about, for he was brought in as mediator and persuaded Curio’s father to pay off his son’s debts’ (2003: 120). However, recall Ramsey’s and Manuwald’s iteration of the topoi of the epideictic, and it is already evident that this account should be treated with caution: in this anecdote alone, Cicero employs three of the six themes of invective identified by Ramsey within this Philippic (2, 4 and 5). Furthermore, consider the salient points of the narrative (after which point Cicero claims modesty and refuses to discuss Antonius’ ‘degradations and sex-crimes’ any further): • Antonius is accused of profligate spending • Antonius is accused of assuming the ‘wifely status’ in a sexual relationship with another man • Antonius is accused of participating in a romantic relationship in which overwhelming feelings of love cause one or both parties to act immoderately with regards to the other. All three can be readily mapped onto the discursive constructs of mollitia and/or incontinentia. I shall consider them as they arise in Cicero’s invective.

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Profligacy equates to Ramsey’s fourth topos, and is an extension of the concept of incontinentia, or lack of self-control. Catharine Edwards explains: ‘Roman moralists harp on the damage done by the descendants of noble families who squander the family fortune and run up vast debts, drinking, feasting, whoring and gambling. Ruin and shame fall on the individual and the family as a consequence. And this has implications for the Roman social hierarchy in general. Individuals, driven by the desire for sensual gratification, fritter away their substance, undermining the foundations of the Roman state’ (1993: 175). Not only, therefore, has the concept been semantically linked to a host of other anxieties made manifest in the body (drinking, whoring, gambling, and so on), but it has been implicated in the decline of the res publica itself. This has, as I will discuss, considerable resonance with later charges levelled against Antonius, and with his construction in popular culture. Moreover, Antonius’ heavy debts as a young man are later more firmly mapped onto specific bodily excesses. I shall address these as they fall chronologically in regards to specific periods of his life, but for now suffice it to note that Antonius’ early bankruptcy is subsequently echoed in immoderate spending and consumption, following clear semantic links to the established discourse of unfitness-to-rule. It is for this reason that, whatever the truth of the historical Antonius’ solvency or otherwise, Cicero’s accusations against him in this respect must be considered outside of historiographical concern and as part of a meta-narrative of Antonius’ life, designed to situate Antonius-as-leader in an ideologically familiar position. Likewise, the charges relating to his relationship with Curio must be treated with caution. In a very real sense, the ‘truth’ or otherwise of these accusations is entirely beside the point: what is of concern to the present argument is how these accusations were designed to be received by their intended audience. Considered alongside Ramsey’s second topos, it is necessary to understand the ideological motivation of the allegations and their rhetorical function. Catharine Edwards discusses at length the key function of sexuality – and particularly transgressive sexuality – in delineating fitness-to-rule: Sexual relationships were constructed as relationships of domination and subordination, of superiority and inferiority, in Roman moral and social

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discourse…. What mattered was whether one took an ‘active’ or ‘passive’ role. To be ‘active’ was to be ‘male’. No Roman portrays himself as willingly playing a ‘passive’ role (Edwards, 1993: 70).

Moreover, she notes: ‘In many cases to accuse a man of being susceptible to sexual penetration by other men was more a vivid metonymy for a generalised and pejorative claim that he was effeminate rather than an accusation that could be directly related to the sexual preferences of the victim of the insult’ (Edwards, 1993: 68). Craig A Williams concurs: ‘According to the prime directive of masculine sexual behavior, a Roman man who wished to retain his claim to full masculinity must always be thought to play the insertive role in penetrative acts, whether with males or females; if he was thought to have sought the receptive role he was liable to being mocked as effeminate’ (1999: 137). I will discuss the problematic mapping of Roman male/male sexual activity onto a modern discourse of homosexuality (and its concomitant implications for the positioning of the Antony-icon) in Chapter 2. For now, I want to discuss the configuration of male homoerotic desire in Roman discourse. While it would not be accurate to claim that the gender of one’s sexual partner was of no importance in the performance of Roman socio-cultural norms, it is certainly true that sexuality was not categorized in line with a hetero-/homosexual binary, and this presents considerable difficulty in terms of mapping Roman sexual practice onto modern discourse. In fact, when positioning sexual behaviour as transgressive, Roman invective makes greater use of a discourse of impudicitia, another term that has no direct modern equivalent. Williams cites Suetonius’ pithy description of Julius Caesar as ‘every woman’s man and every man’s woman’ (Suet. Jul. 52) as an illuminating example of impudicitia at work. ‘The distribution of Caesar’s vices is neatly effected,’ says Williams. ‘As the adulteries are covered by “every woman’s man” (omnium mulierum virum) so impudicitia corresponds to “every man’s woman” (omnium virorum mulierem). The latter phrase has particular resonance to Caesar’s relationship with King Nicomedes… an affair to which Suetonius himself elsewhere alludes in terms of Caesar’s damaged pudicitia’ (1999: 191). Williams further argues that pudicitia/impudicitia is precisely the rhetoric at work in Cicero’s charge of a relationship between Antony and Curio:

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Upon assuming the toga virilis (a step usually taken between one’s fifteenth and seventeenth years), Cicero maliciously claims, Antony began a promising career – in prostitution – and soon settled down to a comfortable marriage – as Curio’s bride. But the stately matrona is too flattering an image for Antony: rather, he was like a slave-boy whom a man buys to satisfy his lusts. The wicked invective fills in the background to an earlier passage in the speech that deploys the rhetoric of pudicitia. Denying that Antony had been his student, Cicero adds the barbed comment that if he had been, it would have been far better both for Antony’s reputation and for his pudicitia; but even if Antony had wanted to study with Cicero, Curio would not have allowed him to do so (1999: 192).

Again, I am not precluding the possibility of an historical basis for a sexual relationship between Antony and Curio, simply that its deployment in Cicero’s invective neatly encompasses too many of the orator’s rhetorical goals for it to be regarded unproblematically. Not only does Cicero effectively eviscerate Antony’s pudicitia, and, by extension, his masculine performance, but he also specifically calls attention to his own exemplary morals and masculinity. Moreover, a charge of ‘penetrability’ inescapably links Antony to another pejorative Roman discursive category, the cinaedus. The iconography of the cinaedus is not necessarily fixed, as Williams explains (1999: 193–197), but he can usefully be conceived of as ‘a “nonman” who has broken the rules of masculine comportment and whose effeminate disorder might well be embodied in the particular symptom of seeking to be penetrated’ (Williams, 1999: 197). This description and its associations resonate clearly with the characterization of Antonius in Cicero’s invective. The charges of Antonius’ assumption of ‘the wifely position’ in his relationship with Curio, therefore, speak to a wider discourse of gender reversal, where Antonius = passive = ‘non-man’. Moreover, Cicero’s condemnation of the passionate love between Curio and Antonius can also be mapped onto the construction of the Antony/ Cleopatra narrative, in which Antony is prostrated by devotion to his lover. I will elaborate on this in greater detail in the next section, wherein I will consider the events of Antonius’ political and military career (and specifically the manner in which these have contributed to his iconography);

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however, it seems prudent to note at this point that accusations of immoderate love were not unique to this later relationship. Cicero was dead before Antonius’ alliance with Cleopatra began in 41 bce, and thus was unable to make use of this more familiar trope in his invectives – yet the fact that the same rhetorical device is used against Antonius with regards to an earlier relationship (and one which, it should be noted, is similarly positioned in terms of its capacity to scandalize) demonstrates that it does not take a Cleopatra in the bedroom to position Antonius as susceptible to extremes of emotion. Post-Prominence Cicero’s contribution to the construction of the Antony-icon remains valuable for the period between Antonius’ ascension to power (first as Caesar’s close associate, and later on Antonius’ own merit) and Cicero’s death in the proscriptions of 43 bce. Indeed, his Philippics, as I have discussed, have been fundamental in establishing Antonius for posterity as the profligate performer of unstable masculinity. Clearly, however, the final 13 years of Antonius’ life must draw their historiographical evidence elsewhere. For this, I would argue, we must look to Plutarch. This section, therefore, will cover both sources – Cicero and Plutarch – as applicable in interrogating those items of invective that have become the foundations of the Antony-icon. Much of the early portion of this period of Antonius’ life is glossed over in constructing the Antony-icon. There are several reasons for this. Firstly, as mentioned above, our information on Antonius’ military prowess is largely drawn from Caesar’s Civil Wars, which, in contrast to the character-driven studies of Cicero and Plutarch et al, are utilitarian and action-oriented, and thus of little use in reifying the Antony-icon’s performance of deficient masculinity. Flowing from this point is the fact that, however well Antonius may have acquitted himself in Caesar’s commentary, it is specifically Caesar’s commentary – designed as a piece of self-promotion by a man who was extremely gifted at mythologizing himself. Where Caesar’s Gallic campaign or his struggles with Pompey are shown on screen, they are, unsurprisingly, a feature of Caesar’s history, in which Antony appears in a supportive role only. It should be noted

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that, thus far, it has been the exception rather than the rule to feature this early period, being a characteristic of twenty-first-century texts exclusively, and absent from twentieth-century narratives (which, focusing on Cleopatra, generally begin with Caesar’s arrival in Egypt). Nevertheless, where Antony’s time in Gaul or Greece, or indeed his early political career, is shown, elements of later invective (such as lechery) are retroactively invoked to castigate him. There is, however, little evidence of the invective that was actively mobilized against this period – for example, where Cicero accuses Antonius of following Gabinius to Alexandria ‘in defiance of the Senate, and of patriotism, and of the will of heaven’, since, in Gabinius’ eyes, ‘he could do no wrong’ (Cic. Phil. 2.19). The Antonyicon’s perfidy against Rome is a feature of later invective, and springs from the orientalizing influence of Cleopatra, as well as his love for her. I will consider the categories cited above in turn. Cicero provides possibly the most colourful exposition of the first – bodily excess – when he describes Antonius in the Second Philippic as ‘a drink-sodden, sex-addled wreck’ (Cic. Phil. 2.3) – a description that demonstrated its continuing resonance when it was copied verbatim into one of the most recent receptions of the Antony-icon (Rome, 2007.3). However, the theme of bodily excess is common to many of the ancient sources, Plutarch included. Plutarch, however, is less openly condemnatory of these qualities in Antonius/Antony, acknowledging them as a significant source of his popularity. Discussing Antonius’ cultivation of his family’s origin-myth, which had the Antonii descended directly from Hercules, Plutarch situates the concomitant behaviour as aberrant while refraining from making the explicit semantic link between bodily excess and fitness-to-rule that Cicero invokes in his rhetoric: And indeed it was these same ‘Herculean’ qualities that the fastidious found so offensive – his swaggering air, his ribald talk, his fondness for carousing in public, sitting down by his men as he ate, or taking his food standing at the common mess table – which made his own troops delight in his company and almost worship him. His weakness for the opposite sex also showed an attractive side of his character, and even won him the sympathy of many people, for he often helped others in their love-affairs and always accepted with good humour the jokes they made about his own (Plut. Ant. 4).

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It should be noted, however, that, although Plutarch’s biography does not employ the tropes of Ciceronian invective, this is a question of style and genre rather than, necessarily, variant authorial intent. Plutarch’s stated aim is to explore the flaws in Antonius’ character that lead, inevitably, to his destruction – and the fact that this has already been accomplished at the time of writing invests the biography with a degree of teleological foreshadowing that is absent from Cicero’s invective at the time of delivery. Plutarch’s Antonius has already demonstrated the ruin to which his bodily excess must inexorably lead; Cicero is, by contrast, writing about a man at the height of his political power, and his rhetoric must strive to evidence his assertion that Antonius is unfit to govern Rome. Moreover, Plutarch’s moralizing project is less concerned with castigation than with understanding the mechanisms by which Antonius’ posited dissolute nature corrupts him. CB Pelling, indeed, states that Plutarch was not interested in exploring the histories of men he considered wholly corrupt, arguing that he needed a ‘degree of sympathetic involvement to produce a worthwhile biography’ (1992: 31). The dissolute nature, however, is taken as read: Tim Duff, in Plutarch’s Lives: Exploring Virtue and Vice (1999), explicitly calls the Demetrios3/Antonius pairing ‘the single extant pair of Lives which is explicitly said to be a negative example’ (1999: 61), but says that, rather than condemning these men as inherently evil: Plutarch appeals to the Platonic doctrine of ‘great natures’. This doctrine… presents great vice as having its roots in the same sort of people – those with great natural endowments – as great virtues. The difference is determined by education and environment. By associating Demetrios and Antony with this paradigm, Plutarch not only implies their inherent greatness but also suggests a less negative way of viewing their vice. Be that as it may, they are, still, as Plutarch himself implies in the prologue to the Demetrios-Antony, to be viewed as bad, as examples of ‘vice’ (1999: 60–61).

The fact that Antonius’ bodily corruption is able to effect both positive and negative consequences in the short term may therefore be read as illustrative of his ‘great nature’ – that which another man might have utilized in the pursuit of glorious ideals, but which is insufficient, ultimately, to

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counteract Antonius’ natural profligacy and tendency towards excess. It is worth noting, indeed, that this Plutarchian doctrine of the ‘Good Man Gone Bad’ is repeatedly invoked in positioning the feminized4 Antony of the twentieth century screen as sympathetic: to be pitied rather than castigated, although never to be emulated. The Ciceronian dilettante, on the other hand, manifests himself in the hyper-masculinized Antony of the twenty-first century, where bodily excess is reconfigured as an over-determined, performative gender display that signals its deficient masculinity through over-insistence on traditionally ‘masculine’ tropes that are now pathologized. Although the Ciceronian invective relies upon incontinentia as feminizing rhetoric to signal unfitness-to-rule, Cicero’s characterization is in many ways the clearest antecedent of the hyper-masculinized Antony – just as the political motivation behind his attacks on Antonius’ personal life is precariously translated into the popular-cultural understanding of the Antony-icon, so does the projection of a discourse of gender deviance opportunistically map onto that which is most contemporaneously relevant. In Chapter 6, I will discuss the variant threat that the hyper-masculinized male presents to the status quo vis-à-vis the feminized male, and the consequent variant mechanisms employed to interrogate and exorcise that threat within the Roman mythic space. For now, however, suffice it to say that where deviant masculinity is understood to perform its deviance through gender reversal (that is, where Antony’s behaviour causes him to cede the masculine sphere) it is, while undesirable, essentially manageable – even in excess – through pity and derision. Plutarch’s historiographical approach, with its allowances for human frailties, is clearly not the only available source, but its cultural privilege renders it the obvious ancestor of the feminized Antony. However, where deviant masculinity is epitomized through over-performance of the masculine – whether or not the performance utilizes tropes of idealized masculinity – it becomes an altogether more sinister phenomenon and must be contained. This, I would argue, is where the Ciceronian doctrine of pathological excess is employed in order to Other the Antony-icon to an extent whereby he may be expected to invoke distaste.5 Rome (2005–7) is the most obvious manifestation of this divergent imperative. Viewed on DVD, it is possible to activate a feature entitled All

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Roads Lead To Rome, which takes the form of on-screen ‘pop-up’ information boxes that supply additional historiographical information pertinent to the current scene. Where an ancient source is cited as a reference for the historical validity of the narrative, it is most frequently Plutarch – yet many of the sequences depicted are reproduced almost verbatim from Cicero’s Philippics. For example, in 2.7, Antony arrives at an early meeting of the Second Triumvirate nursing an impressive hangover. Octavian snaps ‘You’re late!’, to which Antony replies: ‘Posca’s wedding yesterday. I could not get out of bed, no matter how hard I tried. I have the most shocking headache. So you must both speak very quietly or I shall shatter into a thousand little pieces’ (Maybury, 2007.7). Posca is a fictitious character created specifically for the narrative and he performs a variety of functions within the text, but in this instance his name is standing in for Hippias the actor in this Ciceronian anecdote: With those jaws of yours, and those lungs, and that gladiatorial strength, you drank so much wine at Hippias’s wedding, Antony, that on the next day you had to be sick in full view of the people of Rome. It was a disgusting sight; even to hear what happened is disgusting. If you had behaved like that at a private dinner party, among those outsize drinking cups of yours, everyone would have regarded it as disgraceful enough. But here, in the Assembly of the Roman People, was a man holding public office, a Master of the Horse – from whom even a belch would have been unseemly – flooding his own lap and the whole platform with the gobbets of wine-reeking food he had vomited up (Cic. Phil. 2.25).

Although Antony, happily, does not vomit on screen during this sequence, it may be related thematically to a scene in 2.3, during which Plutarch’s dissertation on the same events (Ant. 9) is cited in an on-screen pop-up, and in which Antony, in conference with Cicero in the home that he has recently commandeered from the fleeing Pompey, openly urinates into a plant-pot behind Cicero’s head (2007.3). Moreover, this episode (which is also the episode in which Cicero’s ‘drink-sodden, sex-addled wreck’ barb, cited above, is delivered) explicitly references Cicero, both in the title, These Being The Words of Marcus Tullius Cicero, and the on-screen delivery of a heavily paraphrased Philippic. Much of the urination

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sequence, moreover, can be inferentially linked to Cicero’s complaints about Antonius’ usage of Pompey’s villa: ‘I pity the very walls and roof of that house. For never before had the place witnessed anything but strict propriety – fine, high-minded tradition and virtue… Yet nowadays, in his home, every dining-room is a taproom, every bedroom a brothel’ (Cic. Phil. 2.28). This pattern may be traced throughout the two key sources’ interrogation of Antonius’ character: Cicero’s tone of hyperbolic outrage versus Plutarch’s more measured enumeration of Antonius’ flaws. Indeed, Plutarch goes so far as to explicitly denounce one of Cicero’s more extravagant charges against Antonius: When [news of Antonius’ expulsion from the Senate before he could veto the proposal to have Caesar declared an Enemy of the State] reached him, Caesar broke camp and invaded Italy, and it was for this reason that Cicero in his Philippics wrote that Antony had been the cause of the civil war, just as Helen had been of the Trojan war. But this is an obvious falsehood, for Caesar was by no means easily influenced, neither was he the man to abandon his calculations on account of anger. The mere sight of Antony and Cassius dressed in rags and arriving at his camp in a hired chariot would never have persuaded him to make war upon his country on the spur of the moment, unless he had planned such an action long before (Plut. Ant. 6).

Yet, unsurprisingly (particularly since Cicero was evidently one of the sources that Plutarch employed in researching his history), their respective tropology of degeneracy is largely consistent, and the occasional disconnect is easily attributable to variant authorial interpretation. Both authors, for instance, focus on Antonius’ alleged profligacy: Cicero, as I have discussed, describes Antonius’ bankruptcy in early adulthood and uses it as a semantic link to his affair with Curio, both of which are coded feminine (through incontinentia and mollitia respectively). Plutarch is again prepared to read this quality more positively, as a manifestation of Antonius’ ‘great nature’ – here conceived of as excessive generosity: [Antony] had given orders for two hundred and fifty thousand drachmas to be presented to one of his friends, a sum which the Romans call a decies.

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His steward was dumbfounded at this command, and in order to make Antony understand the sheer size of the gift, he had the money laid out in full view of his master. As Antony passed by, he asked what this heap of coins represented, and the steward explained that this was the gift he had ordered for his friend. Antony saw that the man grudged the expense, and so he remarked: ‘I thought a decies amounted to more than that. This is just a trifle: you had better double it!’ (Plut. Ant. 4)

Although the incident is framed in a much less negative light than Cicero’s outraged account of Antonius’ adventures in bankruptcy, the presence of the steward stands in for the presumed reader, and through his dismay we are invited to read Antonius’ generosity as inappropriate. It is not uncommon for Plutarch’s moralizing message to be conveyed in this way, as Duff states: Moralism may be implicit or explicit. Explicit moralism involves direct narrational intervention, characterised in ancient criticism as ‘praise’ or ‘blame’, in which the deeds or characters of the actors are assessed on a moral scale, and sometimes a lesson drawn for the reader… The second form of moralism involves narrative without direct narrational comment; but moral issues are highlighted and often presented in such a way as to encourage in the reader a particular attitude of praise or blame. Generally, moralism in ancient historiographical works is of the second sort (Duff, 1999: 53–54).

Moreover, he goes on to state: ‘Occasionally authorial judgement is inserted into the narrative as the thoughts of protagonists or “sensible” onlookers’ (Duff, 1999: 55). While the device invoked above is less explicit than the delivery of a direct commentary by a major character, it nevertheless effects a combination of methodologies in order to present a moral position for the reader. Furthermore, this implicit critique of Antonius’ actions by Duff ’s notion of the ‘ “sensible” onlooker[s]’ echoes an almost ubiquitous trope by which criticism is delivered in Antony’s screen narratives: the insertion of a performer of paradigm masculinity into the text (which will be investigated in detail in Chapter 5). For the tropology of the second category – gender reversal – we are much more heavily reliant on Plutarch for enumeration of Antonius’

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performance of directly mappable manifestations of deviance. This is, I would argue, for two reasons. Firstly, Cicero’s invective assumes the mappability of incontinentia and mollitia onto feminized and unfit for public sphere, and largely relies on scandalizing action to deliver his rhetoric of unfit-to-rule, whereas Plutarch’s writing is, as discussed above, a reception of Roman political discourse. While this is not to suggest that he did not understand its functionality, his was a moralizing/biographical piece rather than a product of political propagandizing and is, as such, more concerned with human failings than with rhetorical flourish. More significant, perhaps, is that he also has access to anecdotal evidence that post-dates Cicero’s death. Given Cicero’s treatise on excessive emotionality in his Tusculan Disputations (which will be examined in Chapter 4), it is a virtual certainty that he would have made as much use of Antonius’ supposed descent into melancholy and despair following the debacle at Actium as does Plutarch (Ant. 67–71). Without exception, this emotionality, coded not only as feminized but actively non-masculine (and repeatedly contrasted with Cleopatra’s stoicism in the face of defeat), is used to invoke a discourse of extreme gender deviance towards the end of Antony’s screen narratives – even where he has previously been characterized as hyper-masculine. This trope is directly attributable to Plutarch. It is also Plutarch’s articulation of Antonius’ concern for his appearance that is most overtly translated into his screen narratives (and inevitably heavily used in the visually oriented symbolism of screen narrative, albeit to an extent vastly exaggerated from its presentation in the source text), where it is made to invoke a discourse of deviant masculinity. We should distinguish this aspect of gender reversal (vanity) from feminized appearance, although there is naturally some overlap between their application and manifestation. Both are applied to the screen Antony’s characterization; yet the former is more readily identifiable as a direct reproduction of a Plutarchian trope, while the latter once again illustrates the problematic transliteration of Roman discourse that has no direct semantic equivalent. Plutarch discusses Antonius’ desire to emulate Hercules in his physical appearance: ‘Antony liked to believe that his own physique lent force to the legend [that the Antonii were descended from Hercules]. He also deliberately cultivated it in his choice of dress, for whenever he was going to appear before a large

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number of people, he wore his tunic belted low over the hips, a large sword at his side, and a heavy cloak’ (Plut. Ant. 4). The feminizing rhetoric of Antonius’ alleged vanity will be discussed at length in Chapter 4, and it makes a number of screen appearances that specifically serve to underline Antony’s gender reversal (most usually once he has taken up residence in Alexandria) – for now I simply want to note its genesis in the Plutarchian mythology. Cicero, on the other hand, invokes specifically Roman-oriented references to dress and appearance in order to illustrate his feminizing invective, but these are largely rooted in ancient mores and codes of appearance that have no direct translation into modern discourse. For example, his discourse on the alleged relationship between Antonius and Curio is framed in terms of age/gender-appropriate (or inappropriate) clothing in the original Latin: Visne igitur to inspiciamus a puero? Sic, opinor; a principio ordiamur. Tenesne memoria praetextatum [toga worn by young boys] te decoxisse? Patris, inquies, ista culpa est. Concedo; etenim est pietatis plena defensio. Illud tamen audaciae tuae, quod sedisti in quattuordecim ordinibus, cum esset lege Roscia decoctoribus certus locus constitutus, quamvis quis fortunae vitio, non suo decoxisset. Sumpsisti virilem [toga worn by men who have achieved their majority] quam statim muliebrem togam [dress worn by women, especially prostitutes] reddidisti. Primo vulgare scortum; certa flagitii merces nec ea parva; sed cito Curio intervenit, qui te a meretricio quaestu abduxit et tamquam stolam [traditional garment worn by respectable Roman women] dedisset in matrimonio stabili et certo collocavit (Cic. Phil. 2.18).

Julia Heskel explains: [Cicero] begins by referring to Antonius’ boyhood as the time when he wore the toga praetexta… When Antonius reached adulthood, the orator continues, he put on the toga virilis, the toga of manhood. Cicero plays on the meaning of virilis in relating Antonius’ subsequent behaviour: he turned the toga virilis into a toga muliebris, the toga that prostitutes wore. His clothing thus reflects the fact that he sold himself for financial gain. Cicero continues

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the metaphor with words used of marriage. He gives Curio the credit for making an ‘honest woman’ out of Antonius. They are united in a ‘stable and honest marriage’, and Antonius now wears a stola, the garb of the respectable Roman matron. Note the derisive tone here: although Antonius has become respectable again, he is respectable as a woman, not a man. Cicero thus carefully develops a metaphor that everyone would have understood in order to comment on Antonius’ career and then specifically on his most recent political actions (Heskel, 1994: 140–141).

In effecting a translation into modern English, however, these nuances are inevitably lost. As we see from Grant’s translation (cited above), references to the toga praetexta and stola are elided altogether, and the semantic imperative behind the toga muliebris is largely untranslatable. Later in the Second Philippic, Cicero references Antonius’ disgraceful dress on his return to Rome from Narbo and contrasts it with his own decorous appearance: ‘I came in my boots and toga, not in Gallic sandals and a cloak’ (Cic. Phil. 2.30). Michael Grant (whose translation this is) notes: ‘Even much later it was a solecism to wear sandals in the street. Cloaks were probably a novelty in Rome at this time; Augustus forbade their use in the Forum’ (Grant, 1971: 134). That notions of physical appearance and propriety were important rhetorical tools in Cicero’s attack on Antonius is undeniable (and, it should be noted, this theme references Ramsey’s first topos of invective), but, again, the difficulties in mapping them onto the modern male body – beyond a vague sense of the symbolism of gender deviance – are clear. It is scarcely surprising, therefore, that Cicero’s metaphorical use of clothing to signify unfitnessto-rule is mapped onto a literal reading of ‘woman’s clothing’, and screen Antonies frequently find themselves in gender-liminal robes that suggest a latent transvestitism. It is comparatively more difficult to discern those items that comprise the final category, since, as noted above, all of the preceding tropes combine to imply Antonius’ political ineptitude and un-Roman behaviour: indeed, this is the imperative of the rhetoric. Moreover, the semantics describing Antonius’ un-Roman behaviour – specifically his apparent abandonment of Rome for the Orient – are complex and draw on the discursive construct of Eastern Otherness that is so firmly

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rooted in modern Western identity discourse as to be, essentially, invisible. Moreover, the Orientalist rhetoric from which this discourse flows follows a similar pattern to ancient Roman invective, and the patterns of display in Roman political obloquy are strikingly analogous to the basic symbolism of East/West in both twentieth- and twenty-first-century narratives of Antony. This will be examined in depth in Chapter 4; for now, I want to note simply that Antonius’ gender-deviant behaviour is automatically coded non-Roman by virtue of its incompatibility with the Roman public sphere and mos maiorum, the ancient mores by which the idealized Roman citizen was expected to abide. By this token, both Cicero’s and Plutarch’s texts abound with examples of Antony’s un-Roman activities; however, Cicero’s invective stops short of making explicit or implicit charges of his physical abandonment of Rome (coded as perhaps the ultimate expression of feminized, apolitical behaviour in view of the pervasive trope conflating East with femininity and Rome/West with masculinity), simply because, at the time in which Cicero was writing, Antonius had not yet established the alliance with Cleopatra that would allow him to organize his power base around Alexandria and the Hellenized East. Plutarch, writing some 150 years after the fact, makes much of Antonius’ defection but, presumably on the grounds of his own Greek identity, comparatively little of the pejorative gender association, preferring to read the alleged abandonment as evidence of Cleopatra’s perfidy and Antonius’ susceptibility to this rather than evidence of any specific gender deviance embodied in the choice of locale. However, as I have stated above, while the symbolism of abandonment of East for West is a reading permitted by Plutarch alone, un-Roman behaviour is also clearly embodied in political ineptitude, on which characteristic both sources are agreed. Once again, Cicero’s narrative is explicit whilst Plutarch’s is largely implicit, in keeping with Cicero’s project of presenting Antonius as unfit-to-rule and Plutarch’s reception of texts that situate Antonius as such, and present this suggested ideological position to the reader. Cicero’s direct references to Antonius’ alleged ineptitude are too numerous to cite in full. Selected highlights include the following: ‘For what was left of Rome, Antony, owed its final annihilation to yourself.

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In your home everything had a price: and a truly sordid series of deals it was. Laws you passed, laws you caused to be put through in your interests, had never even been formally proposed. You admitted this yourself. You were an augur, yet you never took the auspices. You were a consul, yet you blocked the legal right of other officials to exercise the veto. Your armed escort was shocking’ (Cic. Phil. 2.3); ‘Antony is not attending the Senate today. Why? He is giving a birthday-party on his estate. For whom? I shall name no names. No doubt it is some comic Phormio or other, some Gnatho or Ballio. What a disgusting, intolerable sensualist the man is, as well as a vicious, unsavoury crook!’ (Cic. Phil. 2.6); and ‘True, your role in the war was insignificant. That was because you were frightened, or rather preoccupied with your sexual interests’ (Cic. Phil. 2.29). This last reference is particularly interesting, since it directly positions Antonius as having both abandoned the masculine business of war to attend to the feminine business of satisfying bodily excess, and also specifically accuses Antonius of unfitness-for-public-sphere through his fear of battle. Plutarch is more circumspect and in fact devotes considerable space in his Life to enumerating Antonius’ skills and successes in battle. In the Egyptian campaign with Gabinius, Antonius ‘not only occupied the isthmus [dividing the Red Sea from the Mediterranean], but also seized the large city of Pelusium and captured its garrison, thus securing the line of march for the main Roman force and laying a foundation for the campaign on which his commander could base confident hopes of victory’ (Plut. Ant. 3). Later, fighting for Caesar in Greece, ‘Antony distinguished himself brilliantly. Twice when Caesar’s troops were in headlong retreat he met them, stemmed the rout, forced them to turn and charge his pursuers, and won a victory. In consequence, his reputation with the army was second only to Caesar’s, and Caesar left no doubt as to his own opinion of Antony’ (Plut. Ant. 8), and following defeat at Mutina, ‘Antony set a wonderful example to his soldiers. In spite of all the luxury and extravagance of his recent life, he could bring himself without difficulty to drink foul water and eat wild fruits and roots’ (Plut. Ant. 17). It is true that, where the feminized screen Antony performs the Plutarchian model, his military prowess is never in question, although it remains poorly explored, at least partially for the reasons expounded above – namely that Antonius’ greatest military successes pre-date

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his association with Cleopatra – but also, as I will argue in Chapter 6, because military skill creates an incoherence in the narrative of feminization. Indeed, 1963’s Cleopatra has Antony (Richard Burton) acknowledge his skill on the battlefield but ineptitude in the political sphere: ‘Show me a city and I’ll tell you how to take it. Let me face an army and I’ll smell out its weak points and hit them hard where they are. Make me to sit down, talk in whispers of this and that, with an emphasis here and a shrug there and I’m soon confounded and defeated’ (Mankiewicz, 1963). While it is possible to read this as a defence of the masculine business of fighting over the more gender-liminal business of interpersonal communication (‘talk in whispers of this and that’, indeed, might well evoke the feminine business of gossip), the context of the scene makes it clear that Antony himself regards this as a failure on his part, and the reader is required to read it along these terms. Antony is supremely unsuited to the masculine, political sphere. At first glance, however, this sits uneasily alongside Plutarch’s discussion of Antonius’ political activities, which seem to agree more closely with the Ciceronian model. Discussing the immediate aftermath of Caesar’s assassination through to the early Triumvirate, Plutarch suggests that Antonius’ actions in the public sphere are motivated by self-interest, often sinister in nature, and repeatedly undermined by the same bodily excesses listed by Cicero: of his execution of the terms of Caesar’s will, Plutarch says that ‘Antony at this period handled everything in an autocratic fashion, since he himself held the consulship, while his brothers had also been appointed to high office, Caius as praetor and Lucius as tribune’ (Plut. Ant. 15). Later, we are told that ‘the Roman people came to detest the rule of the triumvirs, but it was Antony who earned the greatest share of the blame. He was older than Octavius and more influential than Lepidus, and yet no sooner had he shaken off his immediate troubles than he plunged once more into his old life of pleasure and debauchery’ (Plut. Ant. 21). Plutarch’s critical tone accords with his Platonic influences – as Bruno Centrone argues in ‘Platonism and Pythagoreanism In The Early Empire’: ‘In agreement with Plato and the tradition of Greek political thought in general, Plutarch treats politics as inextricably connected with ethics’ (2000: 577). It does not, however, account for the appearance of the screen Antony as feminized political incompetent.

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The key to understanding this aspect of Antony’s characterization is to be found in Plutarch’s assessment of his association with Cleopatra. Plutarch conceives of the rationale behind the affair as Antonius’ inability to operate effectively in the public sphere, which renders him susceptible to the machinations of those in possession of superior political skills – which Cleopatra, embodying gender reversal, is able to employ to great effect. In the prologue to the affair, Antonius’ activities in the eastern provinces are discussed at length, and Plutarch tells us that Antonius ‘was completely ignorant of much that was done in his name, not merely because he was of an easygoing disposition, but because he was simple enough to trust his subordinates’ (Plut. Ant. 24). He continues: His character was, in fact, essentially simple and he was slow to perceive the truth… He never understood that some men go out of their way to adopt a frank and outspoken manner and use it like a piquant sauce to disguise the cloying taste of flattery. Such people deliberately indulge in bold repartee and an aggressive flow of talk when they are in their cups, so that the obsequious compliance which they show in matters of business does not suggest that they associate with a man merely to please him, but seems to spring from a genuine conviction of his superior wisdom. Such being Antony’s nature, the love for Cleopatra which now entered his life came as the final and crowning mischief which could befall him (Plut. Ant. 24–25).

As Ian Scott Kilvert and Christopher Pelling argue in Rome in Crisis: ‘Cleopatra is the most subtle flatterer of them all… Her hallmarks are “charm and subtlety”... That “subtlety” (Greek panourgia) is literally the capacity and willingness to “do anything and everything”, so different from the “simple” Antony who has only one way, brash and soldierly, to behave. No wonder he was “ravished”… a word often used of real military pillaging, but here the captain is out of his depth’ (2010: 319). This is the assessment of Antonius’ political abilities that transfers to screen depictions of the feminized Antony. Note that the texts that seek to position his deviant masculinity as feminized behaviour are all narratives that have Cleopatra as their focus, and it is therefore to be expected that their assessment of his character will prioritize his positioning as

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regards his relationship with her. Moreover, the hyper-masculinized Antony, who, as I have argued, follows the Ciceronian model, has so far appeared only in texts that are focused specifically on Roman events, and in which Cleopatra features only as a digression from the main narrative. All, however, use political ability as a marker of gender performance, as I will discuss in later chapters. Conclusion In situating the Antony-icon as a construction of pro-Augustan (or, at least, anti-Antonian) sources, I am not attempting to ascribe a unanimity of political motivation or even of ideological affiliation to the writers in question. Such an assumption would not only strain credulity – given the disparate historical moments and national-cultural identity of the sources in question – but it would also ignore works such as Gurval (1998) and Powell (ed, 2004), which have argued persuasively against the previously prevailing view that Augustan propaganda in the early principate followed a conscious and calculated proselytizing strategy. Simply put, I am attempting to situate Antonius/Antony as an already-available avatar onto which anxieties about the nascent principate and the termination of the Republic could readily be transferred, negotiated and exorcised. Since Roman political invective functions in the gendered dichotomy of public/ male versus private/female, it is therefore unsurprising that these anxieties are expressed in terms of deviant or deficient masculinity. In receiving and interpolating Roman political invective, as I have stated, successive historico-cultural moments reinvest the mythic space with meaning that is contemporaneously relevant. Such a project does not generally seek to distort or misrepresent, yet the disconnect between the ancient past and the discursive conventions of the present is liable to obfuscate the original intent. The difficulties inherent in transposing ancient idiom into modern syntax are illustrated by Michael Grant in discussing a portion of Cicero’s Second Philippic. ‘As a climax, unknown to Caesar (who was at Alexandria), Caesar’s friends were kind enough to make Antony his Master of Horse,’ says Cicero. ‘At that juncture he felt entitled to live with Hippias; and to hand over race-horses, intended for the national games, to another actor, Sergius’ (Cic. Phil. 2.25). Grant

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explains: ‘There is an uncommunicable pun on the derivation of the name Hippias (Greek hippos – horse), presumably with some reference to Antony’s office of Master of the Horse (deputy to the dictator). The exiled tyrant of Athens, son of Pisistratus, had been called Hippias (527–510 bce). The meaning of the subsequent reference to race-horses is obscure’ (Grant, in Cicero: Selected Works, 1971: 129). Such esoteric references, of course, do not appear in Antony’s screen characterizations; where there is no translatable meaning, there is no possibility of mapping the ancient idiom onto the modern body. Yet it is important to note that, rather than representing an isolated case of linguistic difference, such colloquialisms might better be read as describing a fundamental discursive disconnect between then and now that is often elided by the ubiquity of Ancient Rome as a concept and a signifying system in Western discourse. As Catharine Edwards puts it: ‘The ancient Romans have been so domesticated that many modern western men (fewer women, perhaps) have been able to imagine themselves, their rusty Latin refreshed, easily adapting to life in the time of Cicero or the younger Pliny’ (Edwards, 1993: 63). I have examined the operation of this conflation of ancient with modern – what might be termed a ‘denial of difference’ – evidenced in the gendered semantics of clothing that shift from the subtle (the toga praetexta versus the toga virilis) to the explicit (quasi-transvestitism), and the literal rendering of items of invective that may well be more properly described as metaphor. To return to Edwards: ‘Language is not the only barrier which separates us from the Romans. Entire vocabularies of gesture differ from one culture to another. For Romans, a particular physical movement could have a meaning quite at variance with one a modern Briton might attribute to it – even indicating a category of behaviour for which we have no close equivalent’ (1993: 63). It is this erroneous sense of familiarity, I suggest, that allows the ancient characterization of Antonius to become our modern Antony. However, before I turn to some of the ways in which this has been manifested, I want to examine those items of the ancient invective that have not been translated into Antony-on-screen.

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2 ‘There’s a Great Spirit Gone’:1 The Absence of Fulvia and Curio

Introduction: Antony’s Absent Invective Arguably as important as an appreciation of the function of ancient invective in understanding the construction of the Antony-icon is a consideration of those elements of the ancient invective that have not been reproduced in the screen mythology. In the previous chapter, I touched briefly on Cicero’s mention of an apparent sexual relationship between Antonius and his close friend Caius Scribonius Curio, situating it as an element within a host of invective that seeks to discursively position Antonius as unfit-to-rule. Yet Curio receives no mention in any of the screen texts under analysis. Many of the rhetorical consequences – immoderate love, profligacy, feminization – can be seen on screen, but their etymological root is absent. Given the strong connection between ‘hegemonic’ and ‘heterosexual’ in delimiting idealized masculinity, it would appear to follow that a charge of same-sex desire would automatically be reproduced within Antony’s iconography. This would, however, mistake the semantic implications of ‘Romanness’ within Western popular culture, as I will show. Moreover, Curio is not the only key figure absent from Antony’s screen construction. Despite her key role in a pivotal moment of Antonius’ political career, his influential third wife, Fulvia, appears only as a throwaway reference in Cleopatra (1999). Although Shakespeare uses her in absentia to frame Cleopatra as the jealous Other Woman (‘Can Fulvia die?’ – Antony and Cleopatra, 1.3.71), Fulvia’s only mention on screen is in the 53

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use of her name by Caesar’s enemies to distract Antony outside the Senate House on the Ides of March. At the steps to the Senate doors, an unidentified man approaches Antony and Caesar as they prepare to enter. ‘Mark Antony,’ he says. ‘Fulvia requests an immediate audience with you.’ Antony and Caesar exchange a knowing look and Caesar smiles indulgently. This small gesture alerts the audience to the fact that this is nothing unusual; that Caesar knows very well how demanding his friend’s wife can be. ‘Go on,’ he laughs. Antony, scarcely chagrined, neither surprised nor particularly irritated, turns to leave. Caesar, alone and exposed, continues up the steps to his death (Roddam, 1999). In the English-language screen adaptations of the Antony/Cleopatra story, the only time Fulvia is mentioned is as an aid to facilitating Caesar’s assassination. In this chapter, I want to explore the discursive connotations of both Fulvia and Curio, and the significance of the omission of both parties from the Antonian iconography. I will examine the implications both of their absence and, potentially, of their presence, and situate them within the project of inscribing gender anxiety onto the body of Antony-on-screen. The Absence of Fulvia Fulvia’s absence from Antony’s screen narratives is a component of the modern revisions imposed by twentieth- and twenty-first-century adaptations of the mythology, which will be considered in detail in Chapters 5 and 6. It should be noted that she is not the only missing wife in the narrative: Octavian (later Augustus) is only occasionally placed alongside the formidable Livia, and his first two wives are rarely acknowledged. Yet the mechanisms by which these women are elided are markedly different than that which erases Fulvia from Antony’s narrative, and here the absence leaves a catalytical void in the legend that can only be accounted for by significantly rewriting Antony’s motivations. In common with the historiographical imperative of the ancient world, which privileges the male players and largely disregards the female, the facts of Fulvia’s life are sketchy and tend to relate to her position vis-àvis the men in her life. She is believed to have been born around 83 bce into the plebeian Fulvii gens, and little is known about her until her first marriage, in 62 bce, to Publius Clodius Pulcher.

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Cicero charges that Antonius and Fulvia were lovers during Clodius’ lifetime: Antony was the firebrand who started all of Clodius’s fires. Indeed, one of his projects – he knows very well which one I mean – was actually located in Clodius’s home (Cic. Phil. 2.19).

Diana Delia, however, in Fulvia Reconsidered, points out that Cicero’s rhetorical technique made heavy use of slurs against female relations of its target (1991: 200), and this, as I will show, resonates with other uses of Fulvia’s name in anti-Antonian invective. Whether or not Cicero’s charge is correct is largely a matter of speculation – what is important is his use of the charge and his reasons for employing this specific form of attack. Widowed in 53 bce, Fulvia was briefly married to Caius Scribonius Curio from 51 until his death in 49, and eventually married Antonius in 46. She brought with her two children from her first marriage and one from her second, and she and Antonius had a further two sons: Marcus Antonius (known as Antyllus, Antonius’ eldest son and heir) and Iullus Antonius. At the time of his marriage to Fulvia, Antonius had already established himself as a politician and general, and had served as Caesar’s Master of the Horse the year before. Fulvia’s influence as the widow of Publius Clodius, a popular (and populist) politician whose tactics gave rise to accusations of demagoguery, may well have been an asset to Antonius; however, the extent to which she was able or wished to play an active role in his political career is subject to scholarly debate. Her first appearance in the historical sources is her public lamentation over Clodius’ murdered body, which allegedly stirred his supporters into civil unrest (Weir, 2008: 3). Whether this was a calculated manoeuvre, designed to consolidate her position as figurehead of her late husband’s political legacy, or simply the act of a bereaved widow, is disputed; Babcock (1965: 21) argues for the former, while Delia (1991: 199) argues that the latter is more in keeping with the available evidence. Moreover, Delia interprets the silence of the historical sources with regards to Fulvia prior to the assassination of Caesar – and their general hostility towards her thereafter – as an indication that her political involvement was extremely limited up to this

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point (1999: 199). However, like the accusation of adultery, the question of whether or not Fulvia actively sought entry into the masculine public sphere or whether her involvement was in keeping with the norms and conventions of the Roman matron is essentially beside the point: what is relevant to this argument are the reasons why the ancient sources elect to frame her as a harridan. This, as I will argue, has important connotations for her absence from the Antonian narrative. Key to understanding Fulvia’s significance are the events of the Perusine War, an abortive struggle between Antonius’ supporters (led by his brother Lucius and with Fulvia in some capacity as figurehead) and Octavianus, that was fought close to the city of Perusia in northern Italy between 41 and 40 bce. It is a complex series of events which is open to a range of interpretations, and which allowed both sides the opportunity to propagandize their cause. Besieged within the city, the Antonian soldiers inscribed their sling bullets with Antonius’ name, and a series of coins dating from the period may depict Fulvia as Victoria (Weir, 2008: iii). The counter-propaganda, also inscribed on sling bullets, accuses Fulvia of sexual promiscuity, and Martial attributes to Octavianus an epigram about the war which also mentions Fulvia in obscene terms: Glaphyra’s fucked by Antony. Fulvia, therefore, claims a balancing fuck from me. I hate such games. She cries either let’s fuck or fight! Doesn’t she know my prick is dearer to me than life? Let trumpets sound. (Translation in Preston, 2008: 217)

Preston also describes slingshots discovered by archaeologists studying the battle site, inscribed with vitriol directly aimed at Fulvia herself: ‘“Give it to Fulvia” was lewdly inscribed on one and “I am aiming for Fulvia’s cunt” on another’ (2008: 217). What Fulvia thought of her crude characterization is unrecorded; however, the Antonians gave as good as they got. Says Preston: ‘The besieged within Perusia responded with slingshots inscribed with slogans such as “Greetings, Octavian, you suck prick” and “Octavian has a limp dick” ’ (2008: 217). The gendered nature of the invective need hardly be stated: I have already discussed the ways in which the sexually active/

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passive dichotomy was invoked within Roman discourse to describe norms of gender behaviour, with ‘active’ coded masculine and ‘passive’ coded feminine. Catharine Edwards’ words, quoted in Chapter 1, are relevant again here: ‘In the eyes of Roman moralists, the effeminate were like women in playing a “passive” sexual role but at the same time they were unlike women in having an excessive interest in sex’ (2002: 81). The anti-Fulvian propaganda therefore performs a dual function in terms of positioning Fulvia herself as specifically female (through her ‘excessive interest in sex’), thereby invalidating her politicized position as a figurehead on the grounds of gender, while also discursively underlining her usurpation of the masculine in terms that allowed the political threat to be negated and displaced onto Antonius himself. If ‘Fulvia, therefore, claims a balancing fuck from [Octavian]’ in response to Antonius’ adultery with Glaphyra,2 then she has transgressed the boundaries of acceptable, ‘passive’ sexual behaviour, but the consequences of her transgression are domestic rather than political, and conveniently imply that Antonius’ masculinity is less than adequate. Not only does his wife assume the masculine, ‘active’ sexual role, but the object of her masculinized advance is not even her (feminized) husband. Discursively cuckolded, Antonius is aligned with the feminine through the gender inversion imposed by Fulvia’s transgression and her implied sexual rejection of him, but Octavian is able to disavow the threat of feminization implied by her selection of his body as a substitute when he explicitly rejects her: ‘She cries either let’s fuck or fight!/Doesn’t she know my prick is dearer to me than life? Let trumpets sound.’ As a woman bound by the prescriptive mores of the patriarchal Roman society, Fulvia will of course have been severely limited in her agency, and, while she may well have been a very visible presence in the political tapestry of the late 40s bce, much of the invective that describes her as domineering, jealous, cruel or belligerent can very easily be interpreted as a direct attack upon Antonius. Cicero, as I have argued, employs the rhetorical devices of incontinentia and mollitia to position Antonius as effeminate and passive, and I have also noted the use of incontinentia against Pompey on the grounds of his relationship with his wife. In point of fact, as Delia has noted (above), wives were fair game in terms of political rhetoric. Fulvia is significant in Antony’s mythology for precisely this reason; as much as it is difficult to understand the semantic positioning

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of Antony without Cleopatra, the ghost of Fulvia is equally pernicious, informing his gender performance by her absence. Simply put, the political tensions between Octavianus and Antonius in the early 40s cannot be understood without reference to Fulvia. Equally, the semantics of the propaganda war between Octavianus/Antonius and Octavianus/Fulvia are irretrievably enmeshed with contemporaneous gender discourse, so her construction as harridan and his as solipsistic dilettante are, essentially, predictable and as such problematic. That said, her conspicuous absence from his screen narratives invokes complex semantic repercussions in and of itself. The reasons behind Fulvia’s exclusion occupy a wide range of semantic positions. In the most simplistic analysis, her absence is narratively expedient in that it reduces the number of players and thus the complexity of the political narrative. It is certainly true that, where experts on the political landscape of the late Republic cannot agree on their interpretation of Fulvia’s role, it makes little sense to expect viewers with minimal knowledge of the period to draw their own conclusions. However, the decision to cast Fulvia as a minor player whose contribution can be elided is in itself important. While Livia, the influential third wife of Octavianus, is also regularly edited out, her political significance did not manifest itself until some time after the deaths of Antonius and Cleopatra, and she is not, therefore, critical to the events of the Second Triumvirate. Furthermore, Livia does make a small number of appearances: in Imperium: Augustus (2003) – as might be expected, in a text which has Augustus as its narrative focus – and again in Rome: Season 2 (2007). Fulvia is present in neither, nor is she referenced (although Monica Cyrino convincingly argues that Rome’s Atia is performing the role of Fulvia, given her affair with Antony and the character’s incongruence with the historical mother of Augustus – Cyrino, 2008: 139). Fulvia’s actions, on the other hand, were a direct causal influence in the outbreak of the Perusine War, which exposed the tensions in the nascent Triumvirate and caused a serious rupture in the already difficult relationship between Antonius and Octavianus. This had a significant effect on Antonius’ subsequent political career, and some of his most important decisions thereafter literally cannot be understood without reference to Fulvia. Her absence necessitates an alternative explanation for the schism

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with Octavianus and, on the rare occasion that it is shown on screen, for the Perusine War itself. This explanation is, predictably, in keeping with Antonius’ gender deficiencies, and events are generally attributed to his failure to grasp political realities. The schism is also prematurely related to his affair with Cleopatra, which, while ultimately a component of the propaganda war (and from whose hospitality Antonius was obliged to absent himself in order to patch over the public relations disaster of the war), had not in fact started when the political manoeuvring began. Relating the rift to Cleopatra rather than two mutually antagonistic political manoeuvres is both reductive and in keeping with the theme of emasculation in the presence of the woman of power. This is the rationalization employed by the vast majority of narratives: DeMille’s Cleopatra (1934) has Octavian address the Forum with the following rhetoric: ‘Mark Antony is a traitor to Rome! Two months long have come and gone, and what has happened? Has he attacked Egypt with his legions there? Has he brought Cleopatra back in chains? Yes, he’s done one thing and that completely! He’s sailed to Egypt with the queen and lived there ever since, with no thought of Rome! Who is this poisonous snake that wrecks our man? Caesar first and now Antony. When will it end?’ (DeMille, 1934). Likewise, 1963’s Cleopatra has Antony, fresh from victory at Philippi, apportioning himself the eastern provinces, on the understanding that, by leaving Octavian alone in an unstable Rome, he has essentially handed him a poisoned chalice. This is Antony’s last sound political manoeuvre in the film, and it is significant that it falls almost immediately before he and Cleopatra establish their alliance at Tarsus. In the first place, free of Cleopatra’s influence, he is able to act decisively and manage his own affairs and in the second place, he reverses any discourse of political ability in his next scene, which finds him drunk and bewildered by the news of Octavian’s perfidy in stripping Lepidus of his authority. Furthermore, this latter exchange, which takes place between Antony and the politically astute Rufio, establishes that Antony’s motivation in selecting the east was not precisely tactical but in fact a ploy to enable him to be closer to Cleopatra. Although he refuses to approach her for financial aid, his air of injured pride makes it clear that he expected that she would offer assistance without being asked,

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and that the two of them have spent some months engaged in an elaborate series of manoeuvres and counter-manoeuvres designed to force the other to capitulate first. The point is that Cleopatra becomes the lynchpin of Antony’s decision making even before their affair is consummated: the prospect of an alliance with her is the reason he chooses the east, rather than a consequence of that choice. Cleopatra (1999) continues the trope, despite being the only text to explicitly reference Fulvia. As cited above, she is name-checked as the distraction employed to separate Antony and Caesar prior to the latter’s assassination; however, later in the narrative, Octavian is able to disavow Fulvia completely. Agreeing the terms of the duumvirate (Lepidus is elided entirely, so a triumvirate is impossible), Octavian suggests that their ‘new friendship requires a more personal guarantee’: ANTONY: Meaning what, exactly? OCTAVIAN: A more… binding union. I have a sister, Octavia. You have no wife. You’d be a member of our family. (Roddam, 1999)

Within scarcely an hour of screen time, Fulvia has been excised from the narrative. She is not directly referred to as Antony’s wife during her brief moment in the spotlight, so perhaps it is the fact of their marriage that the text denies, rather than her existence. Either way, however, she has been rendered completely inconsequential to Antony’s history. Clearly, the absence of Fulvia creates a fundamental instability in the mythology. However, I would also argue that her inclusion would create incoherence in the privileged narrative – by which I mean that her presence as a causal vector in the schism between Antony and Octavian contradicts the central assumption that Antony’s downfall and defeat is the result of the machinations of Cleopatra, and, critically, his deficient performance of masculinity. This is not to say that her absence particularly recuperates Octavian’s position as villain of the piece – on the contrary, he is always positioned as skilful manipulator of Antony’s deficits, Machiavellian in his rush to capitalize on Antony’s mistakes – but it does remove the element of the political from their schism and allows it to be positioned in gendered terms.

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In the first instance, as I will discuss in Chapter 4, the removal of the political works to absent Antony from the masculine public sphere and reframe his concerns as essentially domestic. A series of disputes about political status and prestige is reduced to the travails of an ill-equipped dilettante whose primary goal is to have a good time, and who resents the encroachment of the business of leadership (as embodied by Octavian) into his personal life. The very real struggle for survival – both political and personal – is elided. However, it must also be understood in terms of its effect on Cleopatra’s position. Clearly, the excision of Fulvia demands that Antony’s relationship with Cleopatra be opposed against Octavia exclusively, which has important semiological connotations both for Cleopatra and for Antony. While Octavia is allowed to occupy entirely the position of Wronged Wife, the Antony/Cleopatra affair is reframed in terms of a polarization of Good Woman versus Bad Woman. Regardless of Cleopatra’s semiological positioning or the degree of sympathy afforded to her by the text (and also, significantly, regardless of the actual narrative sympathy for Octavia, who is often constructed as meek and dull in her desire to perform the dutiful wife), Antony cannot avoid making a statement of his gender positioning when he chooses Cleopatra – masculinized, powerful, demanding – over Octavia and her hegemonically correct performance of femininity. Fulvia, Octavia and the Mos Maiorum Images of Octavia are constructed entirely from an Augustan framework, and we have little alternative commentary from which to draw a non-partisan picture of the historical figure. As Augustus, Octavianus was insistent on linking the ordered running of the state to the hegemonic working of the family, which relied upon the construction of an idealized archetype of Woman, based on an appeal to essentialist gender paradigms of the mythic past. Catharine Edwards explains it thus: Rome’s first emperor, Augustus, the new Romulus, promised a revolution – a return to the past. In the early days of Rome, wives were chaste; he initiated legislation making adultery a crime… By asserting that the mythical virtues

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of Rome’s past were to be resurrected, Augustus proclaimed the beneficence of his new regime (Edwards, 1993: 34).

That Augustus regarded his own family as symbolic of the new spirit of public morality, designed to negotiate and disavow the chaos of the late Republic, can be seen from his decision to exile both his daughter Julia – his only child – and his granddaughter for their alleged adultery (in 2 bce and 8 ce respectively). These exiles were effected under the Lex Juliae, implemented from 18–17 bce, which comprised Augustus’ efforts at legislating against immorality in the elite classes. However, the Octavia/Cleopatra dichotomy derives from a period in which Octavianus’ authority remained very much open to question. Given that Octavianus’ original authorizing discourse was problematic and far from unanimously popular (Powell, 1992: 144–145), and his initial claim to power was predicated on the ties of family through his posthumous adoption by Julius Caesar, it is not unreasonable to see his early career exercises in mythogenesis as an effort to delineate his own authority as more worthy of the leadership of Rome than that of his rivals, through an appeal to the mores maiorum, the sanctified morals of ancestral Rome. In this myth-making enterprise, then, Octavia, or at least the Octavia that is handed down to us from antiquity, must be understood less as an historical figure and more as a cipher: a figurehead of idealized Augustan womanhood, whose function is not only to illustrate the glorious femininity of ancestral Rome and to link it to the figure and body of Octavian himself, but also to expose the paradigm gap between the mores of Octavian and those of Antonius. Whether or not the historical Octavia embodied the paradigm to quite the extent that was politically useful to her brother, we cannot know from the sources (although Lucy Hughes-Hallett [1990: 168], suggests that Octavia was known for her patronage of several important contemporary artists, hinting at an independently creative mind behind the propaganda). The fact is, however, that, in the absence of contradictory evidence, Octavia effectively is the paradigm, epitomizing a patriarchally conceived model of submissive womanhood that manifests Cleopatra’s exact opposite. Octavia is contained female sexuality, Cleopatra is excessive female sexuality; Octavia is gender-appropriate, Cleopatra

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is gender-inappropriate; Octavia is private sphere, Cleopatra is public sphere; Octavia, crucially, is Rome, Cleopatra is Other. This elementary dichotomy breaks down, of course, when Fulvia is added to the mix. Fulvia is Rome, clearly, but she is also public sphere, gender-inappropriate and excessive female sexuality (at least, according to invective). The binary opposition of Rome versus East cannot be sustained with these two congruent embodiments of problematic womanhood on either side. And it is this factor that ultimately underpins the ideology behind Fulvia’s absence from Antony’s screen narratives: anti-Antonian invective is not interested in denying Fulvia’s existence or, indeed, her importance to the Antonian narrative. Anti-Antonian invective, in fact, welcomes the presence of Fulvia as a cornerstone of anti-Antonian propaganda: she is created as the harridan, the harpy, the gender-inappropriate emasculator, irrefutable evidence of Antonius’ inability to effectively occupy the Male. Her disappearance from the screen must therefore also be understood as a manifestation of a wider gender anxiety than the de-politicizing discourse attached to Mark Antony. By excising Fulvia, the narrative is allowed to polarize Cleopatra’s performance of womanhood against Octavia’s, without the inconvenience of multiple varieties of Roman womanhood detracting from the Eastversus-West motif. It is, for all that, an extremely complex binary with diverse and conflicting positions of identification along the spectrum, and fed by myriad variant receptions of the original story. As with Cleopatra, Octavia occupies shifting semiological sands, sympathetic to the extent that her function within the text requires her to be so. Shakespeare’s Octavia undoubtedly ghosts her later incarnations (as do his other major players in Antony and Cleopatra – see Chapter 3), and, although she is characterized in the play as a dutiful, conscientious Early Modern wife against Cleopatra’s mercurial, capricious Otherness, it is telling that Enobarbus, Shakespeare’s prosaic Everyman, describes her as ‘of a holy, cold and still conversation’ (Antony and Cleopatra, 2.6.136). Although Menas immediately asks, ‘Who would not have his wife so?’, LT Fitz (1977) argues that it is, in fact, Cleopatra who is the chief focus of the play (see Chapter 3), and, as such, this requires us to read ‘holy, cold and still’ against the fire and passion of Egypt. Later, Cleopatra’s messenger negatively re-frames Enobarbus’ words:

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She creeps: Her motion and her station are as one; She shows a body rather than a life; A statue than a breather. (Antony and Cleopatra, 3.3.31–34)

This tension between hegemonic and sympathetic is characteristic of the majority of the screen texts. Cleopatra (Mankiewicz, 1963) is most explicit, picturing Antony and Octavia making excruciating, polite conversation over dinner, while Cleopatra, in Alexandria, tears up her bed in a frenzy of grief. Other texts are similarly undecided about the extent to which Octavia is to be derided or pitied: Cleopatra (DeMille, 1934) has a bubbly, sweet-natured Octavia talk affectionately about her husband to Octavian and Calpurnia, but her relentless cheer in the face of both Antony’s profligacy and Octavian’s frustration with Caesar (which the narrative will justify almost immediately) mark her as oblivious to political reality (in contrast to Calpurnia’s pained but dutiful silence on the subject of her own husband’s indiscretion), and Antony’s indifferent treatment of her (‘“Hello, darling?” You’d think she’d met me before’), though delivered – and accepted – with levity, indicates a measure of disengagement in the marriage. Augustus (Young, 2003) has Octavia meekly accede to her brother’s decision that she should marry Antony, but later allows her to recoup a little of her lost agency as she refuses the carriage that Octavian has sent to bring her back to the family home after Antony has thrown her out of his, stating furiously that she ‘want[s] everyone to see the woman who was betrayed by her brother’ (Young, 2003). Finally, Rome’s Octavia is a mass of contradictions: rebellious impulses tempered by a (grudging) respect for familial authority and fear of stepping outside the boundaries of normative behaviour. Of all the female characters across the two seasons, Octavia possesses arguably the least sexual agency of any (including many of the slaves), submitting her body to be used dynastically whenever family – or other – interests demand it. Yet she is considerably less passive than many of her predecessors, and the scene in which she engages in ritualistic self-mutilation (following her act of incest with her brother and subsequent betrayal by her lover, Servilia), evokes a clear line of connection

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with modern, troubled teenagers and allows us to identify with her quiet desperation. It is clear, then, that, even without Fulvia, Octavia alone is an unstable avatar for Roman/hegemonic femininity, allowing for multiple, inconsistent readings. This is congruent with Shakespeare’s evocation of late Republican Rome, which embodies all that is hegemonic and genderappropriate, but which has also produced the calculating and deeply unsympathetic Caesar as its supreme arbiter. It is this very instability that, I would argue, excludes the possibility of including Fulvia in the screen narratives. The privileged narrative is available to manifold subjectivities as it is, with the central paradigm conceived of as Good Woman versus Bad Woman. It is narratively expedient to correlate Good Woman with Us and Bad Woman with Them; therefore, Antony’s decision can be configured as a rejection of Us for Them. However, if Us can also encompass the Bad Woman (in Fulvia), then the binary becomes incoherent. Ideologically speaking, Fulvia, with her political manoeuvring and violation of the public sphere, collapses the Augustan/Orientalist discourse on which the dichotomy is based. The privileged reading of the narrative, which castigates Antony for choosing gender-inappropriate Egypt over gender-appropriate Rome, cannot be sustained if she is present. In that sense, Fulvia’s absence functions as a link between the gender-dichotomy of East/West embodied in Roman political invective, and the modern gender paradigms enacted in Antony’s mythology. The Absence of Curio Conversely, the omission of Curio from the narrative is designed to bring the Antony-icon closer to the paradigm, and it is here that we find the first traces of what I believe is key to the functioning of the Antony-myth: his positioning as a source of potential – if uneasy – identification. There are two separate but related discourses informing this trope. Firstly, it is important to understand that, although the hegemonic is unattainable to the Antony-icon, for him to operate as icon the hegemonic cannot be unavailable to him. In other words, although he explicitly falls short of idealized masculinity, the construction and positioning of his character within the text must be such that he could

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achieve the ideal, were he not so encumbered by non-masculine flaws. I will examine this idea in detail below. Secondly, the function of Roman sexual Otherness on screen is of critical importance in understanding the configuration of this trope and its significance in constructing the Antony-icon. I have already explored the operation of Cicero’s original invective in Roman discourse (examining the contemporaneous sociocultural semantic positioning, articulation and rhetoricization of sexual relations between men), but I want now to consider the reasons for its elision from the screen narrative, and the ways in which the omission of Curio – just like the omission of Fulvia – displays a clear engagement between the screen and the source texts, and evidences a process of cultural recycling and the embedding of contemporaneous meaning into an ancient narrative. The Antony-Icon and Roman Sexual Otherness At first glance, it may appear that positioning the elision of Curio as a mechanism by which the Antony-icon is brought closer to the paradigm contradicts the central argument of this study. On a superficial level, it is certainly true that this trope is unique among the Antonian iconography (which will be explored in detail in Chapters 4, 5 and 6) in that here alone do we see an effort to mitigate the Othering discourse elsewhere applied to the icon. However, it is simplistic to conflate this with a recuperative imperative, for reasons that I will outline below. It may, therefore, be more convenient to think of the operation of the trope not so much as bringing Antony closer to the paradigm, but as the unavoidable by-product of an effort to obviate a discourse that would inevitably position him specifically outside of the hegemonic. Bruce R Smith, in Shakespeare and Masculinity, provides a useful template to describe a continuum of identification: If bodies in perspective space appear to be ranged along a continuum from closer to farther away, might there not be an equivalent continuum in psychic space? To understand masculinity in terms of others, we need to consider two distinct situations: one in which masculinity is defined vis-àvis various opposites and one in which masculinity is experienced as a kind

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of merging or fusion of self with others. We need to understand, not just the ‘not me’, but the ‘partly me’ and the ‘other mine’ (Smith, 2000: 104).

The Antony-icon is situated somewhere between the ‘not me’ and the ‘partly me.’ Crucially, he is never explicitly rejected, but rather occupies a position of troubling quasi-identification: attractive, certainly, but sufficiently sub-hegemonic as to render that attraction problematic. To understand how and why this should be, we must first understand the processes by which identification creates a sense of connection between a screen figure and the spectator. ‘Identification,’ however, is a contested term. John Ellis describes it as follows: [I]dentification involves both the recognition of self in the image on the screen, a narcissistic identification, and the identification of self with the various positions that are involved in the fictional narration: those of hero and heroine, villain, bit-part player, active and passive character. Identification is therefore multiple and fractured, a sense of seeing the constituent parts of the spectator’s own psyche paraded before her or him (Ellis, 1982: 43).

Ellis’ account is informed by psychoanalytic film theory, which, says Amy Coplan, ‘creates an impression of reality that locates the ideal viewer (or spectatorial position) at the center of vision as the creator of meaning, providing a sense of unity and control. It is from the privileged position of the camera that the spectator identifies with the on-screen characters’ (2008: 98). However, recent work in cognitive film theory rejects the notion of ‘identification’ per se, arguing instead that character engagement can best be understood in terms of ‘empathy’ – again, a term with variable, often conflicting, meanings. Coplan suggests the following definition, describing viewer empathy as ‘a complex emotional process through which a spectator simulates the character’s situated psychological states, including the character’s beliefs, emotions, and desires, by imaginatively experiencing the character’s experiences from the character’s point of view, while simultaneously maintaining clear self/other differentiation’ (2008: 103). This is extremely important in understanding the positioning of the Antony-icon. Critically, he is not a villain (nor can he convincingly be called an anti-hero3), but is to be understood as a

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sympathetic character (pace Coplan, who clearly differentiates between sympathy/empathy [2008: 107]; however, I use the term in its colloquial sense, to indicate a character in whom it is expected the audience will be emotionally invested). Antony’s non-hegemonic behaviour is designed to mark his masculine performance as deficient; however, within the genre conventions of the toga epic, the invocation of ‘deficient masculinity’ carries with it a specific set of discursive associations, not least of which is the implication of non-heterosexual desire. Moreover, non-heterosexual desire is generally, to a greater or lesser extent, conflated with the Roman Other – the text’s antagonist, whose values (imperial, militaristic, dictatorial, non-heterosexual) the protagonist (and therefore the audience) is primed to reject.4 The most obvious manifestation of this trope is to be found in Spartacus (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1960), in the character of Crassus (Lawrence Olivier), and specifically the infamous ‘Oysters and Snails’ sequence that was removed from the cinematic cut and only restored in 1991 for home video release. So revealing is this sequence of the gender paradigm of the toga epic that it has been discussed at length by numerous scholars of the genre (see Hark, 1993; Wyke, 1997; Winkler, 2001; Cyrino, 2005). Crassus has already been systematically and repeatedly marked as Other by the movie, through his thoughtless cruelty, his power-mongering, his extremist language, his disingenuity and through the deployment of the ‘linguistic paradigm’ (Wyke, 1997: 133). This latter term describes the mechanism that operates within the toga epic to devolve Rome/Romanness and non-Rome/non-Romanness into a binary that mirrors the colonialist tensions inherent in American romanitas, by casting Rome with English-accented actors and non-Rome with American leading men. Crassus is, to once again deploy the colloquial, a supremely unsympathetic character, expected to evoke a reject-response from the viewer. We are therefore primed to read his every action in these terms, and so the ‘Oysters and Snails’ scene, in which he attempts to seduce his male slave Antoninus (played by Tony Curtis, and again invoking the linguistic paradigm), must be interpreted as a continuation of this effort to position Crassus firmly within the semiotics of the ‘not me’. Moreover, as numerous scholars have noted (for example, Hark, 1993; Futrell, 2001; Winkler, 2001), the second half of the sequence, which

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was retained in the cinematic print, juxtaposes unambiguous male/male desire with militaristic, autocratic dialogue designed to semantically link Crassus/Rome to contemporary (or near-contemporary) mid-twentiethcentury dictators, whose excesses the 1950s/60s toga epic cycle (as I have argued in the Introduction) was at least partially designed to allegorically negotiate. ‘There, boy, is Rome!’ says Crassus. CRASSUS: The might, the majesty, the terror of Rome. There is the power that bestrides the known world like a colossus. No man can withstand Rome. No nation can withstand her. How much less a boy? There is only one way to deal with Rome, Antoninus. You must serve her. You must abase yourself before her. You must grovel at her feet. You must… love her. (Kubrick, 1960)

Crassus’ language marks him as Other to the American ideal espoused by Spartacus’ slave army, and is designed to distance him from audience empathy. By syntactically connecting this sequence with that immediately preceding it (they both occur within the same geographical space, and are temporally linked by continuous dialogue and non-diegetic musical cues), the text aligns Crassus’ homosexual desire with Roman imperialist excess. Homosexual desire is thus positioned as deviant, and used further to Other Crassus in gendered terms. This should not be surprising, given the fact that, as discussed in the Introduction, the essentialist nature of gender in mythic space requires performances of masculine/feminine to adhere to the hegemonic paradigm if they are to connote a sympathetic character. Brian Baker, in Masculinity in Fiction and Film – Representing Men in Popular Genres 1945–2000, contextualizes the explicit Othering of homosexual desire in postwar popular culture as a product of an ‘anxiety about male subjectivity [that] was partly created by the Kinsey Report’ (2006: 7). Published in 1948, Kinsey’s Sexual Behavior in the Human Male deconstructed the paradigm of male heteronormativity and, according to Robert J Corber, inadvertently contributed to what he calls ‘the emergent heterosexual panic’ (1993: 63) of the era. Corber discusses the politicization of the homosexual Other as a national crisis on a par with the perceived threat of Communism, and Baker concurs. ‘Homosexuals, communists, and women,’ he says. ‘The construction of these Others to a heterosexual

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male normativeness [sic], itself characterized by Sedgwick’s “homosociality”, becomes an ossification of social and sexual formations’ (Baker, 2006: 8). Considered alongside the unsettling fluidity of male sexual identity as unpacked by Kinsey et al, the body of Crassus is therefore made to perform, not only homoeroticism as an indicator of imperialist Otherness, but also imperialism as an indicator of homoerotic desire. Thus displaced onto the imperial Other, the homoerotic is contained and managed: as Baker suggests, homosexuality is conflated intrinsically with the ‘not me’ of three socio-sexual groups that (partially) delimit American hegemonic masculinity. It becomes both an explanation and an exorcism: Crassus experiences homoerotic desire because he is of the ‘not me’;, therefore, homoeroticism can be avoided through the rigid policing of the hegemonic. Moreover, as the homoerotic is discursively explained by inscribing it on the body of the ‘not me’, the semantic link between ‘homosexual’ and ‘Other’ is further rhetorically entrenched. The toga movie is therefore at pains to insist upon the heteronormative desire of its male leads. Jerry B Pierce calls this ‘heteroperformance’ – the visual repetition of activities designed to affirm the hero’s heterosexuality, which ‘can occur through direct action taken by a character (wedding ceremony or consensual sexual encounter), via appropriately masculine attire (rugged clothing), or even indirectly, through the staging of certain scenes (the display of a baby’s crib next to the matrimonial bed)’ (2011: 42). It should be noted that Antony himself regularly engages in heteroperformance through his interactions with Cleopatra. Heteroperformance is also designed to mitigate the presumed unease engendered by the homoeroticism of male display within the toga epic, as I will discuss in Chapter 5; for the purposes of this section I shall limit my examination to the manner in which the emphasis on heteronormative desire is used to position Us/Them and, consequently, Sympathetic/ Unsympathetic within the epic screen text. If this argument appears to collapse the complicated semantics of non-heterosexual sexuality into a simplistic heterosexual/masculine: homosexual/feminine binary, that is because it is, to a very great extent, rendered as such within the epic text. Moreover, a recent study would appear to suggest that the negotiation of ancient heteronormative slippage in modern screen texts is of critical importance to audience reception of

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the movie in question. In recent years, both Troy (dir. Wolfgang Petersen, 2004) and 300 (dir. Zack Snyder, 2006) have explicitly written out potential homoerotic subtext from the screen narrative. Troy reconfigures an apparent homosexual relationship (as attested in The Iliad) between Achilles (Brad Pitt) and Patroclus (Garrett Hedlund) as a familial bond, rewriting the two men as cousins, and having Achilles assume a quasi-paternal status as Patroclus’ guardian (Pierce, 2011: 46), while 300, despite taking pains to present Othering Spartan practices such as infant exposure, carefully omits any reference to what Pierce calls ‘the historically homosexual “baggage” associated with Spartan warriors’ (2011: 49). 300, says Pierce, ‘continues a long tradition of pairing “proper”, heterosexual, masculine and just heroes with “improper”, homosexual or otherwise “deviant” and tyrannical antagonists. In doing so, 300, as well as two other recent epic motion pictures about the Greek and Roman worlds, Gladiator (dir. Ridley Scott, 2000) and Troy (dir. Wolfgang Petersen, 2004), promotes a heteronormative masculinity by linking heterosexuality with heroism and decency’ (p 41). Both movies enjoyed overwhelming commercial success, with Troy achieving a global box office of $497m (imdb.com, ‘Troy, 2004’) and 300 earning $456m worldwide (imdb.com, ‘300, 2006’). It is therefore notable that another recent epic movie, Alexander (dir. Oliver Stone, 2005), which elected to retain the homosexual relationship between its two male leads (Alexander, played by Colin Farrell, and Hephaestion, played by Jared Leto), was a critical and financial failure. In Fortune Favors the Blond: Colin Farrell in Alexander, Monica S Cyrino interrogates the film’s reception. Although she concludes that a multiplicity of factors contributed to Alexander’s box-office failure, including the disconnect between Farrell’s star image and that of the character he plays, she acknowledges that director Oliver Stone’s decision to adhere to the widely accepted reading of the relationship between Alexander and Hephaestion as sexual is significant in the film’s failure to attract a mass audience (2010: 179). Furthermore, it would appear that Stone recognized this as a primary issue in the film’s commercial appeal. Says Cyrino: In fact, Stone was well aware that a forthright depiction of Alexander’s sexuality in his film would isolate his character from that of the gruff family man

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Maximus [Gladiator, 2000], as well as the newly romanticized hero Achilles [Troy, 2004]. When gay rights groups excoriated the director’s decision to cut some of the homoerotic content from Alexander’s scenes for the Director’s Cut DVD, Stone countered: ‘What they’re saying is that we changed the character to make him like Brad Pitt [in Troy] – to make him heterosexual. Which is not the case. We just don’t dwell on the relationship as much’ (Cyrino, 2010: 179).

Whatever the given reason for the belated decision to elide the movie’s homoeroticism, the fact remains: Stone’s decision to remove this content, in the face of box-office apathy, evidences at least a partial acknowledgement that writing male homoerotic desire into the toga movie invokes the genre’s heteronormative paradigm, and an effort to conflate homosexuality (or bisexuality, in this instance, given that Alexander also has an explicit male/female sex scene) with a sympathetic character creates a fundamental incoherence in the narrative. There is insufficient evidence to conclude that this is the primary reason for the film’s commercial failure, of course, but placed alongside the continuum of heteroperformance within the toga epic, it is a convincing argument. As noted above, to function effectively as a cipher, Antony must be available, at least in potential, to the ‘narcissistic identification’ outlined by Ellis. His leading man status demands it, as does the level of audience empathy required for the narrative’s tragic arc to engage with the audience (regardless of whether this engagement is understood in terms of cognitive film theory or psychoanalytic film theory). Given that non-heterosexual desire is symbolically conflated with the spectacularized Roman Other in accordance with the genre conventions of the toga epic, given that Antony must embody at least the ‘partly me’, and given the recent example of the financial risks involved in invoking explicit homoeroticism within the genre, it makes considerable sense to elide an alleged homosexual relationship from the construction of Antony-on-screen. Certainly, socio-cultural norms in general and the Hays Code in particular would have prohibited an explicit examination of this trope for the majority of Antony’s twentieth-century texts, but it is notable that no text has yet explored the possibility of a sexual relationship between Antony and Curio. Even Rome, which explicitly presents homosexual sex (a lesbian

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relationship between Octavia and Servilia, and a sexual act between Duro, an assassin sent by Servilia into Atia’s house, and Castor, Atia’s slave), makes only the most oblique reference to Antony’s possible non-heterosexual desire, when Atia, believing that Octavian intends to marry her to Antony, demands that the latter get rid of any of his house slaves with whom he has had sexual relations, and specifically includes male slaves under this aegis. Antony does not specifically deny that he has engaged in male/male sexual intercourse, but neither does he confirm it, and, since no instance is presented on screen, it is not possible to read this unproblematically as evidence of homosexual desire on Antony’s part. Moreover, given the anomalous nature of Atia’s claim, it is more useful to think of it as evidencing a generally pathological sexual appetite (examined in Chapter 4) rather than specifically non-heterosexual desire. Conclusion In Hiding From Humanity: Disgust, Shame and the Law, Martha Craven Nussbaum identifies ‘male loathing of the homosexual’ as ‘the central locus of disgust in today’s United States’ (2006: 113). Whether or not the reality accords with the polemic, it is certainly true that perhaps no other condition so specifically bounds hegemonic masculinity as the insistence upon its heterosexuality. In Chapter 5, I will argue that Antony’s appeal as a screen icon is partially predicated on the fact that he ought to achieve the hegemonic paradigm and yet does not. This argument notwithstanding, Antony can only function effectively if he presents a convincing avatar of the dangers of acceding to the myriad threats that assail the performance of paradigm masculinity, and for this to be the case, his ‘right’, for want of a better word, to assume the paradigm must be unquestioned. Regardless of any particular lip service paid towards a more inclusive society, regardless of the recent tendency towards spectacularization of homosexual desire (particularly female/female desire), homosexuality remains a barrier, within the toga movie and without, to the assumption of the hegemonic. Quite simply, for all that his function is to manifest deficient masculinity, Antony’s desire for Curio (whether based in invective or in historical fact) would preclude him utterly from potentially achieving the paradigm, and, for this reason if no other, it must be elided from his

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mythology. To include it would be to fundamentally destabilize the icon and its associated narrative. The absence of Fulvia is informed by a similar project of imposing coherence on a narrative that is rendered fundamentally incoherent by its socio-cultural function. By tracing the imperatives that demand her exclusion, it is possible to discern the operation of a complementary binary of idealized/deficient femininity in constructing the Antony-narrative, and it is useful to consider Octavia – reified as an Augustan ideal – as an equivalent to the paradigms of masculine performance that I shall explore in detail in Chapter 5. Were Fulvia to remain within the Antonian mythology, she would collapse the Us/Them, Good Woman/Bad Woman, Roman/ Eastern discourse that teleologically determines the inevitable ruin of Antony and Cleopatra. Fulvia’s presence does not necessarily demand the inclusion of the Perusine War within the narrative, since it is not present in the 1999 text in which she is mentioned, but it holds the potential to explode the convenient, gendered explanation for Antony’s defection from Rome. With or without Perusia to complicate the schism between Antony and Octavian, the presence of Fulvia within the text denies a simplistic positioning of the breach as a manifestation of Antony’s deficient masculinity in his selection of feminized Alexandria and immoderate love over masculinized Rome and political duty. It re-politicizes Antony’s decision, and denies the inscription of gender anxiety upon his body. Curio’s absence guards against a reading of Antony as an irredeemable ‘not me’; Fulvia’s against a recuperation of the discourse of feminization that is, as I will show, critical to the positioning of Antony-on-screen. I will explore the former in Chapter 5 and the latter in Chapter 4, but for now I want to turn to the next phase in transcribing Antony-in-culture into Antony-on-screen: his construction within the Shakespearean text.

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3 ‘Th’ Abstract of All Faults’:1 Shakespeare’s Antony as a Cultural Template Both the Cleopatra story, and specifically Shakespeare’s version of the Cleopatra story, saturate Hollywood history…. [H]owever, Shakespeare’s play maintains a peculiar status, considering its author’s reputation and Hollywood’s penchant for touting any of its high-culture associations: Antony and Cleopatra serves as a submerged source – for character, for situation, and even for the occasional line or phrase – but never, in whole or in part, as a script (Eggert, 1997: 198).

Introduction: Claiming Shakespeare There is a very good reason that three of the chapters in this book use Shakespearean quotes in their titles: without reference to Shakespeare, it is impossible to understand the screen Antonies of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Francesca T Royster (2003: 114–117) argues persuasively that Shakespeare’s Cleopatra has ‘ghosted’ her twentiethcentury screen incarnations to the extent that their construction cannot be understood without reference to Shakespeare’s text. The same can be said of Antony. Shakespeare is everywhere. Eggert (above) discusses the ways in which he is invoked unconsciously in texts that ostensibly bear no relation to his original body of work, and his cultural presence arguably eclipses that of any other writer in the English language. Indeed, as Julie Sanders contends in Adaptation and Appropriation, the pervasiveness of the Shakespearean mytheme in the Western (and, arguably, global) 75

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socio-cultural consciousness ‘functions in a remarkably similar way to the communal, shared, transcultural, and transhistorical art forms of myth and fairy tale’ (2006: 45). As Eggert demonstrates when she locates the narrative structure of Bugsy (dir. Levinson, 1991) as an appropriation of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, the means of reproducing Shakespeare need not be limited to direct adaptation of his corpus, and, in fact, if we are seeking evidence of his pervasiveness in popular culture, a direct adaptation may be the least convincing indicator of ubiquity. Direct adaptation, though it need not necessarily be the case, generally involves a lesser degree of interaction with the source text than does an appropriation that seeks to re-claim and re-vision the text in a manner that renews its cultural relevance and speaks to contemporary concerns – indeed, this is one of the reasons, as I have stated, that I elected to exclude the ‘pedagogical “Scenes from the Bard” ’ (Jörgens, 1998: 22) from this study. It is this sense of ‘(re)claiming’ Shakespeare that indicates, to an extent, his influence within our cultural mythogenesis. Shakespeare saturates popular culture, appearing across genres both obliquely and explicitly, and often speaking to a desire to secure cultural privilege through the invocation of his name. Ten Things I Hate About You (Junger, 1999) updates The Taming Of The Shrew to the twentieth-century American high-school classroom, but appeals to Eggert’s ‘high-cultural associations’ by invoking its Shakespearean roots in an effort to set itself apart from the plethora of teen comedies available at the time. However, the sense of reclamation need not be restricted to a direct adaptation, nor need it necessarily be concerned solely with an appeal to prestige. When, in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, Chancellor Gorkon (David Warner) asserts that ‘You have not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon’ (Meyer, 1991), the scene is ostensibly played for laughs, but it nevertheless demands that we engage with the notion of Shakespeare as cultural ‘property’. Moreover, it suggests that claiming Shakespeare is an act of cultural legitimization – the invocation of his name an act of appropriation, struggle and socio-political contest. This can be at the level of ‘touting… high-culture associations’ (a device, indeed, which Star Trek repeatedly and covertly employs in an effort to highlight its political intent: Shakespearean allusion is frequently deployed in order to signal that the

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overt ‘space opera’ narrative is to be read as an allegory for a deeper, sociopolitically transgressive commentary), or it can involve Sanders’ idea of ‘writ[ing] back’ (2006: 50) to Shakespeare in order to highlight instances within the text of ideologically objectionable material in light of feminism, post-colonialism or other contemporaneously articulated concerns. Both methods appeal to Shakespeare as legitimizer: whether through celebration or castigation of his cultural supremacy, the name and the presence are invoked in order to insist upon the new text’s relevance within the canon. Within this context, it does not seem like an untenable semantic leap to claim that all screen reproductions of the Antony/Cleopatra narrative engage, either consciously or otherwise (and there is considerable evidence to suggest at least a superficial conscious engagement), with Shakespeare. Cleopatra (1934) follows Shakespeare’s lead in elevating Enobarbus from a minor character in Plutarch’s Life to a more significant player and commentator on Antony’s performance of masculinity – indeed, as played by C Aubrey Smith, Enobarbus might be directly transcribed from Shakespeare’s folio. Cleopatra (1963) structures the ‘Antony’ half of the narrative in a similar manner to Shakespeare’s play, culminating in a detailed final section wherein Cleopatra passes the period between Antony’s death and her own in seeking to secure her political dynasty. Moreover, much of the dialogue in this – as in the earlier – text is quasi-Shakespearean in construct: when Octavian calls Antony ‘a part of Caesar’, the similarity to Brutus’ description of Antony as ‘but a limb of Caesar’ in Julius Caesar (2.1.165) is so pronounced that it can only have been a deliberate attempt to invoke the earlier text. Thematically also, the two texts repeatedly coincide: when Cleopatra compares herself poetically to the Nile, she evokes Shakespeare’s anthropomorphized mapping of Egypt onto the body of the queen; she recalls Antony naming her his ‘serpent of old Nile’ (1.5.30), and he calls her ‘Egypt’ during his death scene (‘I am dying, Egypt, dying’ – 4.15.23 and 4.15.50). Further, by specifically using the Nile as a symbol of her own fertility, she taps into a long-standing socio-cultural anxiety concerning the monstrous fecundity of Egyptian soil that was contemporary to Shakespeare’s writing (Royster, 2003: 44–48) and can be seen reflected – albeit obliquely – in his text. Antony and Cleopatra displays a singular

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fascination with anthropomorphizing and allegorizing Egypt’s fertility, for example: The higher Nilus swells, The more it promises: as it ebbs, the seedsman Upon the slime and ooze scatters his grain, And shortly comes to harvest (2.7.21–24)

and later, when Cleopatra equates her progenitive capacity with Egypt as a whole: The next Caesarion smite! Till by degrees the memory of my womb, Together with my brave Egyptians all, By the discandying of this pelleted storm, Lie graveless, till the flies and gnats of Nile Have buried them for prey! (3.13.196–201)

Cleopatra’s decision, in Cleopatra (1963), to frame her own ability to conceive and bear Caesar’s son(s) in these terms situates her within this discourse and aligns her with Shakespeare’s conception of Egypt. ‘A woman, too, must make the barren land fruitful,’ says Cleopatra (Elizabeth Taylor). ‘She must make life grow where there was no life, just as the Mother Nile feeds and replenishes the earth. I am the Nile. I will bear many sons’ (Mankiewicz, 1963). However, as argued above, the allusion to Antony and Cleopatra or Julius Caesar need not be explicit in order to support an argument that situates Shakespeare’s Antony as a template for Antony-on-screen. As I have discussed in the preceding chapter, Plutarch is often the go-to ancient source referenced by screenwriters where they want to invoke an aura of historical authenticity around their Antony. Plutarch and Shakespeare thus exist in a kind of verisimilar feedback loop: Plutarch’s current cultural presence undoubtedly owes much to his status as Shakespeare’s chief source for the Roman plays, and, while Antony and

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Cleopatra is clearly unsuitable as a direct source text for a narrative that aspires to historical credibility, ‘Plutarch’ (as a concept) has effectively been allowed to stand-in for ‘historiographical research’, by virtue of the meta-fame afforded to him by Shakespeare. However, so closely aligned is Shakespeare’s text to Plutarch’s Life of Antony, that it is possible – at least superficially – to claim that to reference Plutarch is to reference Shakespeare. The difference between Shakespeare’s Antony and Plutarch’s Antony is largely a question of cultural familiarity – this is an over-generalization, of course, but one which holds up for the purposes of this argument. Where it comes to Antony-on-screen, ‘claiming’ Plutarch and ‘claiming’ Shakespeare are discursively very similar. I want to spend the rest of this chapter examining the means by which this is achieved, and the implications of it for Antony-on-screen and the performance of masculinity. Shakespeare and Plutarch In the previous chapter, I situated Plutarch’s Life of Antony ideologically as an exploration of the performance of deficient masculinity, and examined the corollary of this in terms of the implications for the construction of his Antony. Shakespeare’s close adherence to Plutarch, therefore, implies at least a tacit acceptance of the tropes of masculine performance embedded in his source text. This is not to imply that Shakespeare unproblematically reproduced the Plutarchian narrative in play form. Alessandro Serpieri, in Shakespeare and Plutarch: Intertextuality in Action, interrogates the text of another of Shakespeare’s Roman plays (Julius Caesar) in order to determine the extent of the playwright’s use of the Plutarchian source text. Through a meticulous textual analysis, Serpieri and his team determined that, although Shakespeare typically adheres closely to his source – since ‘[i]n Plutarch he found a vivid, often stage-like, rhythm, supported by a skilful use of various points of view which added both to the suspense and to the theatricality of the events narrated’ (2004: 45) – where deviation occurs, it is revealing of Shakespeare’s own agenda. ‘In order to create the stage story,’ says Serpieri, ‘he selected both events and characters, according to his semantic and ideological intentions.’ He continues:

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Such selection entailed, on one side, the omission, integration and dislocation of events, and, on the other, a preliminary actantial adaptation, which consisted in the choice of the active forces to be opposed in the dramatic agon and in the actors-characters who had to represent those forces (2004: 45–46).

Specifically, Serpieri identifies the scene in which the newly formed Triumvirate discuss the proscriptions as indicative of Shakespeare’s own authorial intent. Plutarch, says Serpieri, attempts to contextualize the conspicuous cruelty displayed by the Triumvirs by discussing their extended debates around which of their friends and family they would have to sacrifice in order to ensure that their political enemies would be eliminated. However, says Serpieri, ‘Shakespeare does not take into account the scruples mentioned at the beginning of Plutarch’s passage, and therefore confers even more cruelty upon the meeting… Another detail to be noted is that Antony’s uncle, Lucius Caesar, is transformed by Shakespeare into his nephew Publius, historically non-existent. At first sight there seems to be no reason for such a substitution, except, perhaps, that of rendering the condemnation of a young nephew more ruthless than that of an old uncle’ (2004: 53–54). While the restructuring of the opening lines of Act IV – from Plutarch’s vision of triumviral deliberation to Shakespeare’s rather more utilitarian, ‘These many, then, shall die; their names are pricked’ (4.1.1) – could conceivably be attributed to dramatic necessity, in terms of the reordering of the fabula (Serpieri, 2004: 45), the substitution of the fictitious Publius for the historical Lucius Caesar is clear evidence of an effort to ideologically situate the audience in terms of their reading of Antony in particular. The Antony of Julius Caesar, however, is an unconvincing template for Antony-on-screen, since, as I will argue in Chapter 4, the positioning of Antony-on-screen is largely informed by his dyadic gendering relationship with Cleopatra, who does not appear in this text. Indeed, Lloyd Davis, in his discussion of the play, describes it as a ‘one-gender world’ in which female characters are sidelined in order to present ‘a society publicly dominated by and symbolically fixated on men’ (2009: 119), and, as I have argued in Kelly (2011), the ideological focus of the play differs from Antony and Cleopatra – a much more credible source for

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Antony-on-screen – in that Julius Caesar is concerned with the performance of power,2 while Antony and Cleopatra is concerned with the performance of gender. Nevertheless, as an example of Shakespeare’s filtration of his source material in order to make a specific point, the above scene remains relevant to the present argument. Of course, intertextuality is much more than simple reproduction or homage. As Roland Barthes argues: ‘any text is an intertext; other texts are present in it, at varying levels, in more or less recognizable forms: the texts of the previous and surrounding culture… Intertextuality, the condition of any text whatsoever, cannot, of course, be reduced to a problem of sources or influences; the intertext is a general field of anonymous formulae whose origin can scarcely ever be located; of unconscious or automatic quotations, given without quotation marks’ (Barthes, 1981: 39). It is a simple matter to trace the influence of Plutarch in Shakespeare’s characterization of Antony – we know that Thomas North’s 1579 translation of the Lives was Shakespeare’s main source for both Antony and Cleopatra and Julius Caesar, and the similarities between Plutarch’s source and Shakespeare’s adaptation are striking. However, as Sanders argues, Shakespeare was also ‘an active adaptor and imitator, an appropriator of myth, fairy tale and folklore, as well as of the works of specific writers as varied as Ovid, Plutarch and Holinshed’ (2006: 46). In keeping with Barthes’ notion of ‘unconscious or automatic quotations’, Shakespeare did not write his plays in a vacuum, nor could he control the unconscious intrusion of a multitude of cultural influences when constructing his Antony – whom, as we have seen, he uses to perform specifically Shakespearean functions as required by his ideological agenda. To quote Sanders again: ‘Perhaps it serves us better to think in terms of complex processes of filtration, and in terms of intertextual webs or signifying fields, rather than simplistic one-way lines of influence from source to adaptation’ (2006: 24). It is certainly impossible to identify the myriad socio-cultural influences unconsciously embedded in Shakespeare’s Antony, but, in keeping with this project’s theoretical framework that situates every cultural artefact as a product, conscious or otherwise, of the socio-cultural conditions at the historical moment of its creation, it is critical to understand the gender discourse that informs the masculine paradigm in Antony and Cleopatra.

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Shakespeare’s Antony and the Early Modern Self The ideological construction of Shakespeare’s Antony can only properly be understood with reference to early modern conceptions of selfhood – based on Galenic ideas of the bodily humours and transcendentalist philosophy – of which evidence can readily be discovered in the text. Philo’s first description of Antony, heavily loaded with Roman disdain at Antony’s defection to his Egyptian mistress’ corrupt behaviour, creates a picture of the fallen general, lost in ‘dotage’, before the audience is allowed a first glance at the character himself. It thus sets up a conception of Antony that will shadow him throughout the text, but nevertheless provides clues to an early modern audience that both explain and potentially mitigate Antony’s masculine treachery: His Captain’s heart Which in the scuffles of great fights hath burst The buckles on his breast, reneges all temper And is become the bellows and the fan To cool a gipsy’s lust. (1.1.6–10)

In Shakespeare and Masculinity, Bruce R Smith discusses at length the orthodoxies of Galenic medicine, which teaches that the body consists of four humours – blood, choler, phlegm and black bile. Each is associated with a particular organ and a particular element, and an excess of any is liable to unbalance the personality. The heart is associated with blood, which is in turn associated with air (which, with fire, is one of the ‘hot’ elements). Heat is likewise associated with masculinity: Galen presumes that men’s bodies are hotter than women’s. Antony’s great ‘Captain’s heart’, therefore, would have hinted to Shakespeare’s audience that this was a man prone to an excess of blood – in Philo’s imagery, the heart is so engorged by blood in the excitement of the fight that it bursts the buckles on his armour. An excess of blood, however, is as undesirable in a man as a deficit, and will certainly destabilize his personality. His passion for Cleopatra, then, can be read as a symptom of his unbalanced humour: the same humour that incites him to great adventure will, unchecked, lure him to his destruction (Smith, 2000: 104).

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In much the same way that contemporary semantics map imprecisely onto Roman political invective, Smith points out that it is nonsensical to impose a modern-day reading on an early modern text. The disconnect may well be more visible in the unfamiliar syntactical patterns and language of the seventeenth-century dialogue, flagging up more effectively the semantic schism between Us and Them than, perhaps, a recently effected translation of a text from classical Latin into contemporary English, but the pervasiveness of Shakespearean narrative in Western culture invokes a familiarity that is not necessarily justified. Because of his unique canonical position and the absorption of his corpus into the cultural lexicon, because of his constant and visible recycling, appropriation and adaptation into a contemporarily relevant format, it is easy to assume that Shakespeare’s authorial decisions are ‘knowable’ in a contemporary sense. As Julie Sanders argues, the fact that his fundamental narratives are thematically recognizable does not mean that his treatment of them automatically conforms to our semiological reading of his discursive cues: ‘Myth as archetype undoubtedly concerns itself with themes that endure across cultural and historical boundaries: love, death, family, revenge,’ she acknowledges. However, ‘These themes might in some contexts be deemed “universal”, and yet the essence of adaptation and appropriation renders the mythic archetype specific, localized, and particular to the moment of the creation’ (2006: 71). Moreover, ‘Any claim to universality… runs the concomitant risk of de-historicizing the particular choices of the individual work of art’ (2006: 72–73). Antony and Cleopatra concerns itself most visibly with the interrogation of eros, the physical or sexual love between two adults. Lucy Hughes-Hallett (1990), however, argues that post-Romantic notions of romantic love have caused twentieth-century audiences to fundamentally misread Shakespeare’s text, and that, for Shakespeare and his audiences, Antony’s most grievous error was not that he allowed love to cloud his judgement, but that he submitted to such extremes of emotion in the first place. For an early modern audience, she argues, romantic love in and of itself was a pathological state: The grand absolutism of his declaration of love must certainly have thrilled them, as it thrills us still, but they would not have wished to emulate it.

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For them, such extreme feeling could be, at best, the object of compassion (Hughes-Hallett, 1990: 134).

According to this reading, Antony becomes a doubly tragic figure: surrender to his emotion (not, it should be noted, to Cleopatra specifically) is the ruin of his greatness – over which extremes of passion the abstemious Caesar cannot help but triumph – but his loss of greatness is, ultimately, equal to the loss of his life. It is equally important, however, to note that modern uses of the body of Shakespeare’s Antony are necessarily receptions of the text, according to the contemporaneous meanings layered onto his icon, and therefore Shakespeare’s original intent, although far from irrelevant, is not the prime consideration when analysing the modern uses of his character. Nevertheless, it is useful, when considering these modern receptions, to understand the ways in which they vary from the imperatives of the early modern text, not least in terms of drawing attention to the interpretative disconnect that has led to the romanticization of the Antony-icon. This, as I will argue in greater detail in Chapter 4, has been a key component of his feminized iconography. Moreover, to quote Sanders again, it is useful to think of adaptation (and by extension reception) as ‘a form of collaboration across time and sometimes across culture or language’ (2006: 47). As with the problematic, overly literal translation of Roman invective into modern narrative storytelling, the ‘naturalization’ of an interpretative disconnect has been mobilized to shore up a modern reading of Antony-on-screen: here, the Shakespearean interrogation of pathological love has been re-inscribed onto the body of Antony as a prioritization of the feminine business of romance over the masculine business of politics. Notwithstanding the fact that Shakespeare’s intent was certainly to cast aspersions over the physical/psychological health of a man whose humours were so conspicuously out of balance, nor the fact that his ideological motivations are telegraphed through the positioning of his source text vis-à-vis Antony’s performance of masculinity, the ‘romanticism’ of Antony and Cleopatra, as we are to understand it in a twentieth- and twenty-first-century context, is a modern imposition. This is an important point to bear in mind when considering the construction of gender in the play.

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Antony and Cleopatra and Gender Anxiety If Antony’s unstable humours render him susceptible to the excesses of his personality, what is needed to tip the balance is one who is able to exploit his specific weakness. To argue that Cleopatra is positioned as this individual is both accurate and also superficial: while it is certainly the case that she is constructed, in many ways, as Antony’s actant (feminine versus masculine; Eastern versus Western; Them versus Us), and it is equally true that she performs male patriarchal anxiety around the woman of power, it is misleading to categorize her specifically as the cause and source of his ruin. Rather, the complex interplay between Antony and Cleopatra embodies an exploration of gender paradigms that, again, must be historicized in order for us to fully understand their implications, but which resonate clearly in modern screen narratives. As I have argued elsewhere (Kelly, 2011), the timing of the play’s production is significant: Antony and Cleopatra, written in 1606 or 1607 (Pelling, 1999: 37), arrives historically three or four years after the death of Elizabeth I in 1603. According to Smith: ‘The power [Elizabeth] enjoyed at the apex of the social hierarchy caused anxieties about male privilege up and down the line’ (2000: 104). Read in this light, it becomes not only possible but appropriate to view Shakespeare’s Antony as the embodiment of masculine anxiety in the face of the gender crisis enacted by the positioning of a woman in supreme power, and his Cleopatra as a negotiation of the spectre of female power. There exists much scholarly interrogation of Cleopatra’s status as Other (Hughes-Hallett, 1990; Hamer, 1993 and 1997; Royster, 2003); however, it is important to note that in Shakespeare she is not so much opposed to as compared with Antony – a fact that underlines his semiotic status in the text. Shakespeare goes so far as to have Caesar say: [Antony] is not more manlike Than Cleopatra: nor the Queen of Ptolemy More womanly than he. (1.4.7–9)

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LT Fitz (1977) argues that, regardless of the dual title, it is Cleopatra alone who is the protagonist of the play. According to Fitz’s essay Egyptian Queens and Male Reviewers: Sexist Attitudes in Antony and Cleopatra Criticism: Not only does the play culminate in Cleopatra’s death scene, but she has (according to the statistical evidence of the Spevack Concordance) more speeches than Antony; indeed, the most in the play (1977: 309).

Fitz further argues that, where Shakespeare has deviated from Plutarch’s text, it is in order either to elevate Cleopatra’s importance to the story or to exonerate her intentions (although Marsh [1976: 166], points to the instance of Antony’s desertion of Octavia – whereas Plutarch has him turn her out of his Roman house, Shakespeare has him merely abandon her – which, having nothing to do with Cleopatra or her textual motivation, would seem to undermine Fitz’s theory). We should, however, remember that Shakespeare’s source material was concerned with Antony – his life and downfall – and not Cleopatra. This has, I feel, two major implications for his character: firstly, per Fitz, where Shakespeare has elevated Cleopatra’s role it can only diminish Antony’s agency; and, secondly, it clarifies the fact that this is the story of Antony’s (not Cleopatra’s) ruin. These two points may at first glance appear to be contradictory, but in fact they serve to reinforce each other: where Cleopatra is afforded greater power in Shakespeare than in Plutarch, this underlines the detraction of power from Antony, which is in itself underlined by the fact that Shakespeare used as his source text a document whose stated imperative was to present the decline of Antony as a moral instruction to readers. Antony’s agency may be limited, but there is no question that this text can be read as the story of Antony’s downfall, with Cleopatra cast as the catalyst of his self-destruction. Hughes-Hallett provides a comprehensive analysis of Cleopatra’s various iconographical reconfigurations in Western mythogenesis, from the early Middle Ages through to the 1963 movie. The text is primarily concerned with recuperating the Cleopatra of traditional Augustan invective and, as such, Antony is discussed only where his positioning informs Cleopatra’s, but Hughes-Hallett’s analyses make it possible to

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glean oblique clues as to his configuration in a plethora of pre-Shakespearean texts. From this, it is possible to infer – albeit to an extremely limited degree – a continuum of gender negotiation in cultural uses of the Antony/Cleopatra narrative (which must be considered Shakespearean intertexts, if only to the extent that they provide evidence of socio-cultural recycling of the myth). Of particular relevance is Hughes-Hallett’s analysis of Cleopatra’s medieval embodiment of the Good Woman. Antony’s suicide is presented as the courageous act of an honourable man whose fortunes have deserted him (1990: 119), and Cleopatra’s as evidence of idealized wifely virtue. While this may seem to be at odds with the prevailing narrative – and Hughes-Hallett acknowledges the dissonance, drawing attention to its distance from ‘the ancient fantasy of the depraved but lovely temptress’ (1990: 119) – it does, in fact, foreshadow the gendered subtext of the Shakespearean (and, by extension, modern) mythology, and neatly establishes the foundations of Shakespeare’s gender paradigms. For Cleopatra’s suicide is not only read as wifely devotion, it also brings with it connotations of atonement for the part she has played in his fall. Hughes-Hallett is primarily interested in the implications of this positioning for the construction of femininity, and this is certainly relevant to the current argument, but it is also explicitly revealing of Antony’s performance of masculinity, as I will show. Moreover, the trope survives the medieval period and is to be found into the Renaissance. ‘His death was her fault,’ says Hughes-Hallett, referring not only to Cleopatra’s embodiment of womanhood, but a wider socio-cultural discourse of feminine culpability. ‘Similarly, one after another of the early Renaissance Cleopatras admits her responsibility for Antony’s downfall. He has been foolish, mistaken, even sinful, but he is not to blame, any more than Adam was for eating the apple, Odysseus for lingering with Circe or Aeneus for allowing himself to be seduced by Dido’ (1990: 126). However, the very act of allowing Cleopatra to usurp the blame for Antony’s destitution implicitly comments on his agency. Hughes-Hallett again: Garnier’s Antony bewails his own degradation at Cleopatra’s hands: ‘In her allurements caught… I honour have despised.’ He accepts no responsibility,

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for his will is no longer free. His flight from Actium and his subsequent defeat, so Garnier’s furiously self-disgusted Cleopatra declares, was ‘not his offence, but mine.’ Antony dead, she mourns him in terms which make her acceptance of culpability explicit (1990: 127).

It is this theme of the loss of free will that unites these earlier texts with Shakespeare and hints at his gender paradigm. When Philo describes Antony as ‘a strumpet’s fool’ (1.1.14), when Antony worries about the ‘strong Egyptian fetters’ in which he might ‘lose [him]self in dotage’ (1.2.120–121), they describe a similar anxiety around a woman’s sexual power and its potential to disrupt the efficient performance of masculinity. Cleopatra-as-Good-Woman may exert her control unconsciously – even unwillingly – but, critically, Antony is not able to resist. Garnier’s account is particularly damning. Discussing it, HughesHallett offers the following analysis: Garnier’s Eras, wondering at the rigour of Cleopatra’s self-condemnation, seeks clarification: ‘Are you therefore cause of his [Antony’s] overthrow?’ Cleopatra replies with devastating lucidity: ‘I am the sole cause: I did it, only I.’ Sole cause – of a series of events in which she has played an entirely passive part. ‘I did it,’ she says, but it was Antony who loved her immoderately, Antony who preferred her to military honour, Antony who broke the battle line to follow her. But she will stand proxy for Antony because what he has done was motivated by sexual feeling; and sexuality, as Octavius and his Roman contemporaries asserted, and as posterity has agreed, is a female responsibility (1990: 130).

On a superficial level, therefore, it is possible to read Antony’s appearance preShakespeare as tangential to the basic intent of the plot, which is to discuss Cleopatra’s status as a woman. Since this cannot be understood or explained without opposing her position against Antony’s, he serves as her effective point of reference. Cleopatra is understood by and through her relationship to Antony: the text may have a point to make about his performance in the story of their downfall, but it is understood to have been largely informed by Cleopatra’s performance as Woman. Hughes-Hallett makes reference to the work of psychoanalyst Catherine Clément when she describes it as follows:

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So Cleopatra is to blame for Antony’s love, the love which supposedly destroyed him. Her guilt is not related to any willed action. If he had seduced her, even if he had raped her, she would still be culpable…. Cleopatra’s physical existence, her face, her ‘aspect’, is all the evidence required to find her guilty (1990: 130).

The text is not interested in Antony: he is absolved from complicity in his own defeat. He can therefore be understood as occupying a contradictory position with relation to the text: he is the agent of the plot, in that he is proactive whilst Cleopatra is reactive, but narrative agency rests solely on her shoulders, in that she is ultimately culpable in terms of the tragic denouement. To argue that Shakespeare’s text represents a paradigm break with this tradition is overly simplistic – Hughes-Hallett notes that ‘during the latter half of the sixteenth century a flock of Cleopatras took to the stage… Diverse as these plays are in their morals, their sympathies and their artistic merits, they have one thing in common, one partly dictated by the demands of the tragic form’ (1990: 114), clearly generically linking Antony and Cleopatra to its immediate predecessors. Furthermore, while these earlier texts might predate the first translation of Plutarch into English (effected by Sir Thomas North in 1579, from Jacques Amyot’s 1559 French translation of the original Greek), a Latin version of Plutarch’s Lives was available, albeit to a much more limited extent, in Rome from 1470 (Mossman, 1998: xiv), and was used as early as 1551 as inspiration for Giulio Landi’s La Vita di Cleopatra Reina d’Egitto (Hughes-Hallett, 1990: 114). The ‘newly fashionable dramatic form of tragedy’ (Hughes-Hallett, 1990: 114) was the primary impetus behind the selection of narrative subjects. The question of whether culpability for the generic tragic arc rested with Cleopatra or with Antony, while important in terms of delineating Hughes-Hallett’s temporally defined analytical categories of Cleopatra-as-Suicide (derived from the medieval tradition of Cleopatra as Good Woman) and Cleopatra-as-Lover (which is more revealing of early modern constructs of gender), describes a paradigm that has no literal presence in the historical moment. However, Antony and Cleopatra represents the first major instance of Plutarch’s Life of Antony, with all its concomitant ideological and gender positioning, entering

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the English-language cultural lexicon. Antony and Cleopatra may not precisely represent a paradigm break with the tradition of ascribing total culpability to Cleopatra, but, given that its source text is concerned with enumerating Antony’s faults and describing their causative role in his destruction, Shakespeare’s text is certainly considerably more concerned with situating Antony’s performance of masculinity alongside Cleopatra’s performance of femininity as the foundation of their tragic arc. In order to fully explore the mechanisms by which this is achieved, however, it is important to understand the vectors of masculinity as described within both the play’s diegesis, and early modern discourse as a whole. Shakespeare, Romanness and Masculine Identity Derek RC Marsh, in Passion Lends Them Power: A Study of Shakespeare’s Love Tragedies (1976), argues in favour of a pro-Cleopatra reading of the text, considering her to be the most truly honest of the three protagonists (Antony, Octavius Caesar and Cleopatra). It is certainly true that, per his argument, she is regularly required to lay bare her emotions, but I struggle to find evidence in the text that Shakespeare considers this an admirable quality. On the contrary, on hearing that Antony plans to leave Alexandria for Rome, Enobarbus notes acerbically that ‘Cleopatra catching but the least noise of this dies instantly; I have seen her die twenty times upon far poorer moment. I do think there is mettle in death which commits some loving act upon her, she hath such a celerity in dying,’ and Antony agrees: ‘She is cunning past man’s thought’ (1.2.147–152). Indeed, as I will argue in Chapter 4, emotional expressivity attracts a particularly damning gender discourse that situates it as explicitly feminine, in the sense that it is non-masculine and therefore undesirable. Moreover, Cleopatra’s tendency to mobilize her emotionality as a means of exercising control over Antony’s actions links her once more to the notion of the ‘strong Egyptian fetters’ that bind him – at least partially against his masculine judgement – to Alexandria and the queen. What is more compelling is the converse of this argument: that, rather than positioning Cleopatra as specifically honest, Antony and Caesar Octavianus are, by comparison, to be found dishonest. Marsh extends

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this to cover the world of Rome in its entirety as represented by the text, offering as evidence the scene on board Pompey’s barge (2.7) in which Menas advises Pompey to murder the triumvirs in their drunken stupor, against which Pompey only reluctantly demurs: Ah, this you shouldst have done, And not have spoke on’t. In me ‘tis villainy, In thee’t had been good service (2.7.67–69)

It is true that there is no corresponding treachery to be found in Alexandria – but, crucially, neither is it to be found in Caesar. As evidence of Caesar’s performance of Roman treachery, Marsh offers his breach of faith with Pompey – but Pompey is a man who has already demonstrated his own faithlessness in the scene above. I do not argue that Shakespeare’s text is pro-Caesar – his deeply unsympathetic attitude of cold calculation serves to counter this interpretation – but I do, however, argue against an anti-Rome theme in the text. Rather, Rome, here standing in as it does in countless texts for ‘Englishness’ (see Introduction), is performing masculinity as it was understood in early modern England. Rome is the seat of male rule, of hierarchy, of nobility, of dignity, of honour between men, of (for want of a better word) non-foreigners. Egypt, by contrast, is the seat of female rule, of emotion over duty, of foreigners, of sensuous pleasure, of eunuchs, of harlotry and of adulterous affairs. Smith posits four main Others against which early modern masculinity was defined: women, foreigners, superiors/inferiors and sodomites (2000: 104–126). Egypt epitomizes the first two, shows little regard for the feudal hierarchy (which is given expression in the military discipline of Caesar’s army), and, if we substitute ‘eunuch’ for ‘sodomite’ (both expressing a similar masculine anxiety around male genitalia and feminization), it is clear Egypt is performing Other in this text. Antony’s decision in Act 2, Scene 3 (43–45), I will to Egypt: And though I make this marriage for my peace, I’ th’ East my pleasure lies

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must therefore be read as his rejection of the masculine world of Rome for the feminine pleasures of Egypt. This theme of the dereliction of masculine-affiliated Rome for feminine-affiliated Egypt is ubiquitous to Antony’s screen appearances. As I have argued in Chapter 1, the foundation for this reading of Antonius’ relocation to Alexandria is available in Plutarch, but the gender association is not manifest. The Life of Antony describes it as follows: Cleopatra… adopted a rigorous diet, and succeeded in making her body waste away. Whenever Antony came near her she would fix her eyes on him with a look of rapture, and whenever he left she would appear to languish and be on the verge of collapse. She took great pains to arrange that he should often see her in tears, and then she would quickly wipe them away as if she did not wish him to notice, and she kept up this elaborate performance all the time that he was preparing to march from Syria and join the king of Media… In the end [she] so melted and unmanned him, that he began to believe she would take her own life if he left her. And so he returned to Alexandria (Plut. Ant. 53).

Shakespeare’s Enobarbus references this campaign of emotional attrition with his dry comment, cited above (‘Cleopatra, catching but the least noise of this, dies instantly’) – however, its timing in the play does not match Antony’s supposed abandonment of Rome; rather, Cleopatra has (hypothetically, at this point) deployed her emotionality to prevent Antony from leaving Alexandria in order to patch over the schism caused by the Perusine War. Plutarch’s text may heavily imply that Antony rejects masculine Rome for feminine Egypt for reasons of pleasure and his dissolute personality, but his political dereliction is entirely ascribed to Cleopatra and her wiles. Shakespeare’s decision to frame it in gendered terms is a departure from his source text, and warrants examination. Shakespeare’s ideological affiliation is markedly different to Plutarch’s in this respect: unlike Plutarch, Shakespeare has no direct experience of Roman territorial occupation or imperialist/colonialist invective to problematize his assumption of the West/masculine and East/feminine paradigm embodied in Roman rhetoric. Moreover, as Francesca Royster (2003: 33–58) notes, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries witnessed

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an explosion in English colonial expansion, and the concomitant discourse of legitimization of the rapidly-expanding slave trade exposes an anxiety about the Other in terms that are readily mappable onto Shakespeare’s Cleopatra. Royster locates the expression of this anxiety in a trope that is identifiable in both feminist and colonialist studies: the monstrous sexuality of the woman of colour. ‘We might view Shakespeare’s treatment of Cleopatra through the larger lens: England’s fears of interactions with Africans concretely played out through representations of interracial marriage, the looming threat of miscegenation, the corruption of family structure and the infection of the social and military body,’ says Royster. ‘In Shakespeare’s representation of Cleopatra as sexual conqueror rather than conquered, he reverses the traditional Western prototype of civilization building, for as literary critic Arthur Little writes, “just as a white man may be said to lose his status as a white man by raping a white woman, his raping of a black woman becomes one way that he may be initiated into whiteness. (By falling in love with Cleopatra, Antony proves himself both a failed imperialist and a failed rapist.)” ’ (2003: 34; Little, 2000: 148–149).3 This plays into the same discourse, expounded above, that links Romanness to Englishness to masculine through a complex interplay of semantic association and negative identification. Whilst on the one hand this could be regarded as a projection of Roman anxieties about the East (and, indeed, Royster examines the tensions within the early modern English construction of the Other in terms that recall Catharine Edwards’ discussion of ambiguities around philhellenism in Roman discourse – the simultaneous attraction and rejection embodied in a once-great culture that must now be discursively subjugated in order to justify its colonization) – on the other, as I have discussed, Shakespeare’s source material is a problematic foundation for this semantic construction. It is more convincing – and more revealing – to interrogate the construction of Rome/Romanness within the play as a specifically early modern avatar of idealized masculine performance, and, as such, Shakespeare’s gender paradigm becomes clear. The decision to frame Antony’s abandonment of Rome as a conscious act, borne of his own free will (rather than the machinations of Cleopatra, as Plutarch would have it), explicitly aligns him with the gender rhetoric of Easternness/Other and positions him as

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discursively non-male. Given that, as I will argue in the following chapter, the vast majority of the screen texts in question conceive Antony’s relocation to the east in markedly similar terms (‘[Antony] has sailed to Egypt with the Queen and lived there ever since, with no thought of Rome!’ – DeMille, 1934; ‘Let him stay in Egypt! Let him fritter away his life as he chooses – but not the possessions and the empire of the Roman people!’ – Mankiewicz, 1963; ‘Not only does he proclaim an Egyptian bastard as heir to Rome, he secedes the wealth of Syria to a foreign power… I submit to you, fellow Romans, that Mark Antony has broken the pact between us!’ – Roddam, 1999), it is appropriate to view this trope as an extension of Shakespeare’s – not Plutarch’s – Antony and Shakespeare’s – not Plutarch’s – gender paradigm. Conclusion Can we say, explicitly, that Shakespeare’s Antony, and the gender paradigm mobilized by Shakespeare in Antony and Cleopatra, is categorically the socio-cultural template employed in the construction of Antonyon-screen? Such a programmatic statement is difficult to justify. The mobility of textual relations across history, language and culture; the countless intertexts that separate Shakespeare from Plutarch and the twentieth-century screen from Shakespeare; even the malleability of the Antony-icon himself – prohibit such a simplistic conclusion. Moreover, there is the inescapable fact that ‘Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra has never been produced as a big-budget film, in Hollywood or elsewhere’ (Eggert, 1997: 198). Filmed versions of the play exist – indeed, Charlton Heston lent his considerable star quality (and the specific discourse of masculinity associated with his star-text) as director and actor in one such project in 1972, but, while this is not necessarily of the ‘pedagogical “Scenes from the Bard”’ variety that so horrify Shakespearian scholar Jack Jörgens – the type of production that ‘prove[s] that it is possible for actors to speak every word of a Shakespeare play before an audience and be completely untrue to its spirit’ (Jörgens, 1998: 22) – neither is it bigbudget (it was made for an estimated $1.6m – imdb.com, ‘Antony and Cleopatra, 1972’) or a Hollywood text (the film is a British/Spanish/Swiss co-production). By following Eggert’s thesis, I am not intending to offer

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a commentary on the calibre of the productions – indeed, at least one (Scoffield, 1974) is renowned for the exceptional quality of its acting and direction – but rather the extent to which Antony and Cleopatra can be said to have a discernible presence in the filmic consciousness. A definitive answer to that question is, of course, impossible to achieve. We can only infer, on the basis of clues within the films that deal directly with the Antony/Cleopatra narrative, and in the wider thematic concerns of western filmmaking in general, where Shakespeare’s gender paradigm ‘ghosts’ Antony-on-screen. Again, this is easier said than done, such is the cultural pervasiveness of his corpus – to the point that it is practically invisible in the socio-cultural lexicon. Furthermore, as I have discussed, the intertext need not be consciously acknowledged to be present in an appropriation of its mytheme, which renders the business of ‘sourcespotting’ (to borrow from Julie Sanders) precarious indeed, and often a question of perspective. Nevertheless, the cultural afterlife of Shakespeare is capacious. Whether directly or indirectly, no text conceived and produced in the Western, English-speaking world at least can be completely divorced from his intertextual influence; he is, as Sanders argues, ‘a reliable cultural touchstone, a language “we all understand” ’ (2006: 52). Moreover, as I have argued, Shakespeare is repeatedly and insistently mobilized as a vector of cultural legitimacy, and film in particular has conspicuously appealed to his cultural status as a means of justifying its claim to ‘art’. From the earliest days of cinema, when the new technology ‘sought legitimacy and respectability… filming theatre performances or adapting plays represented ways of winning acclaim’, argues Sarah Hatchuel (2004: 15). And, according to Eggert, ‘unlike, say, Love’s Labour’s Lost, both the Cleopatra story and specifically Shakespeare’s version of the Cleopatra story saturate Hollywood history, beginning with an undeterminable number of silent productions that incorporate Shakespeare’s version of the character’ (1997: 198). Indeed, Eggert situates Hollywood’s reluctance to commit the Shakespearean text to big-budget film in terms of Antony and Cleopatra’s gender discourse. ‘While Shakespeare’s play provides the occasion for reproducing the nexus of femininity and power in which Hollywood has always been interested (and that has become even more alluring in box-office terms as feminism gains ground in

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mainstream culture),’ she argues, ‘its extreme treatment of that nexus is one that Hollywood hopes not to entertain’ (1997: 198). Writing during the peak of Third-wave feminism, it is perhaps not surprising that she foregrounds Shakespeare’s treatment of femininity (and the woman of power) – for there is much in his construction of Cleopatra that is objectionable in feminist terms – but it is notable nevertheless that Eggert neither engages with nor acknowledges Shakespeare’s ‘extreme treatment’ of the nexus of masculinity. By implication, any dialogue that is entered into between post-Third-wave feminist adaptations of the Antony/Cleopatra mythos and the Shakespearean intertext must acknowledge and seek to ameliorate the misogynistic construction of Cleopatra, but may freely appropriate Shakespeare’s Antony as is. Moreover, Eggert is in no doubt that this dialogue between screen text and Shakespeare exists, and is longstanding – she locates the first instance of Shakespeare’s Cleopatra entering the sound era in Cleopatra (1934) – a text which both celebrates its similarity to Shakespeare’s play (in the character of Enobarbus, for example, as argued above) and simultaneously distances itself by deliberately invoking the contemporaneous archetypes of the 1930s playboy (Antony) and society girl (Cleopatra). This text is, arguably, key in interpolating the arc that describes the Antony-icon’s trajectory from Roman political invective, through Plutarch, through Shakespeare and into Antony-on-screen. Mary Hamer describes how ‘The mechanisms of identification that cinematic technology engages were exploited in the film’s enterprise of bringing the historic figure into flattering alignment with the women of its own day’ (1993: 117), including the casting of Claudette Colbert as a means of ‘establish[ing] one of the modes in which the audience was to view the story, as a tale of modern times in fancy dress’ (1993: 119). Casting, as I will argue in Chapter 5, is one of the ways in which filmmakers seek to impose meaning on a text, through the semiological discourse associated with the star-text (in Colbert’s case, the discourse of the independently minded modern woman). Thus is it extremely significant, in terms of tracing the meanings embodied in the Antony-icon, that Shakespeare’s Antony has been played on-screen by two iconic constructions of cinematic masculinity: Heston and Marlon Brando (in Julius Caesar, 1953). Julius Caesar, as I have argued above, is informed by an altogether separate discourse of

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masculinity to that which informs the Antony-icon as he appears in this study, but the casting of Brando – fresh from his critically lauded portrayal of Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire (dir. Elia Kazan, 1951) – is significant in itself for the fact that it engages with and contemporizes Shakespeare simply by virtue of Brando’s star-text. Likewise, Heston as Antony: though his Antony and Cleopatra has nothing like the cultural presence of Julius Caesar, Heston himself represents a specific discourse of masculine performance, and his performance of Antony cannot help but inform and be informed by his star persona. If Antony is an icon of masculine anxiety, then the casting of two men who represent two specific means of engaging with masculinity evidences the use of Shakespeare (and Shakespeare’s Antony) as a site of continuing relevance in terms of exploring the male. ‘Hollywood itself continues to approach and then retreat from – in an implicit, unacknowledged, and probably largely unconscious way – its own history of constructing Shakespeare’s Cleopatra,’ says Eggert (1997: 198–199). Third-wave feminist engagement with the Antony/Cleopatra mythology has been vociferous in its rejection of the Augustan Cleopatra, and, by extension, the Plutarchian Cleopatra – whose construction relies upon paradigms established in Augustan propaganda – and the Shakespearean Cleopatra, who locates two generations of masculine unease surrounding the woman of power inside a body that is teleologically primed to exorcise the concomitant patriarchal anxiety. Nevertheless, the Shakespearean Cleopatra continues to ‘ghost’ her screen incarnations – where romance trumps politics; where she chimerically reinvents herself according to the preference of her Roman lover; where she employs disingenuity or emotional blackmail or a combination of the two to achieve her designs, she performs Shakespeare’s ‘infinite variety’ (2.2.279); and, regardless of any token attempt within the narrative to mitigate the pejorative associations, Shakespeare’s gender paradigm also. Antony’s gender performance in Antony and Cleopatra has attracted no similar mobilization of outrage. If Shakespeare’s Cleopatra remains, albeit largely invisibly, within Western receptions of her narrative – despite having been conspicuously rejected – then it is no great leap to assume that Shakespeare’s Antony remains, consciously or unconsciously, a template for Antony-on-screen. Katherine Eggert provides perhaps the

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most striking evidence in her analysis of Bugsy (1991). ‘The plot of Bugsy is, to put it baldly,’ she says, ‘exactly the plot of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra’ (1997: 199). This re-visioned Antony is the man of power gone soft – corrupted by the femme fatale of the piece, yes, but possessed of ambitions that are at odds with his particular embodiment of virility. ‘Beatty’s Bugsy is much more the object of the gaze than is his inamorata,’ says Eggert: Bugsy has ambitions to be an actor: while in Los Angeles he pals around with George Raft, wangles a gangster-film screen test that he then watches in home screenings, and plans a star-studded opening for his Las Vegas casino. He constantly recites a line from an elocution lesson, ‘Twenty dwarves took turns doing handstands on the carpet’. A newspaper headline asks the question, ‘Gangster or Star?’ These associations threaten to demote Bugsy from deadly Mafioso to laughable, feminized spectacle. Bugsy is seen taking pains over his appearance in ways usually reserved for women – he sits under a sunlamp, wearing a hair-net and a mask of facial mud, with cucumber slices on his eyes (1997: 208).

Antony and Cleopatra may not have been committed to big-budget cinema as yet, but where it is transposed into Hollywood filmmaking, a preoccupation with the performance of masculinity remains foregrounded – indeed, inscribed in modern-day terms, Antony’s deficient gender performance becomes all the more obvious. Whether or not it is a conscious desire to reproduce the Shakespearean paradigm, the fact remains: here, and in those narratives that seek to re-vision the Antony/Cleopatra myth on screen, Shakespeare’s Antony and his delineation of masculine deficiencies continue to manifest themselves in Antony-on-screen.

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4 Augustan Projections: From Shakespeare to Rome

Introduction: Hegemony and Subjectivity I have examined the foundation of the Antony-icon in ancient invective and his evolution through Shakespeare into a socio-cultural avatar of problematic masculinity. In this chapter, I want to begin to unpack the translation of Antony-in-culture into Antony-on-screen. In describing the operation of Antony’s screen tropology, I am not attempting to elide the multiple subject positions available to any viewer. I am, however, ascribing to the iconography of Mark Antony the authoritative voice of hegemony, as described in the Introduction, which seeks to bound and guide the various readings available to a plural audience. The following taxonomy of tropes combine, to a greater or lesser extent, to construct a recognizable screen-Antony, which links both to the traditional mythology and to a contemporary discourse of deficient masculinity. In describing their ideological significance, therefore, both in their original (ancient) form, and as that invective maps onto the body of the twentiethand twenty-first-century male, I am describing the operation of a singular, idealized, aspirational masculinity. It is not a definition of masculinity as it applies to – or is even recognized by – all men, but, as a hegemonic paradigm, it is embedded in the socio-cultural/socio-political consciousness and operates invisibly, by appealing to a manufactured consensus or a fictive, singular masculinity. Hegemony works, essentially, less by building consent than by denying dissent, and this idealized masculinity, which elides and denies the availability of any alternative masculine subjectivity, 99

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is the paradigm against which the Antony-icon is measured and found wanting. The judgement does not require that the audience conform to the masculine archetype to which he is compared, but it does require a tacit complicity with the signs and boundaries of the hegemonic male, and the ‘invisible’ nature of hegemony is such that it takes a conscious act of will to stand outside of this complicity. The Iconography of Mark Antony Given that the boundaries of hegemonic masculinity are not fixed, it is problematic to talk in absolutes about Antony’s iconography, since his signifying system (and the relative value and meaning of the signs) adapts to align itself with contemporaneous signs of the idealized male. Moreover, his positioning is complicated by a close dyadic affiliation with Cleopatra within the text: where she is intended to be unsympathetic (Serpent of the Nile, 1953; and, debatably, Cleopatra, 1934), her malign influence is given as an exculpatory factor in Antony’s dissolution, mitigating the ideological bite of his worst excesses; where she is sympathetic (Cleopatra, 1963, particularly; but also Cleopatra, 1999), narrative effort must be expended in seeking an alternative explanation for his teleologically understood defeat.1 However, it is possible to discern several key themes in his characterization. For the most part, these can be traced directly to Augustan propaganda and its conception of a feminized Antonius. Briefly, these are: • alcohol (ab)use • lechery • ‘feminine’ behaviour (tears, despair) • all-consuming love • feminized dress (including the use of cosmetics) • political ineptitude (including individual responsibility for the breakdown of the triumvirate) • the abandonment of Roman duty (or, more explicitly, Rome itself). (Kelly, 2009) The reproduction of the Augustan Antony is in itself worthy of consideration, and these points will be elaborated below. Perhaps more revealing,

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however, are those elements of the myth derived, not from the Augustan version of the historical story, but from twentieth- and twenty-first-century conceptions of Antony: • the eradication of his children (either those by Cleopatra or by both Cleopatra and his Roman wives) from the narrative • his character’s infantilization • the two-act structure that privileges the shorter Caesar/Cleopatra affair by allotting it equal run time with the longer Antony/Cleopatra affair • the commodification of Antony that presents him as a gift to Cleopatra • the narrative invention of fictitious rivals to Antony’s relationship with Cleopatra • the absence of Fulvia • the widespread omission of sequences depicting Antony in battle • (more recently) a tendency to characterize Antony as overtly vicious and without conscience. (Kelly, 2009) Antony’s position relative to other male characters is so repeatedly underlined and reinforced by the narrative that it will be discussed separately in the following chapter, with particular reference to his invented love rivals and to Caesar’s narrative weighting vis-à-vis Antony. Fulvia’s absence has already been examined in Chapter 2, while Antony’s infantilization, his lack of children, his commodification, and his emergent quasipsychopathy, will be discussed in Chapter 6. For now, I want to consider the projection of Augustan-era Roman socio-cultural mores into the constructions of Antony on screen. Alcohol As noted in Chapter 1, Antonius’ relationship with alcohol is a common theme in the surviving ancient sources. Cicero, in his Philippics, accuses him of being ‘always grasping, always plundering, always drunk’ (Phil. 5.9), while Plutarch talks of how, after Antony had attained his early

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political standing, the ruling elite of Rome ‘were disgusted at his ill-timed drunkenness… his days spent in sleeping off his debauches, or wandering about with an aching head and befuddled wits, and his nights spent in revels’ (Ant. 9). However, as discussed in that chapter, the framework from which popular culture derives the Antony-icon is rooted in political invective and, though it tends to be unproblematically mapped onto the body of Antony-on-screen, it should more properly be considered as, if not strictly metaphorical, at least indicative of a political agenda. Wine and drunkenness were gendered concepts in late Republican/ early imperial Rome and were frequently used pejoratively to imply unfitness-to-rule. Brigitte Ford Russell argues that texts from the period imply a connection between female wine consumption and sexual indiscretion, which was itself punishable by death. ‘The implication then,’ she states, ‘is that a Roman husband was within his rights if he chose to kill his wife for drinking wine’ (2003: 78). Male consumption, though not legally controlled, was subject to certain (gendered) taboos, revolving around notions of incontinentia and excess, which, as discussed in Chapter 1, are closely aligned with feminizing invective and a discourse of unfitness-to-rule. Irrespective of the problematic system of coding behind it, hedonistic alcohol use has become Antony’s most widely recycled signifier. It appears in every incarnation of him on screen, echoing Shakespeare’s Antony, whose drunken revels aboard Pompey’s boat are in sharp contrast to Caesar’s ascetic abstention: ‘I had rather fast from all, four days, than drink so much in one,’ he replies to Antony’s entreaty that he ‘Be a child o’ th’ time’ (2.7.118–120). Indeed, this scene lays bare what will become key to the mythology of Antony’s hedonism in many later incarnations: its genesis in Alexandria. Lepidus, having drunk himself into unconsciousness, has been carried ashore, and the remaining powers of Rome – Pompey, Antony and an unwilling Caesar – are preparing a bacchanalian dance, when Pompey observes: ‘This is not yet an Alexandrian feast.’ Antony agrees: ‘It ripens towards it’ (2.7.105–113). In this, he echoes Enobarbus’ earlier description of Alexandria to Mæcenas: ENOBARBUS: Ay, Sir, we did sleep day out of countenance: and made the night light with drinking.

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MÆCENAS: Eight wild-boars roasted whole at a breakfast: and but twelve persons there. Is this true? ENOBARBUS: This was but as a fly by an eagle: we had much more monstrous matter of feast, which worthily deserved nothing. (2.2.217–222)

This is clearly very much in keeping with the Roman conception of the East as a place of effeminate extravagance – and, by extension, the site of Antony’s ruin. As these texts are never specifically telling Antony’s story – most often, they are telling Cleopatra’s, occasionally Caesar’s (Julius or Augustus) and on one occasion the combined story of all of the major Roman players in the death of the Republic (Rome, 2005–7) – Antony’s relationship with alcohol is understood through scenes in which his narrative arc intersects with that of the main player. Thus, in the majority of his representations, we are introduced to Antony’s debauchery at Tarsus, at his famous historical meeting with Cleopatra aboard her gilded barge. Plutarch relates the story as follows: Antony then sent a message inviting Cleopatra to dine with him, but she thought it more appropriate that he should come to her, and so, as he wished to show his courtesy and goodwill, he accepted and went. He found the preparations made to receive him magnificent beyond words, but what astonished him most of all was the extraordinary number of lights. So many of these, it is said, were let down from the roof and displayed on all sides at once, and they were arranged and grouped in such ingenious patterns in relation to each other, some in squares and some in circles, that they created as brilliant a spectacle as can ever have been devised to delight the eye (Plut. Ant. 26–27).

It is notable that Plutarch, having specifically elucidated Antony’s reported drunken indiscretions in his account of Antony and Cleopatra’s meeting, makes no mention of further impropriety. This is not, however, reflected on screen. Where the meeting at Tarsus is included in the narrative, it is without exception used to exemplify the convergence of Eastern wealth and decadence with Antony’s lack of self-control.

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Cleopatra (1934) is a notable example. Antony departs for the East with the express intention of sending ‘Cleopatra to Rome in chains!’ (DeMille, 1934), yet she has the measure of his character and devises an elaborate charade to greet him on his arrival at Tarsus. Having been kept waiting for six hours, he storms onto her barge ready to lay down the law, and she pretends to submit: CLEOPATRA: You see all this? It was all a plan. And you know why? Because it was my only chance. Don’t you think I know you’re my enemy, you and your hungry Rome? But I suppose it was the most stupid thing I could have done. Why, do you know I had show after show with which to dazzle you? But Antony is not a man to be dazzled if he doesn’t please. No. [Sighs] What do you care for this, for instance? Watch… [She claps her hands and a gong sounds. Dancing girls appear and perform a lavish dance routine.] CLEOPATRA: I wish you could see your face! ANTONY: Huh. CLEOPATRA: I’d have more chance with a stone wall. Will you forgive me for being such a fool? I should have known that Antony is not Antony for nothing. (DeMille, 1934)

Her final comment has a double meaning, and it is clear to both Cleopatra and to the audience: Antony is not Antony ‘for nothing’, but what is meant by ‘Antony’ is not what he thinks. By ‘Antony’ she means Antony the profligate, Antony the drinker, Antony the bon vivant. All she has to do to seduce him is to act on her knowledge and to pretend not to know it. By the end of the evening, he is very drunk – as, it appears, is she. Yet as he kisses her chest, the camera closes in on her face: blank and devoid of emotion, it is the face of one whose elaborate plan has led to its intended – and slightly distasteful – conclusion. In Cleopatra (Mankiewicz, 1963), Antony’s predilection for alcohol is used actively to undermine his facility first as a politician, and later as a man. The film follows the two-act structure, established in 1934’s Cleopatra (and echoed in Cleopatra, 1999, and, arguably, Rome, 2005– 7), the significance of which will be discussed in Chapter 5. Antony

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appears briefly in the first act as Caesar’s right-hand man, although his exact contribution to Caesar’s political career is not made clear. However, the extension of Antony’s characterization into the pre-Tarsus scenes enables the film to demonstrate his weakness for alcohol, and its effect on his abilities, before he sets foot in Alexandria. Almost immediately following Caesar’s assassination, the narrative positions Antony as politically out of his depth. He is amazed by the news that Octavian has stripped Lepidus of his command, and comments: ‘I wish I had not drunk so much today’: RUFIO: So do I. ANTONY: Do I trouble you, Rufio? RUFIO: Yes you do. (Mankiewicz, 1963)

Antony’s alcohol use has clouded his political judgement to the extent that he is essentially paralysed by inaction, and allows the audience to see that he is already becoming a liability to those around him. His possible alcoholism is reinforced in the Tarsus banquet scene, which follows shortly afterwards. Throughout the sequence, while vertiginous camera-movements accentuate Antony’s growing drunkenness, Cleopatra remains poised and restrained, serving to heighten the sense of his loss of self-control. As the second act continues, Antony’s growing dependence on alcohol is used as a signifier of his loss of power. While he and Cleopatra debate with their officers over the tactics to be used in the coming clash with Octavian, he is hunched, miserably, over a cup of wine, from which he periodically gulps, while Cleopatra stands beside him. Her positioning in the scene makes the balance of power explicit. Although she speaks gently to him, implying that she has not chosen her position of supremacy, Antony’s growing dissolution obliges her to make excuses – and decisions – for him: ANTONY: My men will do as they are told by me! They have not yet become… they are still Roman. However – as I do as I am told… [He drinks a large draught of wine.]

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CLEOPATRA: The final decision will of course be Lord Antony’s, and I am sure that – in time – he will make it. That is all. [The officers leave.] CLEOPATRA: It would be wiser, I think, not to disagree in the presence of our officers. ANTONY: Your officers. And what final decision have you decided I am to make? (Mankiewicz, 1963)

He may attempt to blame her for usurping his position, but Cleopatra’s attitude of quiet, regal dignity in the scene, contrasted with his messy drunken ranting, does not permit the audience to share his view. Later, at the Battle of Actium, Antony’s alcohol use is proposed as a partial cause of his defeat, as he drunkenly abuses Rufio and Canidius for speaking against his decision to fight at sea. It is worth noting that Darryl Zanuck, having taken over control of 20th Century Fox from Spyros Skouras and applied himself to the task of rescuing the production, which was then considered to be out of control, expressed distaste for the character of Antony, describing him as ‘weak’ – an opinion with which the director, Joseph L Mankiewicz, agreed (Burns and Zacky, 2001). Given the animosity that existed between the men at this stage of post-production, it is tempting to read Mankiewicz’s ready concurrence as evidence that the director (who also re-wrote the script on taking over as director from Rouben Mamoulian) saw this characteristic as key to the character – why else agree with such a negative assessment? It is possible, therefore, to view Antony’s alcohol abuse throughout the film as an external signifier of this perceived internal weakness, in line with Augustan ideas of manhood. Similarly, the 1999 miniseries Cleopatra is at pains to present a specifically Dionysian Antony – a descriptor that is itself problematic in the Antony/Cleopatra mythology, as I will discuss. The film is based on the 1998 novel The Memoirs of Cleopatra by Margaret George, which itself follows the 1972 biography by Michael Grant in attributing a friendship between Antonius and Cleopatra during her stay in Rome at Caesar’s villa. Thus we are shown Antony and Cleopatra drinking wine together one evening at the villa, shortly after he has been introduced to the narrative.

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‘You are quite the Dionysian,’ Cleopatra tells him, to which he replies: ‘When it suits me, Your Highness’ (Roddam, 1999). In fairness, the alcohol does not compromise his ability as a soldier: he is aware even before Cleopatra of approaching danger, in the form of an ahistorical assassination attempt by Octavian against the infant Caesarion, and he is readily able to fight off the assassins. It does, however, jar with the image of Antony created thus far by the narrative: affable, polite and devoted to Rome, there has been no previous sign of Dionysian inclinations in his characterization, and the effect of the scene is to prepare the viewer for his later dissolution. This is again prefigured by the scene at Tarsus, in which Cleopatra’s calculating cool is contrasted against Antony’s drunken excess. She greets him, ‘Welcome, Dionysus,’ as he boards her ship, reinforcing the Dionysian link, of which there has been no further evidence since the scene at the villa. As the banquet continues, she remains in control of herself, while he is rapidly disarrayed, swaying drunkenly and wearing a Dionysian wreath. Several times, he roughly embraces her – embraces that are not returned. Finally, he attempts to kiss her, protesting that he is her political ally, but wants also to be her lover. She says, coolly: ‘We will talk again tomorrow – when you’re more in possession of yourself ’ (Roddam, 1999). It is worth noting that this scene does not exist in the novel that is purportedly the source text, in which the revelry proceeds according to the Plutarchian text, and Antony’s behaviour is not excessive. With the narrative following the two-act structure, the Antony portion is necessarily expedient, allowing for little further exploration of his excesses until his defeat at Actium; however, the rapid exposition, rather than implying abstention, condenses the timeline to such an extent that the Tarsus scene is not long past by the time Antony is shown wallowing in drunken despair at Alexandria. The scene appears to be a conflation of two elements of the myth: Plutarch tells us that Antonius was so despondent following their massive losses at Actium and the ensuing desertions that he retreated to a purpose-built hermitage on the edge of the palace complex. The self-imposed exile was a temporary measure. Plutarch does not give us a timescale, but tells us that Antonius eventually returned to the palace in time to preside over the coming-of-age ceremonies of Caesarion and his own eldest son by Fulvia. It was also at this time that he and Cleopatra revived their Society of Inimitable Livers, established

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during Antonius’ first sojourn in Alexandria in the winter of 41–40 bce, and renamed it Those Who Are Inseparable By Death. The society’s nature is debatable: ancient sources are mostly united in ascribing entirely hedonistic motives to it, but Lucy Hughes-Hallett has suggested that this may be a (deliberate) confusion of orgiastic drinking bouts with the rituals of Dionysian worship (1990: 97), which would have served further to entrench the semantic link between the East (as manifested in the Hellenic cult of Dionysus) and incontinentia. Given the diminishing run-time, the decision to conflate these two elements of the story is understandable, but considerably alters the tone of the latter. The Society of Those Who Are Inseparable By Death, rather than exhibiting nihilistic despair, seems to have been at least partially motivated by a desire to avoid precisely that2 (Hughes-Hallett, 1990: 103), yet narrative expediency juxtaposes Antony’s seclusion in the Timoneum alongside the determined gaiety of the Society in a manner that inescapably fuses the two into a cause and effect of despondency/ alcohol consumption. Moreover, the explicit desolation is configured specifically as Antony’s alone: Cleopatra remains prepared to fight her way out of the situation, while Antony succumbs to emotional collapse. This is most strikingly portrayed in a sequence in which Cleopatra surprises him in his beach-side retreat, where he is dancing frantically under a blanket, and demands: ‘How long are you going to stay drunk?’ The arrangement of the scene specifically emphasizes her power relative to Antony, in an echo of the scene in the 1963 movie (above): she stands over him while he, hopelessly drunk, wriggles on the ground, weeping and full of self-pity. ‘How would you prefer me?’ he asks. ‘Perhaps riding at the head of four legions? To meet him in battle for yet another victory celebration?’ He offers her his cup of wine, which she angrily knocks to the ground: CLEOPATRA: A true king is not a coward! ANTONY: I am not a coward. I am merely a fool in exile. With no place to hide except my wife’s country. [He makes as if to crawl back underneath his blanket.] CLEOPATRA: Enough! Enough! Everybody out! [The revelers leave.]

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ANTONY: [To the revelers] Be well… CLEOPATRA: I trusted you. I believed in you. I believed in your strength. Could I have misjudged you? ANTONY: You misjudged yourself! It may be your nature to see victory in defeat, but it is not mine, I fear. I fear… [He begins to weep.] I fear… I fear I can lead no more. (Roddam, 1999)

He attempts to kill himself, bracing his sword against the ground, but she knocks it easily from his hand. If viewers retain any lasting doubts that alcohol has emasculated Antony, the ease with which Cleopatra removes his (phallic) sword must surely lay them to rest. It is not the first time that the seizure of Antony’s sword stands in for the seizure of his manhood (as I will examine in greater detail in Chapter 5), but it is the most striking visual expression of alcoholic excess as symbolic emasculation to be found in any of his incarnations. Lechery The lecherous Antony is closely linked to the alcohol-abusing Antony, and, indeed, the two themes are themselves closely linked to the Roman distaste for a lack of self-control. ‘The government of the self and the government of the state are linked,’ says Hughes-Hallett. ‘Ancient philosophers from Plato to Marcus Aurelius concluded that the self-control of which sexual abstemiousness was a test was necessary to one who would be a good ruler’ (Hughes-Hallett, 1990: 56). As always, the ideals were not necessarily the same as the practice; if we are to take at face value any of the accusations and counter-accusations that ran back and forth between Antonius and Octavianus throughout their propaganda war (a tenuous business at best), the two men were neck and neck in terms of promiscuity. A surviving fragment of a letter Antonius wrote to Octavianus some time in the 30s bce, for example, uses the language of incontinentia to imply that Octavianus’ own proclivities surpass Antonius’. ‘I’m sure when you read this,’ he writes. ‘You’ll have been going at Turtulla or Terentilla or Rufilla or Salvia Titisenia or all of them’ (in Suet. Aug. 69).

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Similarly, Julius Caesar’s promiscuity was commemorated indulgently by his troops as they marched in the Gallic Triumph: Men of Rome, look out for your wives, we’re bringing the bald adulterer home In Gaul you fucked your way through a fortune, which you borrowed here in Rome. (Suet. Iul. 51)

The issue is confused, however, by the conflation of Roman sexual attitudes with those that have prevailed in Western society over the past hundred years, as Catharine Edwards (1993) cautions: ‘To examine sexual attitudes in the ancient world with the intention of determining whether “they” were more liberated than “us”, is to neglect the fact that “their” preoccupations were quite different from “ours” ’ (1993: 66). Whilst this may appear to be self-evident, the designation of ancient Rome as ‘They’ or ‘Them’ is problematic, given the tensions, explored in the Introduction, of identification/disidentification with ‘Rome’ as embodied in re-creations of the Cleopatra-myth. We must separate our post-Victorian notions of sexual propriety, bound up as they are with colonialist concepts of sexual Otherness, from our modern reading of ancient Roman sexual propaganda. In other words, popular representations of Roman sexual morality, in defiance of Edwards’ notions of how it ought to be considered, most often reflect unproblematically its propagandistic use as an attack on fitness-to-govern (as an extension of notions of masculinity) at face value, with no consideration of the complex socio-political ways in which this was, historically, used. Thus, when Cicero accuses Antony that ‘never a day passes in that ill-reputed house of yours without orgies of the most repulsive kind’ (Cic. Phil. 2.3), whether or not he is relating activities that were common knowledge in Rome, he is certainly appealing to a contemporaneous socio-cultural ideal of manhood. Yet this contextualization is missing from receptions of Ciceronian invective and their reproduction in narratives of Antony. Lechery is, of course, an unstable term, and, for the purposes of this discussion, I have taken it to refer to sexual advances or activity where it is made clear that the desire is not reciprocated by its object.

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Utilizing these parameters, I have included both rape and the use of prostitutes under this aegis. Moreover, although Antonius’ alleged sexual misconduct is a recurring theme in Cicero’s Philippics, Antony’s lechery only gradually becomes a function of his screen mythology. The reasons for this are complex and several, and will be further discussed under the analyses of Emotional Expressivity and Children. However, at the simplest level, this is, for at least part of the twentieth century, influenced by the enforcement of the Production Code in 1934, which limited the extent to which explicit sexual promiscuity could be displayed on screen. Antony-as-lecher seems to have first appeared in the 1953 B-movie Serpent of the Nile (dir. William Castle), a low-budget film that would have had a limited audience only.3 Even here, the association is tenuous and appears to be motivated by a simple desire to expose Antony’s tendency towards sensual indulgence rather than lechery in and of itself: it is found only in one sequence close to the beginning of the film, wherein the audience’s significant introduction to Antony is the discovery of him kissing Cytheris, an early love interest. ‘Life may be short,’ he tells her, ‘but there’s always time for pleasure.’ Her reply would appear to reinforce the sensualist reading: ‘Only a well-fed man can enjoy pleasure’ (Castle, 1953). This is an isolated example in the film, and from this point forward, though he may certainly appreciate, for example, the goldcovered dancer who entertains them during the feast at Tarsus, nothing so overt is required of the narrative. The motif does not reappear until the 1999 miniseries. Antony’s somewhat rough conquest of Cleopatra in the 1963 film – which is echoed in the 1999 text – is motivated by rivalry of Caesar, as it is again in 1999; and therefore, whatever discourse of male sexual power and conquest it engenders, it is difficult to consider this under the parameters of lechery as defined above.4 As 1999’s Antony shows no inclination towards excessive alcohol use until it is incongruously slotted into the narrative, so the sudden emergence of his lewd behaviour at Tarsus is similarly disarming. The scene’s arrangement makes explicit (as the dialogue does not) that Cleopatra’s intention at Tarsus is to seduce Antony, and the camera treats her as a sexual object, drifting across her supine body as she chews seductively on a piece of fruit. This is Antony’s first sight of her as he boards the

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boat, as it is the viewers’ first sight of her since she instructed her advisor to ‘Prepare the royal barge for war… A different kind of war’ (Roddam, 1999). Perhaps, then, this is why the narrative allows him to assume immediately that she intends to become his lover; however, although screen conventions make her intentions explicit, no dialogic (or indeed, bar a few smouldering looks, diegetic) material makes his assumption plausible, and the effect is narratively startling. ‘This is an unexpected pleasure,’ he says, seating himself on the couch beside her: CLEOPATRA: You never came to Egypt to visit me. ANTONY: You never invited me. Three years I’ve waited. CLEOPATRA: You were too busy fighting wars. ANTONY: I’m never that busy. CLEOPATRA: Shall we retire? ANTONY: Of course. [He lies back on the couch with a salacious grin.] CLEOPATRA: To dinner. (Roddam, 1999)

Flirtatious banter notwithstanding, her attitude towards him is entirely aloof and regal, which leaves no room for the viewer to discern his reasons for assuming that, when she says retire, she means to bed. It is an assumption, we must presume, borne of his supposed promiscuity and the resulting belief that all women are available to him. Immediately following the consummation of their relationship, however, it is clear that Antony’s relationship with Cleopatra is motivated by his love for her, and the dynamics between them for the remainder of the run-time suggest a monogamous couple, regardless of his marriage to Octavia (whose relationship with Antony is not shown). It is only when the Antony-icon moves into the twenty-first century that his supposed lechery begins to be foregrounded, in the prodigious sexual appetite of James Purefoy’s character in Rome (2005–7). This is an Antony motivated almost exclusively by lust – most often sexual lust, but also by lust for violence, material wealth or power. Throughout the 22 hour run-time, the references are too numerous to list; I will therefore include only the most pertinent examples.

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It is useful to return, momentarily, to Edwards’ caveat regarding the conflation of modern ideas of sexual morality with pre-Christian principles, as the sexuality of the characters in Rome is, of course, mediated through a twenty-first-century construction of sexual propriety. The series positions itself problematically with regards to sexual expression: whereas the act of sexual intercourse is repeatedly shown, it is generally accompanied by an implicit discourse of power and domination. Most often, it is used as an instrument of tactical advantage (as in Antony’s relationship with Atia, Octavia’s relationship with Servilia, Octavia’s liaison with Octavian, Atia’s liaisons with Timon, Cleopatra’s liaison with Pullo, Pullo’s relationship with Gaia and so on). It is also repeatedly positioned as an implicitly non-consensual act (although never described as rape); it is regularly a commercial arrangement between prostitute and client; and only on very rare occasions is it performed as part of a loving relationship (Caesar and Servilia; Agrippa and Octavia; Vorenus and Niobe). Moreover, where sexual activity is shown between two partners in an affectionate relationship, it is accompanied by either a teleological discourse of impending schism (the historical record has already shown that the relationships of neither Caesar and Servilia nor Octavia and Agrippa – which has no basis in any of the known ancient sources – were ultimately successful) or by the audience’s privileged knowledge of Niobe’s affair with Evander. Thus, although the series attempts to position itself outside of contemporary attitudes to sexuality and adopt a purportedly pre-Christian doctrine through its narrative of sexual availability, it is in fact heavily influenced by the discourse posited by Edwards’ thesis. ‘They’ may be more sexually liberated than ‘Us’, but it is on ‘Our’ terms: sexual freedom is conflated with sexual degradation. It is with reference to this complex (and, I would argue, ambivalent) attitude towards sexuality that Rome’s Mark Antony must be read. His language is littered with sexual expletives, in sharp contrast to the other men of the series5 – indeed, Brutus, in conference with Caesar when they are interrupted by Mark Antony with a cheerful ‘Brutus, me old cock!’, leaves us in no doubt as to how Antony is perceived by his contemporaries, turning to Caesar to complain, ‘I don’t know how you tolerate that man’ (2005.1). Antony’s indiscriminate sexual appetites are introduced soon after when, as the army leaves Gaul for Rome, the scene finds the train

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stationary on the road. A cutaway reveals the reason why: Antony has held up the march to have sex with a shepherdess that he has, presumably, spotted as they pass. As he returns to his men with an attitude of satisfied entitlement, we are shown the shepherdess miserably readjusting her clothes, and are left in no doubt that the act was non-consensual (2005.2). Already, Antony’s lechery is interfering in his public life – although, as the delay has no narrative ramifications, it seems likely that the principle intent was to de-sympathize the character of Antony from the outset of the series. A post-Clinton reading of this text may well produce a range of reactions to a leader whose public activity is compromised by his private desires; however, a rapist could confidently be expected to engender nothing but aversion. Later, in episode 2007.1, this motif is revisited in a scene of which the only possible narrative function is to detract from Antony’s most famous political achievement: his funeral oration over the body of Julius Caesar. On the morning of the funeral, as Atia finishes dressing, Antony, who has yet to rise from their bed, is sexually aroused by the prospect of his planned oratorical coup. He tries to persuade Atia to join him: ‘I am not rising from this bed until I’ve fucked someone,’ he says, to which Atia, who is already dressed, responds by sending her slave to ‘Fetch that German slut from the kitchen.’ That the act is consummated is made clear when the narrative returns to them: Antony, now dressed, is preparing to leave, whilst an unidentified naked woman lies sprawled on the bed, panting and blank-faced (2007.1). This attitude of sexual entitlement to the bodies of household slaves is reflective of contemporaneous Roman law, under which the body of the slave was the property of the owner. Sexual consent was not applicable: a slave had literally no power of decision regarding the use of their bodies by their owners (Weiderman, 1989: 10). This much is reflected in the narrative, through Atia’s careless appropriation of the body of the slave for Antony’s use, and the explicit referencing of the consummation of the act. Yet the scene is in no way a neutral commentary on an historical fact, as is made clear by the inappropriate juxtaposition with the dignity of Caesar’s funeral oration (an event with which the vast majority of viewers will have some form of textual acquaintance, and which is referenced several times in the scene), and the characters’ positioning within the frame: the slave lies naked and exhausted on the bed, exposed and vulnerable,

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whilst Antony faces away from her to dress, having already dismissed her from his mind. By negatively positioning an act which was, according to ancient legal texts, commonplace and perfectly legal – regardless of how distasteful this may be to contemporary notions of human rights and corporeal autonomy – we are forced to read this scene from a twentyfirst-century point of view as, if not rape, the sexual abuse of an individual without the power to make a consensual decision. Returning momentarily to the character of Pullo, although Antony is not explicitly compared with him (Antony, Vorenus, Pullo and Octavian occupy a cross-dyadic structure in Rome, as I shall explain in Chapter 5), Antony’s positioning within the narrative world of Rome is, nevertheless, relational to Pullo’s in many respects. Although Pullo engages in sexual promiscuity, he is redeemed from it by his growing love for his slave Eirene – whose body he specifically does not violate in a scene in episode 2005.9, despite drunkenly asking her to strip naked in front of him, despite his growing sexual desire for her and despite, like Antony, being positioned as sexually excessive. Antony’s relationship with Atia is similarly instructive. From the outset, his dialogue positions it as vaguely sordid, with Antony’s lascivious injunction to Octavian: ‘Boy – tell your lovely mother I will see her later’ (2005.2). This lays the foundation for the Oedipal discourse that will surround the relationship in Season 2, as the rivalry between the two men is reconfigured, simplistically (and ahistorically), as the rivalry between Atia’s lover and her son. Moreover, the affair, true to Atia’s positioning as a woman of limited affection and loose sexual morality, is based on gameplaying and political intrigues. Antony’s affiliation with her, therefore, allows him ample opportunity to express a sexual attitude that is firmly in line with patriarchal ideas of sexual dominance, with sample dialogue that includes ‘I had no idea what a wicked old harpy you are’ (2005.6), and, later, to Octavian: ‘Your mother is a vicious and heartless creature, but I find I am wretched without her’ (2005.11). Their relationship is further derogated by its interspersal with casual sexual infidelities. These are on both sides: Atia continues to consummate her arrangement with Timon, who is accustomed to receiving payment for the odd jobs he performs via sexual intercourse with her. However, Atia is demonstrably more affected by Antony’s transgressions than he is by hers: she is manifestly threatened, for example, by Cleopatra’s presence in

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Rome (after Antony has propositioned her and she has tacitly accepted), whispering in her ear at a party: ‘Die screaming, you pig-spawn trollop’ (2007.2). Later, when Atia believes that Octavian plans to marry her to Antony, she demands that he get rid of any household slaves with whom he has had sexual relations. Antony, on the other hand, makes no reference in either season to Atia’s other sexual partners. Cleopatra, it should be noted, is similarly positioned to Atia, in that her sexual behaviour is always politically motivated, and the effect on Antony of this discourse of politicized sexuality is to underscore the lechery already made explicit in his characterization during Season 1. Antony’s political positioning, as I will show below, can best be described as cunning, but without any great syllogistic gift. Therefore, his sexual liaisons with politically manipulative women are not, from his perspective, political. By extension, if he does not hope to gain politically from them, and they are not motivated by affection (as they are explicitly not, initially at least), then they must be interpreted as evidence of his sexual excess. In the case of his affair with Cleopatra, although it does not begin until 2007.8, its inception is made explicitly sordid in an interaction between Antony and Cleopatra in 2007.2. She has (ahistorically) returned to Rome in the aftermath of Caesar’s assassination, in mourning, to plead the case for recognition of Caesarion as Caesar’s legitimate son. In her interview with Antony, he calls her a whore, and appears to proposition her: although the words themselves are whispered into her ear, her reaction – a knowing smile and the answer ‘That’s possible’ – leaves little room for doubt as to the nature of his suggestion. Although she remains seated as he stands over her, her bearing towards him goes a considerable distance towards redressing the imbalance of power: she has clearly prepared herself for the possibility that his terms will involve a sexual alliance between them. This is reinforced by her parting words, in response to his bitter scorn: ‘If I must prostitute myself for the good of my family and my country, I will’ (2007.2). Her motivation in establishing their future sexual relationship is recuperated and given a political purpose, whereas his is negatively associated with a (failed) attempt at sexual dominance, rendered impotent by Cleopatra’s refusal to be appalled. The narrative decision to have Cleopatra return to Rome in 44 bce, in defiance of every available historical source, and all political common

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sense, is rationalized by this scene, the function of which is to underscore Antony’s established lechery. Given that the discourse of emasculating love (which will be examined in greater detail below) has been used to deride Antony’s authority once he enters into his affiliation with Cleopatra, it might be expected that the de-romanticization of the relationship ought to recuperate his position somewhat within the unfolding narrative. It fails to do so for three reasons. Firstly, Cleopatra’s positioning in the scene, as illustrated above, serves to thwart Antony’s attempt to exert his sexual dominance over her, and has the effect of exposing his behaviour almost as a pathological sexual dysfunction. It follows from this, therefore, that the established negative association with Antony’s lechery is further underlined, which makes a positive recuperation of his subsequent position extremely problematic. Finally, regardless of its origins, the relationship is not, ultimately, de-romanticized: when the narrative returns to it in 2007.9, it follows the established, Augustan line. Antony the lecher is once more required to profess his undying love to his Egyptian queen. A consideration of the use of lechery in creating Antony’s screen mythology is, however, clearly problematized by the shifting and contradictory socio-cultural values applied to sexual activity over the course of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Antony’s lechery is positioned negatively, yet male sexual appetite is closely connected with notions of virility, which, despite feminist critique and recent efforts within masculinity studies to deconstruct biologically essentialist notions of masculinity, remain hegemonically dominant in positively signifying maleness. How, then, can we account for an apparently counter-intuitive positioning of Antony’s sexual excess? This complex question can only be addressed by positioning Antony’s lechery alongside his gendered associations with love and despair (below), and his lack of children, as I will examine in Chapter 6. Emotional Expressivity: Despair and Love The gender stereotype attributing emotional expression to women and reasoned logic to men is pervasive and enduring. In The Philosophy of Emotions, Robert C Solomon (2004) traces a preoccupation with the

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nature of emotion to classical Greek philosophy, where, significantly, gendered language is used to describe an idealized subversion of emotion to reason: One of the most enduring metaphors of reason and emotion has been the metaphor of master and slave, with the wisdom of reason firmly in control and the dangerous impulses of emotion safely suppressed, channeled, or (ideally) in harmony with reason (Solomon, 2004: 3).

Antony’s love for Cleopatra, usually depicted as an all-consuming grand passion, and his later descent into despair, are different manifestations of the same pejorative discourse and are therefore considered under the umbrella category of emotional expressivity. However, despite their semantic link, their application within the screen texts serve different ends, and their manifestations will be considered individually. Describing Antony’s emotional expressivity as inherently gendered feminine is, of course, contentious. Several recent studies of gender stereotypes and emotion have challenged the patriarchal concept of the emotionally expressive woman versus the emotionally inarticulate man (Niedenthal, Krauth-Gruber and Ric, 2006; Brody and Hall, 2008), yet the screen evidence, as I shall outline, leaves little room to doubt that Antony’s expressive behaviour is to be read as symptomatic of his deficient performance of masculinity. Craig A Williams, in Roman Homosexuality, examines the ancient sources for evidence of contemporaneous attitudes to the reason/emotion dichotomy. His findings echo Edwards’ discussion of incontinentia: The Roman conceptualization of masculinity as being embodied in restraint and control, over others and oneself, informs two concepts basic to Roman masculinity: virtus and imperium… Derived from vir and thus etymologically meaning ‘manliness’, virtus came to be used of a variety of moral traits considered admirable in men – concepts that might be translated as ‘valor’ or ‘virtue’. Effeminate men, of course, failed to live up to this standard (1999: 145).

As evidence, Williams cites Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations:

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… the soul is divided into two parts, of which one possesses reason, the other lacks it. When therefore we are commanded to govern ourselves, the precept implies that reason should restrain impulse. There is naturally in the soul of every man something soft, low, earthy, in a certain degree nervous and feeble. But reason is at hand, mistress and queen of all, which by its own force striving and advancing upwards, becomes perfect virtue. A man must take care that this have under its command that part of the soul which ought to obey. Do you ask how? Either as a master commands his servant, or as the general his soldier, or as the father his son. If that part of the soul which I have called ‘soft’ shall conduct itself most disgracefully; if it shall surrender itself effeminately to lamentation and tears – let it be bound and constrained by the guardianship of friends and kindred (Cic. Tusc. 2.21).

Once again, the gendered language of master and servant (not to mention the semantic connection between effeminate and disgraceful) clearly articulates the feminizing nature of emotional expression in Roman discourse. Cicero, a victim of the proscriptions of 43 bce, did not live to see Antonius’ alliance with Cleopatra (begun in 41 bce) or his defeat at Actium, which is perhaps why this feminizing trait does not enter the list of depravities with which he accuses Antony in his Philippics. Nevertheless, it has pervaded Antony’s mythology to such an extent that it informs every single screen construction of him. It is not possible, however, to correlate unproblematically Antony’s on-screen emotionality with a modern discourse of feminization, much less a negative narrative positioning. To do so would be to privilege one (patriarchal) reading of male emotional expressivity over a multiplicity of semantic interpretations. It is also clear (as shown above) that empirical research has deconstructed the ‘folk psychology’ (Strongman, 1996: 227–228) of emotion and challenged the conception of the emotionally inarticulate male. However, my chief concern here is contextual meaning, as opposed to strictly empirical evidence: effectively, the fact that these stereotypes are so culturally embedded that they are considered worthy of scientific evaluation is in itself supremely relevant to this analysis. The emotionally inexpressive male may be a myth – indeed, Niedenthal, Krauth-Grauber and Ric (2006: 279) demonstrate that, in certain situations, men are likely to be regarded more favourably than women when

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expressing the ‘powerless’ emotions more usually associated with feminine behaviour – yet it is a myth with which hegemonic ideas of masculinity are heavily invested. As such, Antony’s iconographical emotional disintegration presents some of the most unambiguous examples of gender anxiety to be found in his screen constructions. This emotional disintegration is as ubiquitous as Antony’s alcoholic excess, to which it is linked, both semantically and literally. The question of whether his predilection towards excessive alcohol consumption inclines him towards despair, or whether his despair is so intense that it requires obliteration by excessive alcohol consumption, is implied – but never explicitly articulated and thus never answered – in all of the narratives considered here. Certainly, both behaviours serve to reinforce each other and contribute, either explicitly or implicitly, to the discourse of feminization that accompanies his screen constructions. However, the most striking aspect of Antony’s emotional disintegration is this: it is never shared by Cleopatra. Cleopatra (1963) underlines the gender anxieties enacted by Antony’s flight from the Battle of Actium, in which Cleopatra retreats, and Antony, drawn by his emasculating love for her, jumps ship and follows, to his enduring shame. The narrative has Apollodorus, Cleopatra’s slave, take Antony’s sword from him soon after he boards her ship, a sequence itself loaded with phallic symbolism (as will be discussed in Chapter 5). Cleopatra is worried that he will use it to take his own life, an act that the audience is encouraged to conflate with despair, in line with the general positioning of suicide in Western discourse. Roman discourse, on the other hand, is considerably more complex, and the act of suicide was available to a range of readings, often contradictory, which could incorporate anything from a tacit admission of guilt through to an idealized act of Roman honour (Plass, 1995: 81–134). The dynamics of this scene, however, obviate any variant reading of Antony’s hypothetical desire to end his life: he does not speak as he boards Cleopatra’s ship, and can barely raise his eyes to meet either the level gaze of Cleopatra’s attendant or Rufio’s horrified stare. Apollodorus brings Antony the queen’s greetings and offers him food – to which Antony makes no reply – then removes Antony’s sword from its sheath and tosses it unceremoniously into the ocean before walking away. Antony, left alone, lets out a low

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moan and sinks to his knees, facing the distant carnage of the battle on the horizon. The scene then cuts to him disconsolately wandering the Alexandrian shoreline, dishevelled and dressed in a long black cape, while nondiegetic music signals his inner distress. On his return to the palace, Antony effects his withdrawal from the world and into gendered despair: CLEOPATRA: They told me you were dead! ANTONY: They were quite right. I am dead. (Mankiewicz, 1963)

Aware that Octavian is nearing the borders of Egypt and that they urgently need to act, Cleopatra makes several attempts to explain her retreat, and thereby persuade Antony to shake off his self-disgusted despondency and fight. Antony’s dialogue, however, reinforces his position of subservience. When he left Actium, he explains, he had no thought for his men, his honour or his military duty: Only that my love was going and that I must be with her! That my love, my master called! And I followed her. And I followed. And that only then I looked back – and I saw… How right you were. If love is your master, anyone, anything… never love (Mankiewicz, 1963).

Unlike earlier narratives, the 1963 text allows Cleopatra to recuperate her actions at Actium, which also involves her repositioning herself along gender lines. Earlier, Cleopatra had cautioned Antony: No, your master must not be love. Never love. Give yourself to love and you give yourself to forgetfulness – of what you are and who you are and what you want (Mankiewicz, 1963).

Yet now, faced with the disintegration of the man she loves, she is allowed to recuperate her former gender reversal and adopt the feminine position: How wrong – how wrong I was! Antony, the love you followed is here (Mankiewicz, 1963).

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Figure 2 Cleopatra (Elizabeth Taylor) warns Antony (Richard Burton) not to allow himself to be ruled by love (Cleopatra, 1963, dir. Joseph Mankiewicz) Antony at first resists her recuperation. ‘To be had upon payment of an empire,’ he sneers, but she reinforces her redemptive stance: Without you, Antony, this is not a world I want to live in, much less conquer. Because, for me, there would be no love anywhere. Do you want me to die with you? I will. Would you want me to live with you? Whatever you choose (Mankiewicz, 1963).

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Likewise, Rome, despite having presented an irredeemably conscienceless Antony across both seasons, somewhat anomalously moderates him in the final episode (2007.10). The Battle of Actium is not shown; however, the episode opens on a pensive Antony in a small boat, leaving the battle site and musing on the unfamiliarity of defeat. Given the semantic associations elucidated above, one hesitates to describe the Antony of the final episode as softened, yet a philosophical interlude is entirely at odds with the character described in the previous 21 episodes. The familiar, id-driven Antony re-emerges in flashes, yet his despair (though not explicitly stated) is evident. Presiding over an Alexandrian orgy (presumably another mis-reading of the Society of Those Who Are Inseparable by Death), Antony lies prostrate on his throne, half-dressed, whilst Cleopatra – stony-faced and desolate – remains poised and dignified. Reporting back to Rome, Octavian’s source tells him that Antony is ‘drunk or drugged’ whilst Cleopatra is ‘sober… alert’ (2007.10). Antony’s behaviour is unpredictable and uncoordinated; he has become a liability to the Alexandrian court. However, following the established line in the preceding screen constructions, Cleopatra remains determined to escape their present predicament. Close to – but publicly avoiding – tears, she turns to Antony and asks if he cannot possibly think of any way out of their impossible situation. ‘You’re so good at that,’ she begs. He replies, his face etched with hopelessness, ‘I’m a soldier. I’m not a fucking magician’ (2007.10). Love, whilst sharing a semantic root with despair and being intimately linked in its manifestations, also attracts an additional discursive structure: the connotative implications of reconfiguring the narrative as doomed romance. By describing this reconfiguration as reductive, I am not attempting to refute the numerous feminist analyses that have deconstructed the negative positioning of the so-called ‘women’s genres’ (romance, melodrama, etc6), but to underline the inverse relationship between the romantic and the political in this context. There is no question that Antonius and Cleopatra enacted an 11-year alliance, of which sexual relations were an element, or that she gave birth to three children whose paternity was attributed (by both parties) to Antonius. However, to use this relationship as motivation and explanation for Antonius’ actions is to apply a reading to those actions that the evidence does not support. Yet it is precisely this

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reading that is enacted, over and over again, in his screen incarnations. His apparent breakdown in the wake of their reverse at Actium is informed by this discourse, and it is read as the reaction of a man who has allowed overwhelming love to dictate – and undermine – his military policy, and who now finds the shame (and often his assumed betrayal by Cleopatra, whose actions render her reciprocal love uncertain) unbearable. The corollary of this inverse relationship is that those narratives which most closely focus on Antony’s presumed infatuation are those from which the political content is most significantly excised. Serpent of the Nile (1953) is perhaps the most unambiguous manifestation, paying only lip service to the political upheavals of the time: Antony is shown crouched over the murdered body of Caesar in the opening shot (the only time he is depicted in Rome) and, thereafter, such political information as is provided (the propaganda war between Octavius and Antony; the complicated political situation that existed between Cleopatra and her younger sister Arsinoë) is treated expediently. The story’s actual focus is made explicit from the opening credits, where its subtitle is displayed: ‘The Loves of Cleopatra’. Moreover, Antony’s position as lover is undermined from its earliest stages: audience privilege reveals that Cleopatra and Lucilius were once lovers, and it is Lucilius, not Antony, whom Cleopatra truly loves. Therefore, Antony’s grand declarations of devotion, and the decisions that he makes based on this devotion, are clearly to be read as the actions of a man deranged by passion. Lucilius implores Antony to return to Rome, telling him that Cleopatra, whose nature he is more able to clearly discern, has tricked him: ‘Antony, we don’t belong here. Come back to Rome.’ Antony’s reaction is blank incomprehension: ‘Leave Alexandria? Cleopatra?’ he says. Lucilius tries again: ‘The high priests don’t support her,’ he argues: ANTONY: I’ll make them support her. LUCILIUS: You love her that much? ANTONY: Could you not love a woman that much? (Castle, 1953)

The short answer, implied but never directly stated, is no: Lucilius is performing acceptable masculinity, and he could not love a woman to

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distraction. As such, he is afforded the privileged position of narrative clarity: he alone can see where Cleopatra’s scheming and Antony’s blind subservience will lead them both. Indeed, it is to Lucilius that Cleopatra reveals her true agenda. Antony is prostrated by love, but Cleopatra, whatever she may profess in public, is not. ‘I am no man’s, Lucilius,’ she says. ‘I can never be’ (Castle, 1953). It is this device, to be found to a greater or lesser extent in all screen representations of the story, that most closely links the gender rhetoric of despair with the gender rhetoric of love: Antony’s love disables him, but Cleopatra’s love does not disable her. Claudette Colbert’s Cleopatra (in DeMille, 1934) occupies a contradictory position vis-à-vis her affection for Antony: on the one hand, during their initial love scene at Tarsus, as he kisses her chest, the camera tilts up to show her expressionless face; later, Apollodorus is able to persuade her to agree to Antony’s poisoning on the grounds that ‘You don’t love him.’ On the other hand, she is prepared to give up Egypt to Octavian if he will agree to spare Antony’s life. Antony’s positioning, however, is less ambiguous. He comes to Tarsus with the express intention of imprisoning Cleopatra for supposedly corrupting Caesar to the extent that his assassination became a political necessity, but she has the measure of him and, once seduced, he is submissive to her desires. ‘I should want to go out and get drunk with a lot of men,’ he muses in Alexandria, shortly before Octavian unleashes his outrage on the lovers, ‘or find another woman.’ Cleopatra asks him why he doesn’t, and he replies: ‘Because you are another woman. New. Always new. Completely new’ (DeMille, 1934). His love for her, to use a term frequently associated with Cleopatra, has bewitched him, and it is his ruin, as Enobarbus explicitly states as he deserts: ‘You, who might have been the world’s great man, ends all for a woman. For that I give you the world’s contempt’ (DeMille, 1934). Following the inverse relationship between love and political content, such lofty ambitions were never realistically within the profligate Antony’s grasp (as discussed in greater detail under Political Ineptitude), but the sentiment remains: in the eyes of Enobarbus, Antony’s love for Cleopatra has destroyed him. In 1963’s Cleopatra, the Battle of Actium embodies the Augustan version’s most damning indictment of Antony’s emasculating love:

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Antony’s alleged abandonment of battle to follow the fleeing Cleopatra. The narrative has attempted to recuperate her position by offering an alternative explanation for her flight to the standard trope that, as a woman, she was overcome by fear for her own safety – she is persuaded to leave by her advisors, once they have convinced her that Antony could not have survived a direct hit to his ship. No similar re-positioning is available to Antony. Thus, his anguish is all the more pronounced: not only has he been forced to recognize the extent to which he has sacrificed the masculine position in his love for her, but his actions have brought about military disaster. Later, continuing the elision of love and despair, it is his love for Cleopatra, whom he believes to be already dead, that persuades him to take his own life: ‘Once more, it seems Cleopatra is out of reach and I must hurry after her. Throughout life, and after it. One woman, one love. Nothing changes, except life into death’ (Mankiewicz, 1963). In Cleopatra (1999), there is little doubt that both Antony and Cleopatra are blinded by love; however, while her love is tempered by a greater love for her son and for Egypt, his is allowed to rule him unchecked. Returning to her after making his political marriage with Octavia, she harangues him at length as he attempts to justify his actions: ANTONY: I have no feelings for Octavia – I only did that to guarantee peace! CLEOPATRA: You were my friend, yet you married my worst enemy’s sister! ANTONY: There was a reason, Octavius is… CLEOPATRA: How does the greatest soldier in the world become the greatest liar? I trusted you! ANTONY: …In order to secure the east…. In order to protect you… CLEOPATRA: To protect your interest! ANTONY: Octavius has a pledge to stay out of Egypt! CLEOPATRA: And you believed him? ANTONY: [Grabs her arms] Would you please be silent? Gods above! CLEOPATRA: How could you… ANTONY: Forget Octavia! [He wraps his arms around her.] I married for convenience. But now I live for love. Cleopatra, there is a great noise in my heart. My eyes – they are clear now because they see only you. Everything I could ever want, everything I could ever treasure, is right

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here. I give myself to you, my queen. I’m yours now. In the eyes of the gods we are already one. I give myself – I give myself to Egypt. (Roddam, 1999)

Olympos, Cleopatra’s physician and childhood friend, embodies the reason that both she and Antony lack, and in fact partially embodies the paradigm of masculinity against which Antony is judged. His omniscience matches the privilege afforded to the audience and, as such, his judgement carries significant narrative weight. Cleopatra may claim that ‘I am in love, Olympos, but my mind is clear,’ but his précis of Antony refutes her, and underlines the essential repercussions of Antony’s gendered surrender to love: ‘You are strong, my queen. You have the mettle to seize and heal the world. Antony – he wants only to seize you. And that makes him weak’ (Roddam, 1999). Just how weak it makes him is revealed in the later scene, already cited, in which Antony’s drunken despair renders him utterly redundant in her fight for their survival. His emasculation by emotional expressivity leads to a replica of the 1934 scene in which Cleopatra is persuaded to sacrifice Antony’s life for Egypt: OLYMPOS: You must! Your majesty, in the name of Isis, do not forsake your country, your own child! For love! (Roddam, 1999)

It is an indication of her superior emotional control that she eventually acknowledges the political good sense of this advice, and Antony is, in fact, only saved by his sudden emergence from despair and subsequent re-assimilation into her final campaign against Octavian. Rome (2005–7), as I argued in Chapter 1, has Mark Antony manifest Roman feminizing discourse as a performance of pathologically unsocialized masculinity, which has implications for the positioning of emotional expressivity and, indeed, for the political/romantic dyad. The political content of Rome is so foregrounded, in fact, as to eliminate the vast majority of the romantic content: the romantic subplots within the narrative tend eventually to be sacrificed to political expediency (Caesar and Servilia; Octavia and Agrippa; Vorenus and Niobe; Octavia and Servilia). This is a narrative whose truth claims are considerably more strident than its predecessors7

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(which may claim to have been informed by months of research, but most of which make no serious effort to advance an historiographical agenda beyond this). Rome, on the other hand, pitches its appeal – not exclusively, but insistently – upon the grounds that verisimilitude has taken precedence over other narrative concerns. Setting aside for a moment the fact that Rome is at least as influenced by the traditional rhetoric as the other texts under analysis, the corollary of this imperative is that Rome inhabits a significantly more politicized universe than do any of its predecessors. With this in mind, as discussed under Lechery, the terms of Antony’s alliance with Cleopatra are considerably de-romanticized, in keeping with his position as a man of unsocialized desires. Nevertheless, after his arrival in Alexandria closes episode 2007.8, episode 2007.9, somewhat anomalously, has him and Cleopatra verbally affirm their love for one another. This is a positioning entirely at odds with Antony’s character construction thus far; if anything, his incapacity for love has been foregrounded, through the inequity of affection in his relationship with Atia. Throughout Season 2, the text has made it clear that Atia is in love with Antony: early in 2007.2, as they are getting dressed, she proffers her cheek for him to kiss, but he ignores it and walks away from her. She waits for him to walk out of earshot and says, softly, ‘I love you.’ In 2007.6 she posits the idea of marriage, which he sidesteps with a promise to ‘talk about that when I return [from Philippi]’. Later, in 2007.7, shortly before he is to marry Octavia (the fact of which he has kept from Atia, who believes that she is to be the bride), she says ‘I love you’ again, which prompts him to respond: ‘We need to talk.’ At the wedding, she stands apart from the party, watching miserably as he and Octavia receive the congratulations of their guests, and Mæcenas comments to Agrippa: ‘Poor Atia. I feel for her. I always thought her attachment to Antony was purely practical. But look at her. I think the old girl’s genuinely in love with him’ (2007.7). Antony may occasionally signal that he feels a measure of affection for Atia (for example, in 2005.11, when he complains to Octavian that he is wretched without her), but for the most part his affection or otherwise is inconsequential: it does not inhibit his ability to act as he sees fit. Episode 2007.8 is perhaps the first significant indication that he may harbour a genuine fondness for her: ordered to leave Rome, Antony arrives at Atia’s house, where she has been confined by Octavian, and shouts her name

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until she appears at the door. The guards will not allow her to leave, but Antony and Atia are close enough to conduct a conversation. There is nothing particularly unusual about the words he uses (he has made similar statements in the past), but his delivery is different – perhaps because it is rare for him to explicitly seek her out for no other reason than simply to see her – and he speaks with apparent sincerity. ‘When the time comes,’ he promises, ‘I will send for you.’ Atia asks: ‘When will that be?’; and he prevaricates: ‘Who can say?’ Unsurprisingly, she asks for something a little more concrete: ‘Promise me – promise me you’ll send for me!’ ‘On my life, I promise,’ he replies (2007.8). Such a promise is narratively possible because of the audience’s privileged teleological positioning: we know that he is going to Alexandria, we know what will happen there and we know exactly what his promise is worth. The fact that he clearly means it is, at this stage, evidence of little more than his self-delusion (albeit the delusion has no diegetic form and is discernible only through viewer privilege). Antony himself is, ultimately, unchanged by his sudden romantic sincerity: the audience knows that events will make a liar of him, even if his textual intent is not to deceive. Thus his sudden conversion to romantic partnership in Alexandria remains anomalous, and, by virtue of its anomaly, provides convincing evidence of a continuity of Augustan projection. Once again, Antony’s love disables him alone: Cleopatra, when the time comes, is quite able to deceive him as expediency requires, and tricks him into committing suicide. Offered clemency by Octavian if she will have Antony killed, she allows him to drink himself into a stupor and pass out in the throne room, before sending a blood-stained Charmian to deliver a note to him in which she claims to have killed herself already. His grief is enormous (perhaps the first appropriate emotional response he has evidenced, yet once again pathologized by hyperbole), and he breaks down into violent weeping before gathering himself together and seeking Vorenus’ help in ending his life (2007.10). Again, there is no suggestion that his love for Cleopatra is unrequited. There is evidence of genuine tenderness between them: she has to be persuaded that Antony’s death is the only sensible course of action available to her; he is genuinely concerned when he sees her distress over Octavian’s request (which she conceals from him); and she weeps over

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his body when she reveals her subterfuge to an outraged Vorenus. Yet she is able to act politically in spite of her love. In other words, though it overwhelms him, it does not overwhelm her. The gendered rhetoric of control over one’s emotions has once again found Antony wanting. Feminization It was common in the late Republic for members of the Roman elite to consolidate their power-claims by professing descent from one or more of the Roman gods. Julius Caesar, for example, claimed descent from Venus. Likewise, the Antonii claimed their descent from Hercules. Antony’s mythology is closely bound up with that of his legendary ancestor, to whom he may well have compared himself in life – although, given the pejorative implications, this may also be a figment of Augustan propaganda; there are certainly many convenient overlaps between the reported lives of the two men. Take, for example, the following narrative from Ovid’s Fasti, in which the hero is enslaved by an Eastern queen. Falling in love with her, he is completely under her thrall and carries out her every command. Later, he and she exchange clothes: She gives him dainty, Gaetulian-purple frocks, Gives him the stylish belt she’d just worn. His belly exceeds the belt: he unclasps the frocks So his massive hands can be inserted. He shattered the bracelets uncrafted for his arms, His huge feet split her tiny shoes open. She in turn takes the heavy club and lion skin And the smaller shafts stowed in their quiver. (Ov. Fast. II.319–325)

Ovid is writing about Hercules, although his subject could just as easily be Antony. In any case, it is clear that the semantic link between Hercules and his alleged descendents could be exploited by Antonius’ detractors as usefully as by Antonius himself. Indeed, it is this semantic link that Gordon P Jones invokes as evidence of his theory that Shakespeare intends Antony’s first appearance in Antony and Cleopatra to be in drag:

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It is evident that effeminate subjection was a traditional, if equivocal, part of the Hercules legend, sometimes serving as moral exemplum, sometimes appearing merely as a comic episode. Buffoonery is never far from Shakespeare’s portrayal of Antony; nor is the severely moralistic Roman interpretation… Like the relation between Hercules and Omphale, that between Antony and Cleopatra inverts normal assumptions about social roles and sexual dominance (Jones, 1980: 66).

Antony’s feminization has another – equally important – source in Roman pejorative discourse: its link with the East. Edwards draws attention to Cicero’s attempt to semantically link Greeks and Hellenized Asians to other groups under Roman (male) subjugation: Giving advice to his brother (about to begin his period of office as proconsul of Asia), Cicero warns against the slippery ways of Greeks and Asiatics, which are to be connected, he says, with their lack of political power (Ad Q. fr. 1.16). By implication, those who have been conquered behave like other dominated groups, women and slaves (Edwards, 1993: 93).

Women and slaves were both reckoned in opposition to the Roman conception of ‘male’ (Williams, 1999: 133); the public sphere was the exclusive province of the Roman male elite – and so the cycle of justification continues, with each subjugated group serving to inform and reinforce the discourse justifying the subjugation of the others. However, positioning Antony as a philhellene was not a straightforwardly pejorative action – there is evidence that Antony himself was happy to position himself thus, and given the tension, discussed in Chapter 1, between Roman cultural elitism and philhellenism, it seems possible to accept this as historically plausible rather than as feminizing invective. It takes a Cleopatra to tip the balance. Edwards once again illuminates, quoting from Pliny: The orator Messala has recorded that the triumvir Antony used gold chamber-pots for all the calls of nature, a charge that would have shamed even Cleopatra (Plin. (E) HN. 33.50).

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‘Pliny,’ says Edwards, emphasizes the enormity of Antony’s behaviour by stressing that his luxury outdid the proverbial extravagance of women and eastern tyrants. Such behaviour was marked as undesirable by its association with the feminine and the foreign (Edwards, 1993: 25).

Antony’s crime, therefore, is to out-feminize the feminine, to out-foreign the foreigner. It is one thing, clearly, to espouse a classical education and look to ancient Greek philosophy for guidance – it is entirely another to allow oneself to be corrupted into luxury and decadence by eastern ways, most particularly by an Eastern woman. A powerful combination of luxuriousness, extravagance, Easternness and female subjugation has been invoked to justify Antony’s positioning as unfit-to-rule: he is the very personification of incontinentia. The conflation of luxury/decadence and feminization recurs over and over again in Antony’s screen constructions, and the mechanisms by which it is shown are closely tied to contemporaneous hegemonic conceptions of masculinity. Feminized dress or appearance is used as an external signifier (in conjunction with the feminizing discourse of emotional expressivity, as outlined above). Thus in Serpent of the Nile (1953), Antony’s hair is allowed to grow longer and more unkempt during his sojourn in Alexandria, in contrast to the brisk military style adopted in his forsaken career as champion of Roman imperialistic advance. Indeed, at the height of his despair, clothing is used to signify Antony’s admission that he has failed as a Roman – and, by extension, as a man – when he removes his cloak and passes it to Lucilius, the implicit commentator on Antony’s deficient masculinity. Essentially, this completes his process of feminization; after this point, he takes no further part in the ‘masculine’ elements of the film, to the extent that he does not even participate in the final Battle of Alexandria. Mankiewicz’s 1963 movie shows Antony, not Cleopatra, taking the legendary bath in asses’ milk. ‘The milk of a cow, a goat, and an ass,’ he muses to his attendants. ‘Which would you say is better for softening the beard?’ (Mankiewicz, 1963). Cleopatra has already been shown to take an intense interest in cosmetics and personal appearance – in an early scene, she is

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seen practising make-up techniques on a mannequin head – but a political undercurrent is always present, undermining an overly frivolous positioning. Thus, in the mannequin scene, she discovers that her taster, Lotus, has been coerced into poisoning her drink and calmly instructs Lotus to drink it in front of her. Lotus obeys, and dies. Later, Cleopatra makes a political decision to frame herself as merry and frivolous to receive a Roman envoy, because she is aware that this is how she is perceived in Rome. Antony, however, is simply bathing in asses’ milk, for no good narrative reason other than to underline his eagerness to adopt Eastern decadence in Alexandria. Dress is also used to underline Antony’s difference from Caesar – where Caesar’s tunics and uniforms are modestly cut, extending at least as far as the knee and generally fashioned in dark, plain colours, Antony’s are short, often skimming the tops of his thighs, and of more ornate construction. In Chapter 5, I will examine the implication of casting on reading the bodies of Caesar and Antony, as this undoubtedly contributes to the ideological implications of male display engendered by Antony’s costume, and it is true that other, younger Roman male players wear uniforms of similar length to his. However, for now I want to underline the point that Antony’s dress specifically marks him as Other to Caesar, and displays his body to the gaze in a manner that permits an overtly feminized discourse that does not similarly attach to Caesar. Caesar’s costuming, indeed, specifically works to mitigate against the risk of such a discourse. The corrupting influence of Alexandria is a recurring motif in Roddam’s 1999 miniseries, to the extent that even Caesar is not immune – although the key difference between his decline into Oriental decadence and Antony’s is that Caesar resists it (and is ultimately successful in controlling its influence upon him), whilst Antony is completely seduced. Caesar’s language presents him as resistant to Alexandrian temptation from the beginning: on a cruise along the Nile, following the Battle of Alexandria (an event which is based in historical fact, although it is extremely unlikely that either party undertook the journey for the recuperative reasons attributed to it in the series), Caesar implies that Cleopatra had to employ some serious cajoling to persuade him to join her: CAESAR: I feel like I’m in paradise. Thank you for bringing me here. CLEOPATRA: Why did you resist me?

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CAESAR: Because I’m Roman. Because I hate idleness. Because erotic sensuality is a kind of treason. (Roddam, 1999)

He is, however, quick to recognize his duty to Rome, and the threat that his luxuriating in Alexandria poses to his Roman (masculine) duty: RUFIO: Mark Antony sent an urgent dispatch from Rome. Your enemies are stirring up the Senate against you. Brutus in particular… CAESAR: What’s he saying now? RUFIO: That you’ve lost interest in the affairs of the Republic, preferring a life of luxury in Egypt. CAESAR: Luxury?! [He smacks a platter of fruit out of the hands of a waiting slave.] He’s right. (Roddam, 1999)

This timely reminder is all it takes to persuade Caesar to return to Rome. Although Cleopatra subsequently joins him there, and although her decadent influence is to be observed later in the series (she and Caesar bathe together in water perfumed with rose petals), crucially, he is able to deny her ambitions and, by extension, her Eastern luxury. Antony, however, is contrasted with Caesar from the moment he arrives in Alexandria – a moment which is itself positioned as his repudiation of his duty to Rome. Waking together the morning after their lovemaking at Tarsus, Cleopatra invites Antony to Alexandria on the condition that he break off his alliance with Octavian. ‘Have you any idea what that would mean?’ Antony asks, horrified. ‘It would be civil war. It would tear Rome apart. I can’t do that… No! No. I can’t go against my country’ (Roddam, 1999). Nevertheless, a few scenes later, he has overcome his patriotic objections and made his way eastwards. Caesar entered Alexandria as a military leader, marching in at the head of his legions; Antony’s entrance is marked by children showering him with flowers. Cleopatra, still smarting from the news of his marriage to Octavia, demands to know why he has come. ‘Are you here to collect taxes, steal grain for Egypt’s debt? Inspect your conquest?’ she asks. It should be noted that these are all military preoccupations, and all were Caesar’s stated intentions on his arrival.

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Antony’s reply underlines his feminized, objectified status, and confirms his opposition to Caesar’s ascetic responsibility: ANTONY: I’m here to taste Egypt’s pleasures. And to bear you a fine gift… myself. Mark Antony comes not to conquer Egypt but to surrender to her charms. (Roddam, 1999)

It is, however, in Rome (2005–7) that the feminized Antony is made most explicit. This is, as I will argue in Chapter 6, an Antony who manifests what might conveniently be termed hegemonic masculinity gone mad: for virility, Antony displays a pathological obsession with sexual intercourse; for warrior-hero, Antony exhibits an almost psychopathic predilection towards murderous rage. His feminization, therefore, is all the more disjunctive. Perhaps because he has been so violent and sexually promiscuous, the narrative requires his feminization to be overt – a gentle, feminized shifting away from his pathological masculinity might actually evidence a degree of healthy psychosocial development, which is not this narrative’s intent. Thus (ahistorically) ordered out of Rome, Antony’s impulse is to head to Alexandria and Cleopatra, with whom an understanding – presumably sexual – has already been reached in episode 2007.2. It is important to note that Alexandria is not the site of Antony’s corruption – he comes to Alexandria already explicitly corrupt – but it is the site at which his corruption is allowed to flourish. Thus, Rome’s Antony, already a lecher and a murderer, finds in Alexandria that this depravity is externally manifested: through opium use (substance abuse being one of the few vices of which this Antony has not yet been guilty) and through his desertion of Roman honour, displayed in his rejection of Roman dress and his neglect of Roman duty. It should be noted that the abstemious Vorenus is also superficially corrupted by Alexandria, in that for the first time he is shown using the services of a prostitute. He, however, remains true to Roman masculinity: he retains his military uniform, and seeks to preserve Roman interests as far as possible without explicitly defying Antony. Antony, on the other hand, adopts a feminized appearance immediately. He arrives in Alexandria at the end of 2007.8, and by 2007.9 he is

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Figure 3 Antony (James Purefoy) and Vorenus (Kevin McKidd) in Alexandria (Rome, 2007.9, dir. Steve Shill) found wearing thick kohl eyeliner (which has already been associated with Egyptian Other-ness in 2005.8) and a tunic so feminine that it might more properly be called a dress, recalling Ovid’s description of Hercules’ ‘dainty, Gaetulian-purple frocks’ and ‘stylish belt’. This is the most explicit example in any of his constructions of the feminizing influence of Alexandria: no explanation is offered in the text, no comment is made by any of the characters regarding his decision to wear feminine clothing and to make up his eyes. This, it is implied, is simply what happens when one adopts an Alexandrian lifestyle. Political Ineptitude The historical Antonius was the product of generations of politicians and statesmen, and his birth into the Antonii gens made a political career practically inevitable. Political prominence in ancient Rome, as I have discussed, went hand in hand with political invective, which conflated masculinity and fitness-to-rule. It should come as no great surprise, therefore, to find that Antonius’ ability to govern Rome (or his own baser urges) is repeatedly called into question in Roman political invective – it

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would be more surprising, in fact, if it was not. What is remarkable, then, is that a man apparently so deranged by the pleasures of gluttony, sloth, lust and inebriation should manage to establish himself as one of the most powerful men in the Roman Empire for 14 years – or at least that receptions of him throughout the centuries have never questioned the logic of insisting upon the reproduction of these two mutually exclusive states of being. That Antony personifies incontinentia has been argued already, and, whatever significance this association may have had in ancient receptions, a modern audience, unaccustomed to the semantics of Roman invective, can easily deduce that a man subjected to excesses of debauchery, extravagance and gluttony would, at the very least, be mentally and physically compromised in his performance of statesmanship. The semantic connection between excessive behaviour and fitness-to-rule may no longer be rhetorically entrenched, but it is certainly not limited to the ancient world. At least part of the problem of recuperating Antonius/Antony from this series of pejorative tropes is the lack of narrative focus on his character prior to his association with Cleopatra. As discussed in Chapter 1, little information survives concerning his early adulthood, but his rise to power as Caesar’s right-hand man is better attested; however, prior to Caesar’s death, Antony generally remains a secondary character on screen, usually serving to punctuate the tale of how the assassination came about. It is during the aftermath of the Ides of March that Antonius’ gift is fully realized, yet most screen narratives fail to depict (or even attempt to paraphrase) the remarkable political skill with which he handled the fragile situation in the days following Caesar’s assassination. A timeline of the post-assassination crisis is included in the Appendix, and it will be clear from the depth of political manoeuvring packed into a matter of days that this sequence of events would be difficult to translate in its entirety into a screen narrative. An abridged version, however, ought to be possible, and is, arguably, critical to enabling a clear understanding of the powers at work during this turbulent period.8 Nevertheless, most narratives opt to skip directly from the Ides to the Battle of Philippi (a leap of two and a half years), usually presenting it as the inevitable filial revenge of Antony-asson over the murderers of Caesar-as-father. Moreover, the single narrative

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(Rome, 2007.1) that attempts to present even a condensed version of the political complexities that followed Caesar’s assassination, positions a panicking Antony, ready to flee the city, dissuaded by Octavian (at this point still played as a child by Max Pirkis), who recognizes the political capital to be gained by standing their ground and negotiating with the assassins. It is Octavian’s – not Antony’s – deduction that the conspirators must compromise their position by proclaiming Caesar’s assassination a tyrannicide (a technicality that consolidated Antonius’ position significantly), since all acts of a tyrant – including the appointment of Brutus as praetor and Cassius as pro-consul – are illegal. Antony, true to his characterization, remains unconvinced, and it falls to Atia, swayed by Octavian’s deduction that, if they can make Caesar’s will stick, she will be the mother of the richest man in Rome, to make the decision that they will stay in the city and brazen it out (2007.1). Rome is unusual in that it does allocate Antony, if not centre-stage, at least a causative, interrogated role in the narrative (‘agency’ would be too autonomous a term for what is largely a reactive character; however, Antony’s reactions, or his actions in response to the suggestions of others, have important narrative consequences and, as such, are afforded a closer examination than in previous incarnations). Elsewhere, as I have argued, Antony is a player in other people’s stories, in which his function is generally comparative. As such, his political ability is irrelevant, even inconvenient: where he plays foil to Cleopatra’s performance of inappropriate womanhood, any demonstration of political skill would grant him a level of agency that the narrative rhetoric can ill afford; where he performs pathological masculinity, reason and logic are antithetic to his excessive behaviour. Simply put, for Antony to function as required, he must be incompetent in the (masculinized) public sphere. The texts repeatedly bear this out. Cleopatra (1934) is a case in point: Henry Wilcoxon’s Antony is easily the least politicized Roman male in the text, a fact underscored by his first appearance as he arrives at Calpurnia’s party: while the conspirators discuss the ramifications of Caesar’s sojourn in Alexandria and Octavian expresses his frustration at the fact that his uncle’s lengthy silence is effectively keeping him out of the political loop, Antony breezes in amidst sounds of delight from the female guests, fresh from a night spent in unspecified pursuits (‘Does any wife ever know

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where her husband is?’ asks a cheerful Octavia) that have kept him from his bed. ‘Sleep? I’m above sleep,’ he tells Octavia, to which Octavian remarks, dryly, ‘I’m glad you’re above something’ (DeMille, 1934). Caesar, on the other hand, is introduced a few scenes earlier hard at work in the business of empire building. Cleopatra underscores the masculine rhetoric Caesar embodies when she draws attention to his industry: CLEOPATRA: Seems strange to see you working. I’ve always pictured you fighting – or loving. CAESAR: I have had some experience with fighting. CLEOPATRA: But none with loving, I suppose? (DeMille, 1934)

With remarkable economy, the text has allowed Caesar to align himself visually with the business of leadership and vocally with the business of war, and to disavow the feminine business of love. It is a similar economy to that which visually separates Antony from the masculine sphere (by surrounding him with women as he enters the party), and aligns him with profligacy and misbehaviour (by having him immediately pour a goblet of wine on arrival as Octavia explains that ‘he always talks like this when he hasn’t [been to bed]’). His behaviour is only specifically gendered nonmale (and therefore non-public sphere) by Roman discourse, but the mise-en-scène goes some considerable way towards emphasizing Antony’s separation from political responsibility. This is not to argue that Antony is uncomplicatedly aligned with the feminine: on the contrary, he is verbally resistant to such categorization, deriding women as ‘playthings for us’. Yet his masculine outrage is, revealingly, most often reserved for Cleopatra – revealing because it is in the positioning of Cleopatra that the text’s gender discourse is most clear. Sympathetically portrayed by Claudette Colbert (who resists the gender paradigm posited by the film so successfully, both diegetically and through the non-diegetic discourse of ‘independent, modern woman’ invoked by Colbert’s star text, that she renders Enobarbus’ masculine outrage – which is hyperbolic, but ultimately vindicated in first Caesar’s and then Antony’s ruin – incongruous at times), this Cleopatra is nevertheless conceived of as the feminizing force that undoes Caesar and almost

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dooms Rome. Caesar, introduced as the fastidious (although problematic) embodiment of masculine leadership, arrives late to his morning meeting for the first time the night after he and Cleopatra begin their relationship. Later, despite specifically denying the title of ‘King’ on their first meeting, he allows her to hail him as ‘Emperor’, responding: ‘Empress!’ Indeed, it is Cleopatra’s implication in the dissolution of Caesar (and, by extension, of Rome) against which the conspirators rail as they make the decision to act against him: BRUTUS: Yes, I believe. Now I know he’s divorcing Calpurnia to marry [Cleopatra]. CASSIUS: That might be his private affair, but tomorrow he’ll force the Senate to declare him Emperor and King. CASCA: And present to them Cleopatra as… CASSIUS: Queen. Our queen, Brutus! CASCA: Our queen. BRUTUS: No, Rome cannot be turned into another Orient, with golden thrones for a king and queen. But I suppose he’ll sway the Senate as he always has. CASSIUS: Oh, no he won’t. We’ll greet Caesar before he greets the Senate. And a little blood will be spilled for Rome. (DeMille, 1934)

It is certainly true that, as Elizabeth Ford and Deborah Mitchell (2009) argue, Warren William’s Caesar is positioned considerably further from the paradigm than any of his screen colleagues:9 his relationship with Cleopatra is motivated by her usefulness to him as a tool of imperial expansion and self-aggrandizement, and both he and other characters explicitly disavow his love for her. Indeed, at the time of casting, William was best known for his portrayal of unscrupulous lotharios, and DeMille apparently chose him for the role of Caesar after watching The Mouthpiece (1932), in which he plays a disillusioned DA who becomes rich as a defence attorney for the Mafia (Birchard, 2004: 276). There is no question but that this text intends to problematize its Caesar, and that Cleopatra – for all that she is positioned in dialogue as ‘the poisonous snake that wrecks [Rome’s] men’ – is a symptom rather than specifically

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a cause of his decline. However, even given the tension encoded into his construction, it is revealing that his downfall is conceived of as a misapplication of his considerable political skill – he is still comfortably of the masculine, public sphere. Antony, on the other hand, is, as ever, undone by incontinentia: Cleopatra is initially able to manipulate his proclivity towards excess, and, thereafter, it is his immoderate love for her that causes his ruin. This Rome may not be particularly politicized – the threat to the res publica embodied in Caesar’s affair with Cleopatra is discussed laughingly by gossiping women; depictions of the standard political signifiers (the Forum, the Senate) are either infrequent or else conspicuously absent; and there is considerable blurring of the public and the private spheres – but it is significant that, where masculinity is coded in opposition to the anti-Roman influence of an Eastern woman, Antony fails to align himself in any meaningful way with the Roman business of political governance (to the extent that he is not even present at the Senate House during Caesar’s assassination). Such is Antony’s dislocation from the public sphere, indeed, that it is difficult to discern the Senate’s rationale in appointing him and Octavian the joint rulers of Rome following Caesar’s death; up to this point, he has been given no opportunity to express any kind of political interest or gift, and has, in fact, demonstrated his disengagement. It is Octavian, not Antony, for example, who is able to discern Caesar’s motives and intentions in bringing Cleopatra to Italy, despite the fact that Antony (to Octavian’s chagrin) is Caesar’s sole correspondent in Rome. Antony, moreover, reads Caesar’s decision as neither political strategy nor even ruthless ambition, but is instead confounded at Caesar’s determination to ‘make a fool over himself for a woman’ (DeMille, 1934). The sequence in which Antony and Octavian accept their commission is also revealing. Conducted at Caesar’s house, rather than the Senate, it is already moved from the public to the domestic sphere, as emphasized by the mise-en-scène, which features a pool, potted plants and ornamented, fabric-draped furnishings. Although Octavian references Antony’s famous oratorical coup at Caesar’s funeral, he does so in terms that suggest Antony’s actions were, at the very least, disrespectful and inappropriate, and potentially reckless self-propaganda: ‘You used my uncle’s dead body to win control!’ protests Octavian. ‘Holding up his blood-stained toga like

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any play actor to make the crowd cheer you!’ (DeMille, 1934). Moreover, Octavian’s later oratorical coup, as he stirs up anti-Antonian sentiment among the Roman people, will actually be shown on-screen, and will be conducted in the politicized space of the Roman Forum. It should be noted that Antony is afforded a moment of strategic clarity during the post-funeral discussion, when he reveals his plan to lure Cleopatra to Tarsus on a pretense of friendship designed to cause her to lower her guard. This is, however, undermined immediately when the following scene – Cleopatra approaching Tarsus on her barge – reveals that she and her advisors are aware of the danger. Moreover, Antony’s stated objective – to ‘send Cleopatra to Rome in chains!’ – is predictably thwarted within a couple of scenes by his excess and her understanding of how to manipulate his excess. Following the Tarsus sequence, Antony does not return to Rome, and, thus removed from the (masculine) West, he is allowed no further political involvement by the narrative; his next engagement with Roman governance is his attempt to deploy his legions against Octavian’s declaration of war – only to be told by Enobarbus that his generals have deserted because Antony has chosen Cleopatra over Rome. Similarly, Cleopatra (Mankiewicz, 1963) emphasizes Antony’s unsuitability for the public sphere through direct or indirect contrast with Caesar. Here conceived in pseudo-Oedipal terms as a figurative father/son drama (see Chapter 5), Antony himself is allowed to make the contrast explicit: ‘Do I trouble you, Rufio?’ he asks in the scene (cited above) wherein he learns that Octavian has stripped Lepidus of his command in Africa. ‘Yes you do,’ replies Rufio, with characteristic frankness. ‘I’ll wager you never found Caesar befuddled with wine,’ muses Antony. ‘Nothing, no-one ever befuddled Caesar’ (Mankiewicz, 1963). There is no bitterness to his words, only regret: he is the prodigal son unable to live up to his ersatz father’s glory; uncertain, perhaps, as to whether or not it’s even worth the effort of trying. The narrative is arguably the first of the English-language screen texts to make a serious attempt to adhere to the broader historical facts, and the 240 minute run-time allows for a degree of context-setting impossible in the earlier films. As the eponymous heroine, the focus is, unsurprisingly, on Cleopatra, which allows for a consideration of her narrative motivation and significantly mitigates her feminizing threat. The result is that

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the stock explanation for her ultimate defeat – the rhetoric of unnatural female appropriation of masculine power – is rendered inadequate by the decidedly pro-Cleopatran narrative. She is, for the first time, explicitly political, comfortable in her role as head of state, and – perhaps surprisingly – allowed a considerable degree of (hegemonic) femininity to moderate her gender threat: an approving Caesar, ever the voice of authority, concedes: ‘You have a way of mixing politics with passion.’ In contrast to DeMille’s 1934 film (and 1953’s Serpent of the Nile), the text is considerably more political in tone,10 seeking to manifest the ancient texts on screen (although, it must be noted, without allowing for the partisanship of the ancient writers), and the net result is that the de-politicized Antony must necessarily move in a politicized screen universe. Whereas the earlier texts disregarded his political skill by aligning him subtly with the private sphere, here – unavoidably positioned in the public – Antony cannot help but explicitly acknowledge his own failings: ANTONY: Show me a city and I’ll tell you how to take it. Let me face an army and I’ll smell out its weak points and hit them hard where they are. Make me to sit down, talk in whispers of this and that, with an emphasis here and a shrug there and I’m soon confounded and defeated. Meaning to do the best, I suppose… I suppose I could not have done worse. (Mankiewicz, 1963)

The father/son relationship is echoed in Cleopatra (Roddam, 1999), and is putatively offered as an explication for Antony’s decision to fight the conspirators at Philippi, thus once again providing a narrative impetus for the battle without exploring the lengthy and complex political manoeuvring that historically preceded the action. Unusually, the text elects to show his funeral oration over Caesar’s body – the majority of screen narratives, no doubt haunted by the ubiquity of the Shakespearean ‘Friends, Romans, countrymen’ passage, segue over the speech itself, although it is often represented in dialogue-free long-shot. However, this text avoids Shakespearean comparisons precisely because the form and intent in 1999 are so different. Whereas Shakespeare’s Antony used his oration to skilfully manipulate the anti-Caesarian crowds in the Forum into a proCaesarian frenzy, the film assumes a pro-Caesarian crowd to begin with,

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which allows for a much more straightforward and highly emotive speech, wherein an emotional Antony, barely able to keep his voice steady, rails against the conspirators and declares his intention to seek vengeance as quickly as possible. The formalities dispensed with and the political upheavals of 44–42 bce neatly elided into one emotionally charged speech, the narrative is free to ignore Lepidus (whose name is not mentioned) and reduce the triumvirate to a squabble between Antony and Octavian. The division of the Roman Empire is a case in point: Antony, arriving late to their meeting, is petulant and childish: ‘As long as [Octavian] stays on his side of the world, I’ll stay on mine,’ he grumbles: ANTONY: Now – I’ll take the lands to the east, including Egypt. OCTAVIAN: [Laughs humourlessly] Of course. Who better to govern a land of such decadence and luxury? ANTONY: If you want to avoid a civil war, then you will stay out of Egypt. You can have everything else. Take it or leave it. OCTAVIAN: Very well then. I’ll take Spain, Gaul and Africa. SENATOR: Then it’s agreed. The east for Antony, the west for Octavius. (Roddam, 1999)

Not only has Antony carelessly discarded any territorial claim beyond Egypt (it should be noted that this is the only Eastern country specifically cited in the scene, although Spain, Gaul and Africa – which represent virtually the entirety of the Western Roman world in 42 bce – are all name-checked), but he has also allowed the narrative to invoke some pervasive gender/geography associations. Antony’s reasons for selecting Egypt are given narrative motivation – the scene immediately follows the consummation of his relationship with Cleopatra at Tarsus – but the specifics of the dialogue are revealing: ‘Antony’ is aligned with ‘Egypt’, which is aligned with decadence and luxury, both of which, are, along with Easternness, gendered feminine in Roman discourse. Regardless of whether or not the text is aware of the complexities of Roman invective, or even whether there has been any conscious decision to reproduce a gendered rhetoric on screen (most explicit in the Senator’s summing up – which could, arguably, sum up the entire film: ‘The east for Antony, the

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west for Octavius’), the dialogue itself positions Antony as indifferent to the political sphere. His excessive behaviour governs his decision-making process; he is uninterested in the business of leadership. This positioning becomes more complex as receptions of Antony move into the twenty-first century and the gender rhetoric undergoes a paradigm shift. Now, instead of signifying the inadequacies of the feminized man, Antony embodies that which is found wanting in hegemonic masculinity – yet his political ability remains unchanged. No longer unsuited to the public sphere because of his feminized behaviours, Antony’s excesses are now conceived of as a kind of animalistic lack of control, which renders him incompatible with the niceties of political and diplomatic manoeuvring. Both Rome (2005–7) and Augustus (Young, 2003) are informed by this altered gender rhetoric. Rome (2005) has Antony return from Gaul at Caesar’s behest to stand for election as tribune, despite the horrified objections of Caesar’s slave, Posca (whose commentary often provides exposition and a suggested partisan position for audiences): ‘I had understood the people’s tribune to be a sacred office, with power of veto over the Senate… An office of great dignity and seriousness!’ he protests. Dryly, Caesar concedes: ‘Perhaps you’re right. We shall send Strabo along to make sure Antony behaves himself ’ (2005.2). The scene then cuts to Antony apparently raping the shepherdess (above, under Lechery), immediately vindicating Posca’s concerns. Politics, however, bores Antony, and it quickly becomes clear that the political intent is Caesar’s: Antony is here because he has been told to be. He sighs and rolls his eyes throughout the election procedures and his investiture as tribune (‘About time,’ he complains as the lengthy ceremony concludes, ‘I need a drink’), and the audience might question Caesar’s logic in selecting Antony for the task. His rationale becomes clear, however, in the following scene: arriving at a clandestine meeting of the optimates (Pompey, Cato et al) at Atia’s house, Antony’s demeanour – a sinister undercurrent of implied violence masked by an unconvincing (as it is intended to be) veneer of good-natured bluster – is designed to intimidate during the ostensible negotiations that follow. As he arrives in his armour, Cato protests: ‘You’re inside the sacred precincts of Rome, but yet you wear the bloody red cloak of a soldier!’ Antony smiles, as he

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often does when he is at his most volatile, and lightly counters: ‘Che bruto figura – it completely fell from my mind. I’m most sorry. Will you forgive me, friend Cato? Will you take this, Atia, and burn it?’ The apology is too effusive to be plausible, and he has made his point: by arriving in military uniform, Antony has underlined the threat that he represents and the real reason Caesar has sent him to Rome. The terms of Caesar’s proposal are certain to be unacceptable to the Pompeians; what Caesar needs is to underline the risks inherent in dismissing him out of hand. He needs, in effect, to threaten his opponents, and Antony is threatening. His physical presence exudes menace: his words may be innocuous, but the delivery is chilling. ‘Winter does not last forever,’ he tells Scipio, who has dismissed Caesar’s military capacity because the 13th legion is on the other side of the Alps. ‘Spring comes. Snows melt.’ Scipio protests: ‘That’s a threat!’ On paper, it is difficult to see what has upset Scipio: none of Antony’s words are remotely threatening. Yet delivered in his low undertone, eyes shrouded, and the promise of violence imbued in every syllable, there is no doubt about it: this is a threat. ‘Snows,’ he says slowly, coldly, ‘always melt’ (2005.2). If there were any lingering doubt that Caesar’s political ambitions for Antony are not, in fact, of specifically political intent, Antony’s performance in the Senate, during the debate over Scipio’s proposal that Caesar be declared an Enemy of the Senate and People of Rome, is unambiguous (2005.2). Pompey, in conversation with Cicero, has already made clear that the proposal is for show only: they cannot afford to provoke Caesar into civil war. Pompey’s hope is that, by showing Caesar that the Senate is against him, Caesar will find himself with no alternative but to lay down his arms. Pompey is counting on Antony’s tribunician veto and is certain that Antony will use it to end the decree before it can be debated. Antony’s position in the Senate confirms his positioning in the text: seated apart from the Senators, he is indifferent and barely following proceedings. As Caesar’s supporters shout down the proposal, he can scarcely raise a lethargic glance, and it is only when Cicero rises and moves with his supporters to stand by the Pompeians that his smirk fades. Chaos breaks out on the Senate floor and Antony, not usually one to pass up the opportunity to join in the violence, is able only to watch helplessly. It falls to Cicero, who has only supported the proposal on the basis that Pompey has

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threatened to abandon Rome to the Caesarians if Cicero’s faction refuse to collaborate, to scream above the commotion: ‘Antony! Veto the motion! Stand up! Veto the motion!’ His words appear to rouse Antony from his stupor, and he finally stands and attempts to make his veto heard, but by this stage the clamour is too great and his words go unnoticed. Antony has panicked, and his panic has caused political disaster. It is true that the episode title is How Titus Pullo Brought Down the Roman Republic, and that some frantic political wrangling by Cicero (not Antony, who is not even present in the negotiations) allows the session to remain open for debate the following day, thus providing a much-needed get-out clause for Pompey – as long as Antony is able to arrive safely at the Senate, which Pullo’s gambling problem prevents. However, whilst this mitigates Antony’s failure slightly, the burden of culpability is inequitably distributed, in part, perhaps, because of the reformation of Pullo’s character in the screen time since the gambling brawl that almost led to his death. The attack on Pullo is, therefore, positioned as the intrusion of past misdemeanours into a narrative in which they no longer have any rightful place. Antony’s failure to veto Scipio’s motion, by contrast, cannot be read as anything other than gross incompetence. This is only the first of numerous sequences throughout Seasons 1 and 2 that serve to derogate or deny Antony’s political authority. There is no doubt that Antony, in keeping with the shift in his gender positioning that occurs in his twenty-first-century appearances, now moves comfortably in the masculine public sphere, yet it would be inaccurate to equate this new-found comfort with ability. What has changed is Antony’s attitude to the political sphere: affiliated with the masculine, he no longer questions his entitlement or his suitability to political authority. While this might appear on a cursory viewing to afford him some political competence, this is in fact illusory: where Antony acts successfully within the political sphere, it is always at the behest of another, more politically astute character. In Season 1, this is usually Caesar (although, on occasion, Atia is able to manipulate him into acting on her imperative). Caesar, in fact, is able to provide a considerable check to Antony’s worst excesses, regularly contradicting or censuring Antony’s remarks. By Season 2, however, with Caesar dead and Antony (in the temporary narrative absence of Lepidus) governing single-handedly, his

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incompetence is repeatedly underlined and his profligacy given as the impetus behind his decision to seek office: in a bath with Atia, he complains: ‘Running this damn city isn’t nearly as amusing as I thought it would be’ (2007.2). This follows closely behind the scene, outlined above, in which he propositions Cleopatra and arranges to extort 42,000 denarii a month from her grain shipments to Rome, and immediately after a scene in which Cicero describes to him the chaos currently stalking the Aventine, which Antony is apparently powerless to stop. In keeping with Antony’s reconfiguration as a man ruled by animalistic urges, when he acts on his own initiative within the public sphere, it is not out of political necessity but as a response to his baser appetites: lust (his alliance with Cleopatra; the alliance with Atia that obliges him to remain in Rome after Caesar’s assassination) or rage (his murder of Quintus; his murder of the unnamed Senator whose task it is to read out Cicero’s Philippic on the Senate floor; the proscription and murder, indeed, of Cicero). Where he attempts to position himself politically, his position is never informed by sound logic (his decision to flee Rome and recruit an army to attack Caesar’s assassins, which is obviated by Octavian; his decision, in conjunction with Cleopatra, to provoke Rome into war with Egypt because he is bored by peace; even his preference for punitive action vis-à-vis first Pullo, when he returns the stolen gold to Caesar, and later Vorenus, when he spares Pompey’s life), and is either gainsaid by his more politically able peers (Caesar, Octavian) or proves utterly disastrous (an unwinnable war with Rome). Antony may no longer question his suitability for office, but he is no more capable of it in the twenty-first century than in any of his previous incarnations. The Abandonment of Rome As argued in Chapter 1, this concept is intrinsically linked with the entirety of the feminizing rhetoric that surrounds the Antony-icon in a number of ways, some obvious and others more complex. As a projection of Augustan values, it is closely aligned with the gendered rhetoric of east and west and the Othering of the East – an idea most startlingly reflected in Rome, when King Nicomedes of Bithynia (alleged by Caesar’s enemies, although, notably, not the screen text, to have been Caesar’s

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lover) promises aid to Brutus and Cassius against Antony on the condition that he can watch ‘a Roman woman fucked by baboons’ (2007.3). Considered impartially, Antonius’ presence in Alexandria makes political and military sense: as his most powerful client nation, a strong alliance with Egypt was an important element in the consolidation of his Eastern powerbase. The gender of Egypt’s ruler made a sexual partnership – a device frequently employed in the power struggles of the ancient world – extremely likely, but improbable as an excuse to remain in any country in which there was no political advantage to be had. Yet, considered in rhetorical terms, Antony’s selection of Egypt over Rome (as it is generally portrayed) becomes the gendered selection of East over West, with all that this implies. Antony’s abandonment of Rome is closely linked to his political inability: the eastern province to which he defects is positioned apolitically (in line with Saidean Orientalist discourse), governed by a woman who operates autocratically and whose gift is for enjoying the luxuries of leadership but not leadership itself. ‘I’ th’ East my pleasure lies,’ says Shakespeare’s Antony (Antony and Cleopatra, 2.3.45), and this sentiment echoes throughout his screen incarnations. Thus Antony’s crime in 1934’s Cleopatra, for which war is the price, is not any direct antagonism of Rome (as it will come to be positioned in later texts) but a failure to act. By sailing to Egypt, Antony absents himself entirely from the masculinized world and betrays Rome. ‘Has he attacked Egypt with his legions there?’ shouts Octavian to a clamouring Forum. ‘Has he brought Cleopatra back in chains? Has he done anything? Yes, he’s done one thing, and that completely! He’s sailed to Egypt with the queen and lived there ever since, with no thought of Rome!’ Later, Antony’s decision is made explicit. ‘There’s no room in Rome for Octavian and me,’ he says. Enobarbus suggests that he means Cleopatra, and Antony agrees (DeMille, 1934). Likewise, in Cleopatra (1999), Antony’s decision to go to Alexandria represents a specific rejection of the political, as he outlines in the preceding scenes. When Cleopatra asks him to join her in Egypt, it is on the condition that he breaks the concord with Octavian. ‘Have you any idea what that would mean?’ he says. ‘It would be civil war. It would tear Rome apart. I can’t do that.’ Whatever his scruples, a few scenes later his

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concern for Rome has been forgotten, and he arrives in Alexandria amidst showers of rose petals. Octavian’s response is the echo of his 1934 speech: Far be it from me to say that Mark Antony is not an honourable man, yet there he remains in the East, wallowing in the mud with the whore of the Nile, swelling her banks – caught by the same hook as Caesar. I submit to you, fellow Romans, that Mark Antony has broken the pact between us. For the good of the empire, I as co-consul, must do as Roman justice commands me  (Roddam, 1999).

To be fair, his speech has been provoked by Antony’s actions in the preceding scene (a heavily slanted version of the Donations of Alexandria), in which Antony has effectively signalled his rejection of Rome: And let it be known throughout the world that I, Marcus Antonius, renounce my false Roman marriage, and have taken as my wife Queen Cleopatra. And as a token of this great union I hereby bequeath to the throne of Ptolemy the land of Syria to the limits of its borders  (Roddam, 1999).

Augustus (Young, 2003) repeats the trope, this time allowing Augustus a flashback commentary on Antony’s selection of East over West. The narrative devotes several scenes to making the point that Antony is entirely submissive to Cleopatra’s demands, underlining her iniquity by employing the cinematic and stylistic conventions of the femme fatale in her construction. Her costumes are designed to expose the body of actress Anna Valle – she is regularly dressed in a gold bikini with a flimsy, transparent gown open at the front – and more than once she is introduced to the scene in a lingering reveal that starts at her feet and travels slowly up the length of her body to her heavily made-up face. Where she and Antony share the frame, she dominates, either by remaining standing while he lies on a bed, by lying down on top of him, by having the camera follow her movement, or by occupying the top third of the frame and relegating him to the bottom. Antony remains passive within the mise-en-scene, compliant with her dominance and even appearing,

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Figure 4 Cleopatra (Anna Valle) dominates the frame as Mark Antony (Massimo Ghini) lounges in Oriental luxury – Augustus (dir. Roger Young, 2003) at times, to enjoy it. Thus, when he protests against her demands that she marry him, ‘I would! I would! But you’re a foreign queen! Custom forbids it!’, and she counters, ‘Then the custom must change,’ it is clear who will emerge victorious from the culture-clash. He may object that ‘I could bring the entire city down on me! And the Senate!’, but we have already seen her browbeat him into an outright battle with Octavian (in a fictitious skirmish in Brundisium, the result of which is Antony’s marriage to Octavia), and so we are prepared for the wedding scene that inevitably follows her complaint. This, however, is signified (with the benefit of 50 years’ hindsight in Augustus’ voice-over) as Antony’s dereliction of his Roman duty. As the highly orientalized wedding ceremony takes place, with Antony dressed in the lush red silk robe that marks him out as Other to Octavian’s austere Roman dress, Augustus, from his position as unchallenged ruler of Rome, muses: ‘The decline of Rome would have begun

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on this very day. Mark Antony was giving away the power of the empire because of his selfish desires. He had set himself above the wellbeing of his people’ (Young, 2003). Rome (2007) is slightly different in its presentation of the same essential trope; instead of Antony making the decision to reject Rome, his proclivities cause him to be expelled from the city. This is in keeping with the shift in gender positioning outlined under Political Ineptitude: aligned with the masculine (albeit pathologically), Antony himself does not perceive his incompatibility with the public sphere, and it is left to the public sphere (here represented by Octavian) to reject him. Octavian has returned to Rome, after Antony’s violent attack on him in 2007.2 necessitated a swift exit to Campagna, and, during his absence, has achieved adulthood: from 2007.4, the role is played by 27-year-old Simon Woods. This significantly shifts the balance of power between the two men, Antony’s dominance having derived from the inequity between his status as a fully grown man and Octavian’s as a youth, rather than, as I have argued, any political or intellectual supremacy. Through a complex series of negotiations, the Triumvirate is established – including, unusually, Lepidus (who is largely disregarded by the other two men and, as such, is allowed to perform the Voice of Reason). Later, Antony’s decision to withhold a large bribe from Herod leads to a serious rupture, which is patched over by Octavian’s insistence that Antony and Octavia marry. Antony’s acquiescence, regardless of the fact that Atia clearly believes that the marriage has been arranged with her in mind as the bride, and regardless of their long-standing affair, is inadequately explained by the narrative. ‘There was no choice – your son would have it no other way,’ Antony tells Atia, who counters, not unreasonably, ‘And he is your master?’ ‘He is my political partner!’ Antony protests (2007.7), but it is not enough to convince Atia, and it certainly does not fit with what the audience knows of Antony. His political partnership was not enough to persuade him to act honourably towards Octavian in the past; it is not enough to persuade him to be faithful to Octavia (or she to him), and his consent to a marriage in which he clearly has no vested interest implies Octavian’s assumption of the position of supremacy. He may not be able to control Antony’s predilections towards lust and luxury, but he is sufficiently dominant to be able to issue commands.

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His position is reinforced in the following episode, after Mæcenas has made him aware that both Antony and Octavia have elected to continue their love affairs: Antony with Atia, Octavia with Agrippa. Octavian’s position as moral exemplar is undermined by his failure to perform paradigm masculinity, but this does not compromise his position as champion of morals. Episode 2007.8 opens with his lengthy speech to a gathering of women on his intention to enact laws strengthening the institution of marriage, which is periodically superimposed over scenes of both Antony and Octavia cheerfully engaging in their adulterous affairs. Octavian is clearly not a sympathetic character; there is little with which we can identify in his personality, and in many ways he is more like a machine than a man. However, while Shakespeare’s Caesar (Octavianus) may also have little to recommend him as a human being in Antony and Cleopatra, he is still able to perform the masculine virtues of self-restraint and self-governance, which is what ultimately allows him to defeat the moral degradation embodied in the Easternized, feminized Antony. So Rome’s Octavian may be thoroughly disagreeable, may treat the highly sympathetic Octavia and Agrippa with an imperious detachment that bears little relation to brotherly affection, but his self-restraint and governance are what allow him to speak for the masculinized Roman world and reject Antony from it. ‘You shall go east to your provinces, and you shall not come back,’ he tells Antony. Antony, predictably, rebels: ANTONY: Or else what – boy? OCTAVIAN: You shall leave this city or I will declare our alliance is broken. I shall have this sad story told in the Forum. I will have it posted in every city in Italy, and you know the people are not so liberal with their wives as you are. They will say you wear cuckold’s horns. They will say your wife betrayed you with a low born pleb on my staff. You will be a figure of fun. The proles will laugh at you in the street… [Antony begins to close in on Octavian, with a dangerous expression on his face.] OCTAVIAN: Your soldiers will mock you behind your back… [Antony grabs Octavian by the throat. Octavian remains calm.] OCTAVIAN: Go on. Strike me. See what happens. [Antony holds on for another beat, then releases him and strides out of the room.] (Rome, dir. Carl Franklin, 2007.8)

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Octavian has won – Antony makes one further, brief attempt to see Atia, which is prevented by Octavian’s guards, and the episode closes on his arrival in Alexandria. Masculinized Rome is no place for a man of Antony’s gender positioning – whether he realizes it or not. Conclusion: Iconography and Hegemony The historically mobile nature of hegemony is reflected in the different strategies employed by the texts under analysis, in order to construct hegemonic and non-hegemonic masculinity under the iconographical categories listed above. The very fact of their adaptability over time lends weight to the argument that these are not simply projections of Augustan discourse, divorced from connotative meaning and simply reproduced as part of the quasi-historiographical project of mapping the Antonian mythography onto a filmic narrative. The semantics of the toga muliebris might be lost on a twentieth- or twenty-first-century viewer, but a gauzy pink tunic and heavy kohl eyeliner on a male body performs a similar semantic function, imperfectly translated from its original rhetorical intent, but nevertheless broadly updating the language of effeminacy to fit the modern screen. This dialogue with ancient invective implies an active process of negotiation with and response to the mythographical tropes. Moreover, the treatment of Antony’s excess in his twenty-first-century narratives would seem to confirm this notion of a persistent cultural lexicon that evolves and adapts in keeping with contemporary gender paradigms. Rome’s Antony continues to display bodily excess along the lines examined above – however, audience response would seem to suggest that Antony’s excessive displays are a significant factor in viewers’ enjoyment of his character. Reviews of the series position Antony, essentially, as the charismatic villain of the piece – entertaining precisely because of his performance of unacceptable masculinity. ‘James Purefoy is still a pleasure as the libidinous Marc Antony, crude but clever and unscrupulous,’ says Alessandra Stanley of The New York Times (online, 2007), while Melanie McFarland of Seattle P-I calls him ‘an arrogant libertine who would willingly bugger the Senate with the same casual attitude as he does the help’ (online, 2007).

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‘Libidinous,’ ‘crude,’ ‘libertine’ and ‘casual attitude’ are clearly markers of excess, in line with Antony’s performance of lechery in Rome as interrogated above. However, as I have noted in Chapter 1, where Antony embodies Ciceronian invective, the feminizing rhetoric is conspicuously absent, and I have suggested that this de-feminization of the substance of incontinentia should be understood as indicative of the problematic mapping of ancient invective onto a contemporaneously relevant tropology. This is not to argue that Antony’s incontinentia is no longer a threat to the status quo – since it is explicitly shown to impact upon his ability to function within the political sphere – simply that, robbed of the implied shame of feminizing invective, the audience is no longer invited to share his mortification at his bodily excess, since the element of humiliation has been elided from the hegemonic discourse. Rome’s Antony, id-driven and unabashedly unconstrained by the mores maiorum, delights in his excesses, which permits the audience to enjoy his delight. This Antony displays excess-as-spectacle – always a key component of audience enjoyment of the historical epic – while teleologically promising, through our foreknowledge of his suicide, to contain the threat he poses. It is interesting to note that, where the inherently unstable and damaging nature of his masculinity is detected, it is framed in terms of the more recent addenda to the Antonian iconography, such as his quasi-psychopathy as referenced by Variety’s Brian Lowry when he calls him ‘brutal [and] bloodthirsty’ (online, 2007). The terms of marking Antony’s masculinity as deficient have changed, as has the audience reception of them. Where the iconography works to feminize, it is expected to evoke distaste and/or pity, and we are invited to share in Antony’s chagrin at his own failings. Bombastically exploded into spectacle, it is pathological but perversely entertaining, and we are able to enjoy his de-feminized excess while retaining a lingering sense of the sinister, not fully expressed by contemporary audiences because the terms of reference may not yet be fully understood. In other words, the new paradigm against which the twenty-first-century Antony is measured is too much of the present to be available to self-reflexivity as yet – where his masculinity transgresses, it transgresses gender norms that may not yet be fully articulated. I will explore the new paradigm in full in Chapter 6, but for now I want to note that cinema does not create ideology, it reflects ideology. I do

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not want to argue against the multiplicity of (or multiple) subjectivities that impact upon audience reception of, interrogation of and response to the Antony-icon’s performance of masculinity, but I do want to note the evidence of hegemonic masculinity in defining the boundaries of that response. Despite the mobility of gender relations throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, audience response links us back to a hegemonic undercurrent that insistently defines the idealized male for western culture. I want now to look at some of the ways in which this ideal has been envisaged in terms of the Antony-myth, and how it has been used to underscore his deficiencies.

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5 ‘Neither Wit, Nor Words, Nor Worth’:1 Antony Versus the Hegemonic Man Introduction: Identifying the Hegemonic Male Although the original semantic function of Roman-gendered invective may be lost somewhat in translation, the basic modes and tropes that inform Western paradigm gender performance – both male and female (or, to put it more contentiously, both male and non-male) – persistently and pervasively revolve around a polarized and essentialized concept of gender difference. As such, the traditions that inform incontinentia and mollitia as parameters of gender performance remain comprehensible even where the terminology and specifics do not. This is why the Augustan Antony retains his relevance in the screen age, albeit reconfigured in such a way as to make him meaningful to the socio-cultural moment. In this chapter, I want to extend my argument to investigate the function of the hegemonic man in constructing Antony’s gender deficiencies. Although this is clearly a corollary of gender-Othering imposed by Augustan invective, through its application within screen texts we begin to uncover evidence of the culturally and historically specific revisions to the Antony-myth that underpin my argument that his screen-age avatar performs a definable cultural function. In Chapter 2, I located Antony’s gender positioning within the screen depictions of his life as occupying (or seeking to occupy) a position between Bruce R Smith’s idea of the ‘not me’ and the ‘partly me’. In this chapter, I will examine the ways in which other performances of masculinity are used to comment on the screen Antony’s own deficiencies 157

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and attempt to position him on Smith’s continuum of identification/ disidentification. If Antony is the ‘partly me’, who is the ‘other mine’? Simplistically – even superficially – this role might be said to be occupied by Julius Caesar, yet Caesar himself occupies a highly complex position within Western popular culture, and the complicated relationship between his performance of Romanness and the American model of romanitas renders him unstable as an icon of hegemonic masculinity, as I will show. In fact, if the texts are unanimous in their rejection of the Antonian model of masculinity, they also without exception present at least one avatar of idealized, hegemonic masculinity, which the narrative (and often the mise-en-scene and cinematography) positions as the performance of masculinity with which the viewer ought to identify. Whether or not the viewer actually adopts the positioning offered by the text is more difficult to determine (and the positioning of James Purefoy’s performance in Rome (2005–7) and Richard Burton’s performance in Cleopatra (1963) suggest that, for all his flaws, viewers may at least recognize the screen Antony as the ‘partly me’). However, notwithstanding the difficulties in encoding a privileged reading into the film text, the narrative’s ideological alignment anticipates a reading of the hegemonic man as the ideal with which the viewer will identify. To be clear: Antony’s performance of feminized (or hyper-masculinized) masculinity is sufficient to indict him. Nevertheless, the appearance of the hegemonic man is ubiquitous to Antony’s screen incarnation and, as such, warrants interrogation. The hegemonic male presence is outlined below according to the screen text in which he appears; it should be noted that Caesar, although never a straightforward performance of hegemonic masculinity, has been included where he is present, as he is without exception relevant to Antony’s position within the text. The Antony/Caesar opposition is arguably the most complex relationship within any of the texts, for a number of reasons (not least, as argued below, Caesar’s contradictory position within Western culture), and will be explored separately to the other performances of hegemonic masculinity, which will be discussed according to the most frequently recurring tropes.

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Caesar’s Unstable Paradigm2 Considered alongside the other paradigm masculinities with which Antony’s gender performance is compared, it is clear that the figure of Caesar possesses disproportionate narrative weight. However, as Figure 5 shows, when the paradigm is invoked in Antony’s screen texts, Caesar is rarely allowed to occupy this position alone. His performance of masculinity may be the most pervasive (and, arguably, the most significant), but, as an avatar of hegemonic masculinity, Caesar is unstable at best. Why has Caesar come to occupy such a privileged position? For one thing, we must consider his relentless self-promotion in life, and the fact that his autobiographies have survived antiquity intact. For another, there is his importance to the Augustan regime in its earliest days. Maria Wyke, in Julius Caesar: A Life in Western Culture, elaborates further: [Caesar’s] biography has taken on monumental dimensions, and matured into a foundational and formative story. It has possessed an extraordinary and lasting appeal because his image has not been fixed… Even from the time of his own writing about himself, Julius Caesar’s life has been arranged, fictionalized, and sensationalized so as to become a set of canonic events and concepts whose telling reveals much more than just the minutiae of one individual’s existence. Julius Caesar was a Roman leader of flesh and blood who existed in real time. He is also a quasi-mythic protagonist in the development of Western culture (Wyke, 2007: 1).

Caesar’s quasi-mythic status, therefore, is as dependent on his reception in popular culture as his reception in popular culture is dependent on his quasi-mythic status. Royster (2003) argues that Cleopatra-in-culture is a cipher, adaptable to the needs of whichever parable in which she figures, adaptable to the mores and expectations of the culture that receives her, and the same can be said for Caesar. To quote Wyke again: Whether as a founder or destroyer, Julius Caesar’s life has become a point of reference from which to explore concerns about conquest and imperialism, revolution, dictatorship, liberty, tyranny and political assassination. Used as a model or an anti-model for warfare and statecraft, he has also been invoked

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to pose questions about more personal merits (such as audacity, risk-taking, courage and glory, leadership, good fortune and fame, even immortality) and about personal failings (such as arrogance, ambition, extravagance, lust and cruelty) (Wyke, 2007: 1).

Text

Year

Paradigm Male

Cleopatra Caesar and Cleopatra4 Serpent of the Nile Cleopatra

1934 1945 1953 1963

Cleopatra

1999

Imperium: Augustus Rome

2003 2005–7

Enobarbus3 Julius Caesar Lucilius Rufio Apollodorus Julius Caesar Olympos Julius Caesar Augustus Julius Caesar Vorenus/Pullo (acting as dyad)

Figure 5 Characters who perform paradigm masculinity Caesar-as-cipher (per Wyke) has generally been positioned as explicitly positive or explicitly negative in his cultural receptions. His screen appearances, however, tend to be more ambiguous. The reasons for this are complex and will be outlined below, and they impact on his ability to perform paradigm masculinity. Caesar’s ambiguous positioning is in large part a continuation of the complex identification/disidentification with Romanness embodied in the American psyche, and encapsulated in the concept of romanitas. The figure of Julius Caesar stands as a bridge between the Republic (as a champion of the people and a highly skilled manipulator of the Republican mode of government) and the Empire (as the progenitor of the imperial line), and therefore embodies considerable conflict in terms of romanitas. His ideological positioning is, as such, far from stable within his English-language screen texts, the overwhelming majority of which are US productions, either fully or in large part.5 The body

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of Caesar thus becomes the site of negotiation for a range of socio-political concerns surrounding empire, power and demagoguery, articulated through his relationship with Cleopatra (who, however sympathetic or otherwise her characterization, without exception performs imperialist hauteur), and, ultimately, annihilated by the actions of Brutus and his cohort of Republican idealists. This is an individualized manifestation of the more general expression of contemporaneous political concerns found in – arguably – every toga movie ever made. Numerous scholars (Wyke, 1997; Fitzgerald, 2001; Winkler, 2001; Eldridge, 2006) have positioned the sub-genre as a vehicle for the expression of collective societal anxieties too close or too contentious to be addressed directly. Winkler’s (2001) and Fitzgerald’s (2001) analyses of films such as Quo Vadis (1951), The Robe (1953) and Ben Hur (1959) – all big-budget biblical epics set in the time of Christ or the early years of Christianity – highlight analogies with contemporary or near-contemporary socio-political traumas: the rise of Nazism, the HUAC hearings and/or a more generalized anxiety about the new position of the US as a world superpower. Played out in the body of Julius Caesar, concerns about the imperializing nature of America’s economic and political status following World War II6 can be ameliorated thus: firstly, by shifting responsibility for Caesar’s corruption and movement away from democratic ideals onto Cleopatra, the imperialistic urge is made safe. Responsibility for Caesar’s rejection of the Republican ethos becomes externally imposed rather than the inevitable product of expanding power (however wellintentioned her motives may be in encouraging him to follow her autocratic model), and therefore resistible. Secondly, Julius-Caesar-asavatar is conveniently containable: history has already spoken, and his imperial designs are destined to be eliminated by the Ides of March. In much the same way that the body of Antony is ideal for interrogating concerns about deficient masculinity, because his performance of his deficiencies will be contained and castigated by his death, so the same mechanism is effected by using Caesar to manifest notions of imperial corruption. Finally, and related to the second point, a teleological reading of Julius Caesar’s motivations during his lifetime is informed by his position as progenitor of the imperial line (as noted above). Caesar must therefore be understood as a figure predisposed towards rejection of

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the Republican ideal (by virtue of the fact that history has shown him – albeit obliquely – to be such). His downfall and Rome’s slide from glorious Republic into vice-ridden, deviant empire thus becomes the parable of one good, but flawed, man corrupted by circumstance and the sensual temptations of Imperialism as manifested by Cleopatra. Framed as such, the loss of the utopian ideals of Republicanism is not only avoidable (by failing to mimic Caesar’s mistakes), but also explicitly rejected, contained and made safe. That said, as noted above, Caesar occupies a particularly recognizable and privileged position in western culture. As such, although critical to understanding his reception in these screen texts, it would be simplistic to regard him as essentially an avatar of contemporaneous socio-political concerns. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, where the imperial/ democratic binary is invoked within any screen text, the narrative tends to follow the standard tropology of the ‘toga movie’ (Fitzgerald, 2001: 37) and oppose the might and decadence of Imperial Rome against the heroic, non-Roman Other, standing in for an idealized American republic. By virtue of its pre-Christian setting, the Caesarian narrative allows for greater fluidity of identification. Cleopatra, for example, is most often the axis around which the narrative revolves, and her positioning, although far from stable, very often allows for considerable identification and/or sympathy; however, she also performs the non-Western Other and imperialist autocracy, serving to corral the viewer into an uneasy identification with Rome. This provides a partial explanation as to why paradigm masculinity is overwhelmingly embodied in a Roman character:7 Egypt, with all its luxury and decadence, represents the Orientalized ‘not me’ by virtue of its affiliation with monarchical autocracy, while Rome, since it has not yet descended into the depravity of empire, is recuperated somewhat along the axis of identification. It is therefore able to represent a troubling ‘partly me’ in the body of Caesar and, to an extent, Antony, and a more convincing ‘other mine’ through its embodied performance of paradigm masculinity. The second reason, as I will explore below, is Caesar’s function as one half of the Caesar/Antony dyad. Caesar’s quasi-hegemonic masculinity (at least as compared to Antony’s), and his function within the gender paradigm interrogated in these texts, goes some way towards moderating

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his ideological instability and stabilizing his positioning within the semiological construct that is Rome On Screen. The Antony/Caesar Dyad The dyadic relationship is manifested in three key ways: • The division of the narrative in such a way as to emphasize the importance of Caesar to the historical record, and to de-emphasize Antony’s contribution • The configuration of Caesar as ‘father’ and concomitant designation of the Caesar/Antony dyad as a pseudo-Oedipal drama • The non-diegetic ‘baggage’ brought to the text by casting decisions vis-à-vis Caesar and Antony. (Kelly, 2010) Narrative Division Historically, the affair between Cleopatra and Caesar lasted from around the autumn of 48 bce until the Ides of March 44 bce, while the affair between Cleopatra and Antonius began in mid-41 bce and lasted until Antonius’ death in August 30 bce. Yet, where both liaisons are featured on screen, the text affords equal run-time to both.8 This narrative division has the effect of covertly privileging Caesar’s position within the text: ‘privileging’ in that allotting equal or greater screen time to cover a period of three and a half years versus a period of a little over 11 years clearly affords both greater significance to and examination of the events of the final years of Caesar’s life (while necessarily rigorously condensing and abridging the final years of Antonius’); ‘covertly’ in that, by all available diegetic markers, the abridgement is denied. The maturation of Caesarion is a case in point: where his conception and birth are featured in the narrative (Cleopatra, 1963; Cleopatra, 1999; Rome, 2005–7), his screen age functions as a temporal cue for the audience, acting as a marker of elapsed diegetic time. Historically, Caesarion was 17 years old at the time of his death; however, screen Caesarions are generally portrayed as young children at the close of the narrative and none are older than ten years when

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their mother dies. As such, the narrative specifically seeks to apportion a shorter diegetic length to Antony and Cleopatra’s affair, and to ensure that it is read as such. Robert Rosenstone, in Revisioning History: Film and the Construction of a New Past, argues for a tolerant approach to the abridgement required during the adaptation of an historical narrative to screen (or, indeed, any process of historiographical engagement – 1995: 208), and this is unquestionably a valid point. In The Historical Film: Looking at the Past in a Postliterate Age, he identifies a strategy for constructive engagement with what he sees as the inevitable process of ‘invention’ in narrativizing history on film, distinguishing between ‘false invention’ (which ‘ignores the discourse of history’) and ‘true invention’ (which ‘engages the discourse of history’). He further describes four key means by which a film might utilize ‘true invention’ – alteration, compression, invention and metaphor. He explains: Film, with its need for a specific image, cannot make general statements about revolution or progress. Instead, film must summarize, synthesize, generalize, symbolize – in images. The best we can hope for is that historical data on film will be summarized with inventions and images that are apposite. Filmic generalizations will have to come through various techniques of condensation, synthesis, and symbolization (2001: 62).

Within this theoretical framework, it is clearly more difficult to interpret Antony’s disproportionate screen time as ‘innocent’ narrative expediency. The abridgement of his affair with Cleopatra, while undoubtedly indicative of compression and summarization, does not constitute engagement with the discourse of history; rather, it distorts history and insists upon an erroneous reading of the historical record (since on-screen cues demand that the viewer follow a distorted historical timeline). There is no sense of ‘summariz[ation], synthesiz[ation], generaliz[ation], symboliz[ation]’ – the temporal imbalance in Antony’s and Caesar’s affairs with Cleopatra is simply ignored. As Harriet Margolis argues in her discussion of screen adaptations of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: ‘The film versions should not be seen as less interesting than Shelley’s original just because they have been simplified for cinematic purposes; on the contrary, the cinematic

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omissions, deletions, and alterations may help students to understand Shelley’s work more fully’ (1990: 162). The same is clearly true of the ‘omissions, deletions, and alterations’ to the Cleopatra narrative: by discerning where the narrative chooses to edit the historical record, we can learn a great deal about the relative value afforded to the characters. By itself (in the absence of Caesar, in other words) the abridgement of the relationship between Antony and Cleopatra is, arguably, less significant, since, as I argue below, sexual union with Cleopatra is a key marker of relative masculinity within these texts. It follows, therefore, that where there is no comparative affair, there is no framework within which to judge competitive standards of masculinity within these terms. However, the rare narrative that excludes the Caesar/Cleopatra alliance (and to date, only Serpent of the Nile has done so) does not exhibit any concomitant examination of Antony’s political achievements, despite the additional screen-time afforded to his character (and, in fact, arguably offers a greater indictment of his gender performance through the discourse of sexual-union-as-marker-of-masculinity – see below). Moreover, by explicitly affording Caesar equal or greater diegetic time, the narrative acknowledges this paradigm – and rejects its corollary, which is that Antony’s claim to the masculinity marked by heterosexual union is potentially greater than Caesar’s. This is, as I now want to argue, heavily informed by the quasi-Oedipal trajectory imposed on Antony’s association with Caesar. Caesar-as-Father The configuration of the association between Caesar and Antony as a putative father-son relationship informs an Oedipal dynamic which is critical to the configuration of Antony’s narrative arc, and which considerably mitigates the unstable ideological ground that Caesar occupies. The association between fatherhood and authority is so embedded into hegemonic discourse as to scarcely require iteration: it is, of course, the rhetoric of fatherhood that etymologically informs patriarchy, and thus the very structures interrogated by gender theory. Concomitantly, the connection of fatherhood to hegemonic masculinity is longstanding, and, regardless of any repositioning of signifiers of the hegemonic, shows no signs of yielding any of its semiological significance. Indeed, van Hoven

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and Hörschelmann (2005), in Spaces of Masculinities, describe it as ‘one of the key signifiers of masculinity’. This is achieved through an intimate connection with the concept of virility, a word that shares an etymological root with virtue, and which is derived from the Latin word vir, meaning manliness. According to Alphonso Longis, in Foreign Bodies: ‘The virile body figures as the incarnation of law, reason, power, direction, and directives, not because of the use-value of the specifically male nervous circuitry and musculature, but because of its force as the incarnate sign of civilization’ (1994: 130). Kelly Oliver concurs. ‘The virile body becomes a representative of control and power’, she says in Family Values: Subjects Between Culture and Nature: It is an antibody insofar as its virility defies the uncontrollable passions and flows of the body. It is the body that represents the overcoming of boy. The virile body is the symbol of manliness; manliness is associated with culture; culture is associated with overcoming the body (Oliver, 1997: 128).

In semiological terms, therefore, father = virile = control; each of the three terms can, essentially, be used interchangeably in metaphorically inscribing authority. To configure Caesar as putative father to Antony, then, not only positions Antony as less virile (and, by extension, less manly), but also clearly ascribes both metaphorical and, by extension, actual authority over Antony-as-son to Caesar-as-father. Caesar and Cleopatra (1945) is, of course, the most overt example of Caesar-as-father, both in the sense that he stands in for the physical figure of the childlike Cleopatra’s absent parent, and in the sense that he arguably stands in for western civilization’s benevolent parenting of the childlike Oriental world. Indeed, George Bernard Shaw, who wrote the original play (first performed in 1898) and adapted his work into the screenplay for the movie, conceived of the narrative as a reaction to the romanticism of Shakespeare’s Cleopatra, and was adamant that any hint of a sexual relationship between her and Caesar be absent from the text (Hughes-Hallett, 1990: 252–253). Antony figures in the diegesis only in the wistful reminiscences of Cleopatra, who remembers him from Gabinius’ restoration of her father to the throne in 55 bce, and in Caesar’s parting promise to send him to her in Alexandria as a reward for

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being a good, obedient subject and learning to submit to the authority of the civilized, adult West. Being a British (rather than US) production, the socio-political dynamics informing both the play’s and the film’s ideological positioning are less informed by the Republican/imperial binary than the other texts under analysis, which allows for a less ambiguous reading of the figure of Caesar. This anomalous ideological positioning has the effect of underscoring the notion of Caesar-as-father, not only as regards Cleopatra-as-child, but also as regards Antony. Antony is as subject to Caesar’s authority as is Cleopatra: as Caesar leaves Alexandria in the final scene, he appeases a sulking Cleopatra by promising to send her ‘a beautiful present from Rome’ in the shape of Antony (Pascal, 1945). We have earlier been invited to share Caesar’s disapproval of Antony’s dissolute lifestyle – more obviously stated in the play’s directions that Caesar be ‘touched by her innocence of the beautiful young man’s character’ (Shaw, Act 2, p 128), but manifest in both the play’s and the film’s subsequent dialogue. ‘My poor child!’ cries Caesar (Act 2, p 128), distressed by her infatuation with such a scoundrel. The effect is to emphasize further the disparity in the two men’s positions: Antony, though never seen in the text, is the errant miscreant, more closely affiliated with Cleopatra-as-child than Caesar-as-adult. This is, moreover, the mechanism that underscores the hegemonic authority of Caesar-as-father: by configuring Antony as, essentially, a misbehaving boy, Caesar’s correct performance of adult masculinity (and control over the adult, virile male body) is made explicit. It is a similar trope to that which informs the power dynamics of the scene in Cleopatra (1963), discussed in the previous chapter under Alcohol, in which Cleopatra’s authority is inscribed by Antony’s refusal to adopt the masculine position of authority. In his abdication of responsibility, Antony cedes the masculine by default to whomever is prepared to perform adulthood on his behalf. Royster (2003) discusses Caesar’s apparent knowledge of Antony and Cleopatra’s later career ‘gallivanting around Rome and Egypt decadently’ as a critical component in the scene’s reinforcement of Cleopatra’s girlishness: It is Cleopatra’s open expression of admiration for Antony, her ignorance of the ways of the world and the gap between this innocence and the woman

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that she will become that sets up the titillation of the scene. To participate in this adventure, we must maintain the illusion of Cleopatra’s sexual innocence (Royster, 2003: 123).

Not only that, but we must also infer Antony’s divergence from Caesar, and his conflation with Cleopatra. Caesar and Cleopatra represents the most insistent delineation of Caesar-as-father, yet it is not unusual to find his relationship with Antony configured in this way. Cleopatra (1963) and Cleopatra (1999) explicitly position the dynamic as quasi-Oedipal; Rome (2005–7) is more ambiguous but still available to a reading under these terms. I will discuss these texts in greater detail below, but first I want to examine the presentation and configuration of Caesar as Father within the texts more generally. At the most oblique level, Caesar is established as a quasi-paternal figure through the metaphorical appeal to a gendered construction of statesmanship, and this configuration is repeatedly restated throughout the text, generally from his initial appearance. Imperium: Augustus (2003), for example, establishes Caesar as a kind of Republican icon from his first mention in the narrative (where Livia tells a bucolic Octavian, freshly arrived from the countryside and completely ignorant of Roman politics, that Caesar is the enemy of the nobles), and then repeatedly contrasts him with the bloodthirsty, self-serving behaviour of Mark Antony. Caesar first appears on screen digging fortifications with his men, and is obliged to demur the high praise of the soldiers: ‘I’m not a god. Just a general, trying to save the lives of his men’ (Young, 2003). Antony, on the other hand, arrives on screen moments after the audience is provided with a précis of his incompetence. Informed by Lucius Tutillius that Rome is not safe after dark, Octavian expresses confusion: ‘Doesn’t Mark Antony guard the city? He’s consul of Rome.’ The words are no sooner spoken than Antony arrives, unannounced, to sneer at Caesar’s policy of clemency: ‘The civil war is not yet over. And won’t be, until Caesar’s enemies are dead. You’d better tell Uncle Julius to kill a few enemies before they kill him.’ As he rides off, Octavian asks: ‘Who was that?’ Tutillius sums up this particular narrative’s conception of Mark Antony in his answer: ‘That was Mark Antony. You’re lucky you still have your head’ (Edel, 2002).

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Likewise, the Caesars of 1963’s Cleopatra and 1999’s Cleopatra, however problematically they may skirt the boundaries of imperialism at times, repeatedly articulate the welfare of the Roman state and people as their first priority. These texts, however, go a step further and employ a more literal configuration of Caesar-as-father, in which Antony is positioned as the putative son.9 Both employ a twofold mechanism in establishing the dynamic: prior to the assassination, Antony’s dialogue is used to bind him to Caesar in explicitly or implicitly filial terms; postassassination, he is allowed to express the son’s frustration (and envy) as he fails to live up to the father’s glory. Thus, the first act of Cleopatra (1963) has Cicero call Antony ‘a part of Caesar’ (Mankiewicz, 1963), while in Cleopatra (1999), when Cleopatra asks if he distrusts Caesar, Antony replies: ‘Me? No. I love him. He is greatness itself ’ (Roddam, 1999). Later in the film, a conversation between Antony and Cleopatra anticipates the Oedipal drama that informs the second act. ‘I’ve fought hundreds of men in my time, but I must say, your presence disarms me,’ he tells her as they relax at Caesar’s villa. ‘I envy Caesar’ (Roddam, 1999). This envy is important for several reasons. In the first place, it establishes a critical tension within the father/son dynamic and situates that tension in the body of the father’s mistress by configuring her as the reward for his performance of masculinity in line with the hegemonic ideal: as Antony notes, in the scene above, Caesar is ‘Beloved of the gods, to have [Cleopatra] as a prize’ (Roddam, 1999). The corollary of this is that the body of Cleopatra becomes a marker of gender performance and relative power – what Antony covets, Caesar possesses – and this theme is underscored as the text progresses and the second act examines the fact of Antony’s love for her. After Caesar’s death, Antony-as-son must establish his right to succeed his putative father, both as a political leader and as Cleopatra’s lover. Under the paradigm established above, his failure at the former ought to preclude him from the latter, and Cleopatra’s failure or refusal to recognize this underscores her own tragic arc. Indeed, so insistent and pronounced is the discourse that both texts have Antony acknowledge himself the gulf between his and Caesar’s performance of masculinity, and Cleopatra’s expected response. From Cleopatra (1963):

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ANTONY: Be braver than the bravest, wiser than the wisest, stronger than the strongest, still no Caesar! Do what you will, Caesar’s done it first and done it better, ruled better, loved better, fought better! Run where you will as fast as you can, you can’t get out! There’s no way out! The shadow of Caesar will cover you and cover the universe for all of time.

‘Where’s Antony?’ he asks as she watches him levelly. ‘…One step behind Caesar… In the shadow of Caesar. Tell me – tell me how many have loved you since him? One? Ten? Anyone? No one? Have they kissed you with Caesar’s lips, touched you with his hands?’ Cleopatra’s reply underlines the Oedipal tension manifest in his words: ‘You come here, then, running over with wine and self-pity, to conquer Caesar?’ (Mankiewicz, 1963). Likewise, in Cleopatra (1999): ANTONY: Grovel? I grovel before no man! And no woman! CLEOPATRA: Then be strong! Be like Caesar! ANTONY: I am not Caesar! CLEOPATRA: No. You’re not. ANTONY: Do you feel this beating heart? That’s life you feel! Not a dead king, not a memory, that’s me! Mark Antony. Here with you. Right now. (Roddam, 1999)

He tries to kiss her, and Cleopatra snaps: ‘I’m not your sport, general! Now go away!’ His response is to smash the bust of Caesar that rests beside her bed and passionately embrace her. The trajectory is Oedipal only inasmuch as it represents a victory over the father through the conquest of the father’s sexual property (the text does not support an attempt to read Cleopatra as mother-figure); however, it is key to understanding the authority of Caesar over Antony, and Antony’s failure to perform masculinity to the standard set by his father-figure. An intriguing exception is Julius Caesar (2002), which invokes an alternative dynamic by casting Caesar and Antony with actors of the same age. Although this has the effect of destabilizing the paradigm, it is useful in terms of exposing the mechanisms of the Oedipal trajectory as it exists elsewhere, since it is conspicuously absent here. The Caesar/Antony relationship exhibits many of the standard tropes (made most explicit

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in the scenes at Alesia, in which Caesar’s visionary leadership is sharply contrasted with Antony’s defeatism; and where Caesar is obliged to lead a contingent of reinforcements to Antony’s rescue in battle), yet, crucially, the narrative is unable to sustain a father-son dynamic, due to the similarity in ages of the two actors (Jeremy Sisto, playing Caesar, was 28 years old at the time of filming; as was Jay Roden­, playing Antony). Sisto plays Caesar from the age of 18 until his death at 56, which accounts for the decision to cast a younger actor in the role; however, the corollary is that one of the most substantial signifiers of authority in the Caesar/Antony paradigm is absent – indeed, Roden is actually slightly older than Sisto. Consequently, although it is possible to perceive in the narrative a consistent effort to derogate power from Antony, the unusual casting decision allows Roden to embody in his Antony a considerable resistance to form and renders a standard reading extremely problematic. As this is Caesar’s story, Antony’s greatest successes, which occur post44 bce, are of course absent. He is, however, given an interesting (and formatively divergent) oratorical coup: on Antony’s return from Gaul (historically as tribune-elect, in order to bolster Caesar’s position in an increasingly hostile Senate; textually without defined political status), Antony faces off against Cato in the Senate House. Cato’s positioning in the text – the honourable republican old guard, defending the institutions that the First Triumvirate is trying to overthrow – problematizes even Caesar’s textual authority. Indeed, the narrative is so adroit in its handling of the complex oppositional politics of the late Republic that neither Cato nor Caesar escape unchallenged by the film, and the motives of both are called into question. As such, the following sequence is rendered extremely complicated vis-à-vis Antony’s position: ANTONY: Caesar has done more for Rome than any other general in its history. And how do you respond? You strip him of his consulship, in his absence, without any explanation. He’s more than doubled the size of Rome in the last eight years, and what do you ask him to do? Lay down his arms. It is not Caesar who is the criminal. It is this Senate! CATO: This Senate represents the people of Rome! ANTONY: This Senate represents its own interests!

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CATO: [Closes in on Antony so that his face is directly in front of Antony’s] Sulla said almost the very same thing. ANTONY: If he said it he was right. But the difference between Sulla and Caesar is, the people feared Sulla – but Caesar, they love. CATO: You know nothing of the people’s feelings! ANTONY: You’re right – I don’t. Let me ask them. [He walks to the Senate doors and opens them. The assembled Senators get up to follow him as he walks out and to the rostra, which is directly outside.] ANTONY: People of Rome! I come to you with a question from Caesar. He needs to know what you want so he can better serve your needs. The Senate says they represent the people, but the Senate wants Caesar to lay down his arms and return to Rome as a man, not as a soldier. And when he arrives, the Senate will find him guilty of crimes against the state. Caesar’s crime is spending eight years in battle outside of Rome, with none of the comforts we all take for granted and with daily threat to his life – why? So he can bring wealth to the Roman people. Temples, libraries, holidays and games are all funded by Caesar’s levies in Gaul – yet what do they think in the Senate? They think he’s doing this for personal gain. I ask you: if he’s doing it for private gain, why does he stay in Gaul? Why does he live in a tent? I know why he does it. He does it so we Romans can live well. [Cutaway to the steps of the Senate, where Pompey and Cassius confer quietly.] CASSIUS: What are you going to do about this? [Pompey holds up a hand to quiet him.] [Cut back to Antony.] ANTONY: Whatever these men might think – some of whom have never been up on a horse’s back… [Laughter from the crowd] …I have never known a man tougher on the enemies of Rome, nor gentler to its friends. When I call myself a Roman, the thing that makes me most proud is to share that title with one other man: a man whom it has been my privilege to fight beside, a man who has shown time and again that he loves his own life less than he loves yours. His name is Caius Julius Caesar! [The crowd cheers wildly, shouting Caesar’s name. Antony joins in with them. Some of the crowd begin to ransack the nearby stalls for vegetables

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that they can throw at the Senators, who retreat into the Senate House and bolt the doors.] (Edel, 2002)

Rousing as Antony’s speech may have been, the non-diegetic music (strings in a minor key) makes it impossible for the viewer to align wholeheartedly with him, as does the bombardment of the senators with fruit and vegetables. By this point in the narrative, Caesar, who was originally established as the family man fighting for his principles, has undoubtedly been corrupted by the power he has achieved; it is possible, in fact, to read the narrative as an exposition of precisely that. Cato’s later suicide is a case in point: as his son weeps outside his room, Cato kneels in front of a window, framed by the ethereal morning light, and, with his back to the camera, falls on his sword. The sequence is both deeply poignant and visually very beautiful, stressing the positioning of Cato himself as a kind of martyr of the old Republic. The dialogue between Caesar, arriving victorious at Cato’s Utica fortress, and Cato’s son Marcus underlines the point. As Caesar enters the room, his skin tone – perhaps an effect of the ageing make-up designed to turn the 28-year-old Sisto into the 54-year-old Caesar, perhaps deliberately underscoring his inner corruption – is grey, almost bleached, in sharp contrast to Marcus and, remarkably, the newly dead Cato. He walks around the straw-mat on which Cato died: CAESAR: We’ll bury him with honours. MARCUS: I’ll bury him myself. CAESAR: Let the state celebrate his life. MARCUS: Which state? Rome? The Rome of Caesar? To accept your honours would defile my name. And on behalf of my father and my family, I decline. Now I’m asking you to leave this room. (Edel, 2002)

It is within this context that Antony’s earlier speech must be placed, which would seem to represent a bridge of sorts between the Antony that was just too feminized to be politically effective, and the twenty-first-century Antony that is by nature corrupt. The earlier tropes on display – Antony is

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introduced as a man ‘running from his debtors in Rome’; Antony is surprised and/or outwitted in battle, obliging Caesar to come to his rescue – are met with a political aptitude that is not quite pointed in the direction of the common good. Antony himself is a relatively minor character in Julius Caesar, and perhaps his insignificance to the narrative, in which he is for once without function, is what allows him to resist his gendered positioning. Julius Caesar is, however, unique among these texts in its construction of the Caesar/Antony relationship. Elsewhere, the Oedipal re-configuration is critical in establishing and interrogating the hegemonic paradigm. Caesar’s performance of biological fatherhood, in keeping with his unstable affiliation with the hegemonic paradigm, is often ambiguous, but the fact of positioning him as father is sufficient, in the first instance, to inscribe a paradigm of virility to which Antony, as ever, fails to rise. The complicated semantics of performing Father will be unpacked in detail in Chapter 6 as I discuss their relation to Antony’s sexual excess, but for now I want to posit the semantic link between father and virile, and to argue that the repercussions of this association in configuring Caesar’s authority vis-à-vis Antony’s serve once again to emphasize the latter’s relative inability to perform hegemonic masculinity. Casting Caesar and Antony I have examined the means by which Caesar’s authority is configured diegetically, by equalizing (or appearing to equalize) the length of his and Antony’s affairs with Cleopatra, and by positioning Caesar as Antony’s father-figure. I want now to look at the ways in which this authority is configured non-diegetically, through the ideological and connotative potential of the casting process, particularly with regards to its impact on the position of the character within the screen text, and its capacity to guide the audience’s reading of the narrative and its key players. While it is true that casting decisions regarding the actors embodying Caesar and Antony (outlined in Figure 6) are, at the most basic level, reflective of the historical disparity in both men’s ages (Caesar was born in 100 bce, Antonius in c.83 bce), such a simplistic reading is undermined by Dyer’s notion of the ‘structured polysemy of the star’s image’ (1994: 143) – the ways in which a star’s ‘persona’ is mobilized

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Text10

Year

Caesar

Antony

Cleopatra Caesar and Cleopatra Serpent of the Nile Cleopatra Cleopatra Julius Caesar Imperium: Augustus Rome

1934 1945 1953 1963 1999 2002 2003 2005–7

Warren William Claude Rains (Not featured) Rex Harrison Timothy Dalton Jeremy Sisto Gerard Klein Ciarán Hinds

Henry Wilcoxon (Not featured) Raymond Burr Richard Burton Billy Zane Jay Roden Massimo Ghini James Purefoy

Figure 6 Actors playing Caesar and Antony to convey non-diegetic information about character. In Film Acting and Independent Cinema, Andrew Higson discusses Hollywood’s enduring efforts to cultivate persona ‘as a means of achieving an almost-seamless coincidence of actor/persona and character (or narrative role)’ (1986: 156), a signifying strategy that he calls casting to ‘type’. ‘Casting on the basis of “type” is itself at least a twofold concept,’ he says: First, there is the question of the physical look of the actor, in terms of facial and corporeal characteristics as more or less culturally coded signs (and to this we may add the vocal sound of the actor). Secondly, although clearly the first feeds into the second, then the question of persona, which brings into play such ambiguous concepts as charisma, personality, presence, aura, etc. In these senses, recognition of type involves a signification of the actor as always already an ideological construction: ‘look’ and ‘persona’ function as signs of both interiority and social status, establishing the actor as a relatively complex social and psychological type, a complexity which is brought into play in the narrative development of the film (Higson, 1986: 156).

This has clear implications for the relative positioning of Antony and Caesar within the narrative. Higson identifies the body and the face of the actor as ‘culturally coded signs’, and links this cultural coding to a discourse of ‘interiority’, thereby drawing attention to the privileging of

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surface aesthetics as an ideological signifier in the primarily visual linguistics of screen semiology. To say that movie stars are valued for their aesthetic appeal is scarcely novel, but it does signpost the differential discourses applied to Caesar and Antony through the casting process. In the first place, there is a cultural/financial discourse invoked through the differential imperatives that inform the casting of both characters, as I will discuss. However, this leads into and underpins a more insidious good-looks:intelligence binary (arguably a cornerstone of Western sociocultural semantics at large and certainly a familiar trope in mainstream cinema), which might pass largely unnoticed were it not explicitly flagged as relevant in relation to the first point. That is to say that by insisting on Antony’s aesthetic appeal, explicitly invoked by the casting decisions, we are inescapably reminded of the cultural prestige underpinning the casting of Caesar. Consider the actors involved. Discounting Gerard Klein (as Caesar is a relatively minor character in Imperium: Augustus) and Jeremy Sisto (for the opposite reason: Caesar is the eponymous character, which considerably alters the narrative dynamics and the casting imperatives), the actors playing Caesar are high-profile names, with a recognizable corpus of screen work at the time of casting. Most have appeared as the romantic lead at some point in their career;11 however, by the time they are cast as Caesar, they are primarily known for character roles in quality, prestige productions, and may be closely identified with a key iconic role (Dalton as Bond; Rains as the Invisible Man). In Film Stars: Hollywood and Beyond, Philip Drake argues that ‘most filmgoers’ choices about what to watch revolve around stars, their image and their reputation’ (2004: 76). He continues: The financing and distribution of most films directly depend on the involvement of stars and their economy of signification. The commercial strategy of Hollywood therefore requires that a star performance is recognizable to an audience. The circulation of performance signs is central to the semiotic and financial economy of narrative, establishing a set of expectations for an audience prior to the film (in the film trailer, for instance). Every performance therefore retains traces of earlier roles, histories that are re-mobilized in new textual and cultural contexts. In fact this is actually an economic condition

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of stardom, which relies on the continuing circulation and accretion of the star image (Drake, 2004: 77).

If we consider the ‘traces of earlier roles’ invoked in the casting of Caesar and Antony, we can see that there are, essentially, two imperatives informing the process: casting for prestige – inasmuch as the performers selected to play Caesar evidence an attempt to invoke the authority afforded to the actor through the audience’s knowledge of his off-screen ‘persona’ – and also casting as indicator of diegetic hierarchy – inasmuch as the casting of younger actors with greater contemporary visibility and aesthetic appeal is designed to usurp Caesar as romantic lead. At the most basic level, Caesar is cast for the reviews, Antony for the box office. This privileging of Antony as romantic lead might appear to derogate Caesar’s importance within the text, but, in fact, the reverse is true. As I have argued, the off-screen visibility of the actors playing Caesar goes some way towards reclaiming his authority on screen (and indicating his narrative importance), but, more than that, Antony’s very physical attractiveness, within this binary, acts against him. By specifically seeking to position him as an object of desire, the text invokes the discourse of commodification on the grounds of aesthetics, which serves to feminize him in a number of ways. Firstly, it allows the text to foreground his physical features as the primary source of his appeal: each narrative repeatedly emphasizes his attractiveness to members of the opposite sex, and features instances of his preoccupation with matters of physical appearance; Cleopatra (1963), for instance, in a neat reversal of the trope, has Antony bathing in asses’ milk. Secondly, it aligns him with Mulvey’s notion of the gaze – the female ‘to-be-looked-at-ness’ (2009:19), in which she is spectacularized as the passive object of erotic desire. This feeds into the third and final point, which is that where Caesar is cast for prestige and Antony for attractiveness, this attracts a slightly vacuous subtext that derogates Antony’s authority on the grounds that his primary value is aesthetic, while Caesar’s is built upon something more substantive. Clearly, it would be overly simplistic to equate physical attractiveness directly with a lack of intelligence; however, this semantic link is persistent within socio-cultural gender discourse (see, for example, Schipper, 2006), and devolves the two factors into a mutually exclusive binary that

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opposes the aesthetic against the cerebral. Caesar is attractive, certainly, but his diegetic textual value is not dependent on his attractiveness; rather, the narrative prioritizes his intellectual capabilities, in keeping with the boundaries of hegemonic masculinity (which cannot be eroded by the feminine business of ‘to-be-looked-at-ness’). The derogation of Antony’s intelligence is an aspect of the feminization process, certainly, but, by casting him from a pool of actors whose box-office value is in large part predicated on their physical attractiveness, the text foregrounds attractiveness as the primary source of his appeal, and Caesar, cast for his non-diegetic cachet, is afforded a position of semantic superiority before the opening credits roll. Burton as Antony: The Conjunction of Screen and Life The case of Richard Burton’s Antony, however, is particularly interesting. On the one hand, his casting broadly follows the paradigm outlined above: at the age of 37 (to Rex Harrison’s 52), and with a contemporary screen presence as the romantic lead in a number of recent Hollywood movies, including two historical epics (The Robe, 1953; Alexander the Great, 1956), his star persona – in terms of the ‘traces of earlier roles’ at least – accords with the typical formula for casting Caesar and Antony. Aestheticized as the romantic lead – by virtue of his screen visibility, his conventional attractiveness and audience expectation – he is thus objectified as the object of the gaze (and, as I will discuss below, given no opportunity to reclaim the masculine position through ‘manly’ activity). Yet Burton’s star image also – unusually – embodies considerable resistance to type. He is, for example, at least as entitled as Harrison to claim prestige casting: Burton was a theatrical veteran and noted Shakespearean actor, and continued to intersperse screen work with critically acclaimed theatrical productions (indeed, he had just finished a successful Broadway production of Camelot when he was cast in Cleopatra). Moreover, director Joseph Mankiewicz’s desire to cast him as Antony was apparently rooted in his belief that Burton’s ability as an actor could invest a necessary level of gravitas to the screen character. ‘Mankiewicz felt compelled, as the renowned screenwriter he was,’ says Hollis Alpert in his biography of Burton, ‘to measure up to such illustrious predecessors as Shakespeare and Shaw, both of whom dramatized the story

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of the Queen of the Nile and her relationships with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony. He wanted actors who would be able to handle the rounded characters he was creating. Soon enough, this need led to Rex Harrison for Caesar and to Richard Burton for Antony’ (1987: 97). The studio, notes Alpert, initially demurred due to ‘Burton’s poor box-office record’ (1987: 97). Clearly, then, the Caesar/prestige:Antony/box-office paradigm cannot be wholly sustained in the case of Burton-as-Antony. We might therefore expect that the non-diegetic resistance embodied in his star persona ought to permit a partial re-balancing of the relative authority afforded to the Caesar/Antony dyad. It fails to do so for two reasons. Firstly, Burton’s star persona is clearly more than simply a summation of his previous roles: Dyer notes that, ‘A star image is made out of media texts that can be grouped together as promotion, publicity, films and commentaries/ criticism’ (1994: 68), and Burton’s off-screen life provided much fodder for gossip columnists. Consequently, his image was heavily informed by press reports of his legendary heavy drinking and his on-set womanizing: Alpert notes that, from his earliest days in Hollywood, ‘word about his off-screen behavior was spreading in veiled references in the gossip columns and also by word of mouth’ (1987: 61). He quotes Pamela Mason, wife of the actor James Mason, with whom Burton and his first wife Sybil were friendly: ‘Certainly all Hollywood was observing [him]. People made wisecracks like “for this guy, the women bring their own mattresses” ’ (1987: 62). During the New York run of Camelot, Burton’s dressing room was known as ‘Burton’s Bar’, and New York Times reporter Barbara Gelb wrote of him: ‘He drinks more or less steadily, and has now reached Phase 2: Charming-and-Witty (the characterization is his own; Phase 1 is Warm-and-Cozy; Phase 3 is as yet unsuspected, let alone defined)’ (in Alpert, 1987: 96). In short, Burton’s star image was clearly informed by the same excessive, uncontainable behaviour used to construct Antony-on-screen, allowing both for the body of Burton to be mapped convincingly onto Antony and, crucially, the body of Antony to be mapped onto Burton. This goes some considerable way towards undermining the prestige/authority discourse afforded by Burton’s distinguished body of preceding work. This Burton/Antony mapping is, of course, only intensified by the popular cultural positioning of his affair with Elizabeth Taylor. Moreover, the

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terms in which the affair is configured are revealing. In The ‘True Love’ of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, Suzanne Leonard calls their relationship itself ‘performative’, and describes the positive feedback loop that informs its inscription in the popular consciousness: The presence of their supposedly unfettered passion relied heavily on the crossover between Taylor and Burton’s real life and their onscreen appearance as Marc [sic] Antony and Cleopatra, since the real-life lovers were playing a world-renowned couple whose affair had ostensibly changed the course of history. The two relationships existed in a dialectical relation to one another: Taylor and Burton lent verisimilitude to the historical romance; likewise, Antony and Cleopatra’s fated relation gave credence to the affair between the two stars (Leonard, 2010: 78).

Clearly, it is impossible to determine the extent to which Antony-onscreen might have been mapped onto Burton in the absence of the scandal and publicity that surrounded the Taylor/Burton affair (although I would suggest that, given the overlap between Antony-on-screen and Burton’s star image, a degree of conflation was likely in any case), but Leonard’s idea of the ‘dialectical relation’ between Burton/Taylor and Antony/Cleopatra serves to entrench the fusion of Burton-as-Antony in the popular consciousness. Note the terminology employed in contemporary reportage: Taylor is reified as a modern-day Cleopatra, enacting gender reversal upon the object of her affections by virtue of her masculinized pursuit of him. Dorothy Kilgallen, for example, writing for the Montreal Gazette, frames the affair in line with the standard trope of the femme fatale bewitching the helpless male with her charms. Quoting ‘one of Richard Burton’s friends in Rome’, she writes: Of course, at first all of us were betting that Dickie would have his romantic fling with Elizabeth and then go back to his wife as he’s done before, but now the odds have changed. Dickie is extremely intelligent, and in the past has always conducted himself with the utmost discretion, so no one who knew him could imagine him taking Liz Taylor seriously and certainly none of us could picture him involved in something as flagrant as the current Roman

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circus. But I guess we underestimated Liz… if Dickie went along with it he must be sufficiently hooked to abandon his usual good judgment. Over here, we’ve come to one certain conclusion. Elizabeth Taylor isn’t just playing Cleopatra, she BELIEVES she’s Cleopatra (‘Dorothy Kilgallen’s Voice of Broadway’, 1962: 11).

Moreover, as Jennifer Frost notes in Hedda Hopper’s Hollywood: Celebrity Gossip and American Conservatism, culpability for the affair (and the subsequent breakdown of both Taylor’s and Burton’s marriages) was disproportionately afforded to Taylor: ‘She has done more to degrade the women of this world,’ Hopper argued, ‘than any mistress of any king.’ The Vatican’s weekly newspaper also weighed in, warning that ‘the sultry actress was headed for “erotic vagrancy” ’. Connecting personal and international affairs, Georgia Congresswoman Iris F Blitch averred in May that Taylor ‘lowered the prestige of American women abroad, and damaged goodwill in foreign countries, particularly Italy’ (2011: 191).

While this is certainly at least partially informed by the sexual double standard, it is also strongly reminiscent of Hughes-Hallett’s description of Cleopatra’s positioning in popular culture: It was Antony who loved her immoderately, Antony who preferred her to military honour, Antony who broke the battle line to follow her. But she will stand proxy for Antony because what he has done was motivated by sexual feeling; and sexuality, as Octavius and his Roman contemporaries asserted, and as posterity has agreed, is a female responsibility (1990: 130).

By mapping Cleopatra onto Taylor in this way, Burton is robbed of his agency in much the same way that Antony’s immoderate love for Cleopatra robs him of his. He becomes not a player in his own degradation, but either the feminized object of Taylor’s uncontainable lust or hopelessly in thrall to the incapacitating beauty of the world’s most beautiful woman. Both options are essentially emasculating. These are also the same options afforded to our reading of the Augustan Antony.

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‘The irony of the Taylor-Burton love affair may be that the more excessively performative the couple became, the more deeply their image as great lovers was etched into the collective romantic unconscious,’ says Leonard (2010: 94). Indeed, such is the popular-cultural resonance of Taylor/Burton that, despite having divorced (for the second time) in 1976, and despite both parties having remarried several times since then, Burton’s widow Sally (his fourth wife) felt obliged to refute claims of their ‘great love story’ after Taylor’s death in 2011 re-invigorated public interest in the affair (‘Let’s Hear No More About Liz, Says Sally Burton: Richard’s Widow Hits Out At Fascination With Their Relationship’, 2011 [online]). By configuring Taylor/Burton as a grand romance, the couple’s joint star image continually reaffirms and re-performs both Antony/Cleopatra-asepic-romance, and, by extension, Taylor/Burton as the same. Moreover, by aligning Burton-as-Antony with the rhetoric of great love, he is also rendered vulnerable to the reductivizing dichotomy of emotion/logic as outlined in Chapter 4, which, as I have argued, is used to implicitly feminize Antony-on-screen. It also allows Burton-as-Antony to be read more closely in line with the prestige/box-office paradigm than his relative authority, vis-à-vis Rex Harrison, might otherwise imply, which in turn aligns him with a discourse of aesthetic value. Furthermore, by underlining the aesthetics of the body of Mark Antony as outlined above, we are inevitably drawn into questions of male bodily display. I want now to consider the ways in which the feminizing discourse of aestheticization feeds into generic conventions for the display of the male in the historical epic as a whole. The Homoerotics of Male Display ‘Male spectacles… abound in films,’ says Ina Rae Hark in her discussion of Spartacus (Kubrick, 1960). ‘They surface especially in narratives and genres that feature power struggles between men’ (1993: 151). She notes the relationship, interrogated in psychoanalytic film studies (and perhaps most famously in Laura Mulvey’s Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema), between the act of looking (subjecting the body of the looked-at to the gaze), and Foucault’s notion of institutionalized power and control (1993: 151). Steve Neale links this to psychoanalytic theories of voyeurism and

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fetishism – both of which are closely linked to notions of domination/ subjugation and sadomasochism (1983: 17–18). Film genres that conventionally encompass the fetishized display of the male body typically employ a predictable series of disavowal mechanisms by which the homoerotic is denied or elided, and the male gaze is made safe. Neale discusses the interpersonal violence of the films of Antony Mann as one such mechanism: ‘In a heterosexual and patriarchal society, the male body cannot be marked explicitly as the erotic object of another male look: that look must be motivated in some other way, its erotic component repressed. The mutilation and sadism so often involved in Mann’s films are marks both of the repression involved and of a means by which the male body may be disqualified, so to speak, as an object of erotic contemplation and desire’ (1983: 13–14). He considers Paul Willeman’s analysis of Mann’s work and concludes: ‘The repression of any explicit avowal of eroticism in the act of looking at the male seems structurally linked to a narrative content marked by sado-masochistic phantasies and scenes. Hence both forms of voyeuristic looking, intraand extra-diegetic, are especially evident in those moments of contest and combat’ (1983: 16–17). Hark concurs, and further points to a discourse of natural/unnatural as a method of discursively explaining and justifying the spectacularization of the male. She argues that, while both male and female bodies are on display within the historical epic, the presentation of masculinity-as-spectacle evidences considerably more anxiety. ‘[The texts] frequently code such spectacles as unnatural, in contrast to those of women, which transpire unremarked within the diegesis,’ she says. ‘Males played by movie stars become spectacularized or commodified, these narratives assert, only because the rightful exercise of masculine power has been perverted by unmanly tyrants’ (1993: 152). Indeed, a review of Cleopatra (1963) in the Montreal Gazette adopts a tone of masculine outrage that reveals the tensions embedded in the text with regards to the display of Antony’s body. Reviewer William Glover refers to ‘a series of scenes that must be referred to as the bath strip-tease’, and continues: Miss Taylor reclines first in carefully devised undrape alongside a tub of sybaritic dimensions in which perfumed toy barges float. Later on she

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is immersed therein, after which – possibly to give feminine ticket-buyers equal value – Burton also splashes about. In the final tub scene, a carefree company of Roman warriors in battle armor frolic in the waters (‘Taylor ‘“Cleopatra” Rated Lavish Bust’, 1963: 9).

There are a number of points to be made about the information provided in this paragraph, and specifically the clues as to Glover’s reading of the scenes in question. For a start, it should be noted that Glover clearly does not identify with the paradigms expressed within the movie, either as regards Burton’s personification of Antony’s gender performance, or as regards the mythic strategies adopted by the text as a whole. For evidence of this, one need only note the fact that he has negatively reviewed the film, which would indicate that the narrative has not succeeded in engaging with his subjective position. That said, the manner in which he chooses to express his disidentification is revealing. Notwithstanding the fact he elsewhere frames Rex Harrison’s Caesar as the sole vector of ‘authority and dignity’ in an otherwise ‘overlong, gaudy and ultimately tedious spectacle’ (which feeds into the discourse of authority/prestige afforded to the casting of Caesar and the casting of Antony), the focus of Glover’s dissent is expressed in remarkably gendered terms. Specifically, we should note the construction of the sentence in which Glover describes the first two scenes of the ‘bath strip-tease’. Cleopatra is first to be immersed in the bath – which requires no further comment or explanation. However, subsequent to this, ‘possibly to give feminine ticket-buyers equal value – Burton also splashes about’. The display of Cleopatra’s body is thus naturalized in viewer reception: exposed as titillation, certainly, but the implication in Glover’s lack of qualifying explanation is that body-as-spectacle is, implicitly, female-body-as-spectacle. Burton’s bath scene, however, must be justified with the speculation that it has been inserted ‘possibly to give feminine ticket-buyers equal value’. The hegemony of the male gaze is thus enacted and the concomitant homoeroticism of Antony’s display is explicitly highlighted, with the hasty disavowal that the aberrant sexualization of the naked male must be directed at the female gaze. I do not argue that Glover’s is a consciously articulated anxiety, only that the anxiety is evident in the tone of heavy disapproval, the discursive

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justification and the necessity of the qualifier. Cleopatra-as-spectacle implicitly stands within the conventions of the mythic female; Antony-asspectacle transgresses the mythic male, and the implication for the male viewer is unsettling. Given that the toga epic has traditionally been a vehicle for the display of male flesh, there is clearly a significant level of anxiety associated with the homoeroticization of the gaze that must be visually or narratively diffused. Fitzgerald (2001: 37) states that this is typically achieved either by presenting the spectacularized male body in action (usually violent action) or by forcing it to suffer. He explains it thus: There are two contrasted spectacles of manhood in the toga movie: the armor-clad legions tramping in invulnerable synchrony across the screen and the single, semi-naked man raised on a cross to die or displayed in an ecce homo (Fitzgerald, 2001: 42).

It should be noted that Antony is displayed as neither.12 Moreover, returning to Glover’s review, note that the fact that the ‘carefree company of Roman warriors’ enter the bath ‘in battle armor’ is clearly enough to ameliorate any further homoerotic anxiety. Not only are they clothed, but they are clothed in a uniform that echoes the ‘proper’ spectacle of manhood within the toga movie – Fitzgerald’s ‘armor-clad legions’ – and again, like Taylor’s ‘natural’ display of the female form, no speculation is required as to why this sequence exists. It is spectacle – distasteful, perhaps, to Glover’s eye, but not sufficiently disjunctive to require explanation. Antony’s unabashed display of his body, on the other hand, disquiets. Antony’s Love Rivals Figure 5 outlines the avatars of paradigm masculinity within each text, whose gender performance is used to comment on Antony’s. These hegemonic exemplars are ubiquitous to Antony’s screen appearances, yet they represent, by and large, a passive commentary on his deficiencies. Two texts, however, go further and expand the theme of comparative masculinity to include a scale of reward/punishment, in which Antony is effectively penalized for his failure to conform to the hegemonic by being

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challenged for – or even denied – the heterosexual union (with Cleopatra) that is positioned as both the embodiment and the recognition of appropriate masculine performance. These are as follows: • Serpent of the Nile (Castle, 1953) Lucilius, originally Brutus’ lieutenant, becomes Antony’s friend and advisor after Philippi, and accompanies him to Egypt after the fateful meeting with Cleopatra at Tarsus. Antony, however, is unaware that Lucilius and Cleopatra were formerly lovers. • Cleopatra (Mankiewicz, 1963) Apollodorus is Cleopatra’s faithful slave and constant companion. He confesses his love to her in a sequence shortly before her death. The original cut of the movie included a sequence making explicit reference to a sexual relationship between Cleopatra and Apollodorus, but this was excised from the theatrical release (Buselink, 1988: 7). It should be noted that Rome’s (2005–7) Marcus Agrippa does not support a reading under the love rival trope, despite the fact that he remains Octavia’s lover after her marriage to Antony. This is for two reasons. Firstly, the marriage is explicitly political, and the narrative repeatedly restates both parties’ lack of emotional investment in the union. Secondly, and most importantly, Agrippa himself, although he manifests several characteristics of the hegemonic man, falls short of the paradigm when he refuses to rescue Octavia from house arrest under her brother’s orders. It is true that he is motivated by loyalty to Octavian; however, Octavia is a sympathetic character (where Octavian is not), and her parting words leave little doubt as to how Agrippa’s decision is to be read. Angrily, she reveals that she is pregnant, and Agrippa asks who the father is. ‘Who knows?’ replies Octavia. ‘Neither man is worth a brass obol, so what matter?’ (2007.8). Rome’s Cleopatra, on the other hand, is apparently sexually faithful to Antony, and her sexual duplicity is enacted upon Caesar.13 Where the love rival trope is employed, it is used to frame a much less mutable mode of gender performance than that exhibited by Agrippa. Apollodorus is a less stable avatar of masculinity than Lucilius, being both Egyptian and a slave (both of which terms are coded feminine in Roman

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discourse), while Lucilius is a Roman general, but both are constructed in essentialist terms as the physically powerful, emotionally inexpressive protector – in many ways, Carroll’s archetypal ‘warrior hero’ (2003: 33). This theme of protection is key, as I will now explain. Serpent of the Nile Apollodorus is concerned with protecting Cleopatra, but, no less significantly, Lucilius is concerned with protecting Antony. That Antony requires protection is significant in terms of not only his performance of gender, but also Cleopatra’s. Serpent of the Nile enacts the Plutarchian gender reversal outlined in Chapter 1, wherein Cleopatra, opportunistic and hungry for power, is able to use Antony, whose bodily excesses render him susceptible to manipulation, to her own advantage. As such, the protection of the hegemonic man is used not only to position Cleopatra as unsympathetic, but also to position Antony as feminized in his very need for protection. Throughout the narrative, ‘love’ is used as a marker of gender performance and relative power. Cleopatra’s love for Lucilius is a case in point: her refusal to prioritize the domestic over the political causes him to repudiate her affections, and therefore not only underscores her gender reversal (by her rejection of the feminine business of love for the masculine business of governance), but also affords him a position of power over her through her unrequited love, which she ultimately seeks to negate by attempting to have him killed. That Cleopatra’s love is available to Lucilius and not Antony underscores not only Antony’s poor judgement, but also Cleopatra’s disdain for him and his gender positioning relative to Lucilius-as-paradigm. Lucilius’ position of appropriate gender performance, moreover, allows him to recognize (as Antony does not) the emasculatory threat embodied in Cleopatra, and, as Antony’s protector, he repeatedly exhorts his friend to reject Cleopatra and return to the masculine business of government. His ability to disavow Cleopatra’s love on the grounds of gender reversal marks him as, if not Antony’s opposite, certainly his superior in the hierarchy of masculine performance. By contrast, Antony allows himself to succumb to excessive love – designated as excessive by Cleopatra’s failure to reciprocate and by Antony’s repudiation of anything that might threaten

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the relationship, including his duty to Rome – and his love, therefore, becomes the signifier of his deficient masculinity. This deficiency, and Antony’s recognition of his inferior gender performance relative to his friend’s, is visually expressed in a sequence towards the end of the film, in which Antony removes his (Roman, military) cloak and hands it to Lucilius. As a metaphor, it is striking: the surrender of an explicit symbol of Roman power clearly acknowledges Lucilius’ superior gender performance, and his greater suitability to the paradigm. The trope, moreover, is not unique to this text. Cleopatra Where Serpent of the Nile manifested Roman, masculine leadership in a military cloak, Cleopatra (1963) is more explicit again, mobilizing Freudian symbolism to discursively emasculate Antony in the sequence immediately following the Battle of Actium. A disconsolate Antony, having abandoned the ongoing hostilities, boards Cleopatra’s ship only to be confronted by Apollodorus, who confiscates his sword on the anxious queen’s orders and throws it into the sea. While this may certainly be read as Cleopatra figuratively removing the semiological manifestation of Antony’s phallic power (the sword) via her agent (Apollodorus), the immediacy of Apollodorus’ presence in the scene, and his active appropriation of Antony’s phallic symbolism, allows the sequence to be read as Apollodorus explicitly usurping the position of dominance by seizing an exterior symbol of Antony’s masculinity. His position as love rival to Antony, moreover, further complicates the gender dynamics of the scene. I have already problematized Apollodorus’ claim to the paradigm on the grounds of his status as a slave and an Egyptian, both of which are gendered feminine in Roman discourse. Throughout the text, in fact, Rufio (as I will argue later in the chapter) is a more stable avatar of hegemonic masculinity, being Roman, military and closer in social status to both Antony and Cleopatra. Rufio, however, has little access to Cleopatra within the narrative, and is thus unable to function as a love rival. The nature of Apollodorus’ relationship with Cleopatra may be ambiguous in the absence of the missing sequence identifying them as lovers, but echoes of this scene remain in the release print, investing their companionship with a significance not fully articulated until he confesses his love

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for her towards the end of the narrative. Cleopatra, it should be noted, offers no similar declaration, which alters the dynamics of this relationship versus the central love triangle of Serpent of the Nile, in that Apollodorus’ love for Cleopatra does not call her stated love for Antony into doubt. It does, however, offer an alternative model for the ‘proper’ expression of romantic devotion that, once again, allows ‘love’ (and the ability to love appropriately) to be used as a marker of gender performance. Apollodorus loves, but his love is contained and appropriate, driving him to assume the role of masculine protector; Antony, on the other hand, loves to excess, to the extent that Cleopatra is obliged to express her reservations: ANTONY: I have only one master – my love for you. CLEOPATRA: No – your master must not be love. Never love. Give yourself to love and you give yourself to forgetfulness – of what you are and who you are and what you want. (Mankiewicz, 1963)

Any gender commentary invoked by her reticence is largely undermined by context: Cleopatra’s love for Antony is not in question (and is repeatedly restated by the text in unambiguous terms), and, in any case, the rhetoric is recuperated somewhat when she later revokes her statement in response to his attempt to disavow his subjection to love. However, his recantation is prompted by bitterness at their ignominious defeat at Actium – the result of his decision, dictated by excessive love, to abandon the battle and follow Cleopatra’s retreat – and he retracts it once she reaffirms her love for him. As such, no similar recuperation is possible for Antony. Apollodorus’ final act as Cleopatra’s protector underscores his superior performance of masculinity relative to Antony’s, and also the damage that Antony’s deficiencies have wrought. His troops having deserted, Antony returns to Alexandria in defeat to find Apollodorus waiting for him in Cleopatra’s palace suite. The queen has retreated to the relative safety of her mausoleum, from which she has sent Apollodorus with a message to Antony, telling him where she can be found, but Apollodorus deliberately delivers it so obliquely that Antony believes Cleopatra is already dead.

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He then watches as Antony prepares to take his own life, and only after Antony is mortally wounded – definitively negating any further threat he might pose to the queen – does he confess his lie and consent to take the dying Antony to Cleopatra. The problematic embodiment of hegemonic masculinity embodied in Apollodorus therefore works against Antony: by allowing an Egyptian slave to essentially usurp the hegemonic position that ought to be afforded to the Roman general, the text locates Antony further from the paradigm even than an avatar of conventionally unstable masculinity. I do not argue that this is necessarily a conscious decision on the part of the filmmakers (or even, necessarily, a reading that will be available to the majority of viewers, given that Cesare Danova, playing Apollodorus, fulfils many of the explicit requirements of hegemonic screen masculinity: muscular stature, athletic physique, protector of the female lead, contained/manageable heterosexual desire and so on), but, whether consciously or unconsciously articulated, it clearly evidences engagement with the historical sources in line with their socio-political agenda, as outlined in Chapter 1. That Apollodorus appears at all is because he is tropologically embedded into Cleopatra’s mythology (presumably via Plutarch’s Life of Julius Caesar, though he is also mentioned in Cassius Dio and Lucan) as the vector by which she arrived, rolled into a carpet, in Caesar’s quarters during her power-struggle with her brother-husband, Ptolemy XIII. This being the case, he is unquestionably aligned with Cleopatra as, at the very least, her attendant. Whether the text elects to portray him as slave or advisor, the fact remains that he is subservient to a female, Eastern ruler, and the semantics of Easternness (diegetic and discursive), as we have seen, render Cleopatra Other, regardless of how sympathetically she might be portrayed. Catharine Edwards, in The Politics of Immorality in Ancient Rome, discusses Pliny’s castigation of Antony’s excesses in relation to Cleopatra: ‘The triumvir Antony used golden vessels in satisfying his baser needs, an outrage even Cleopatra would have been ashamed of. Till then, foreigners had held the record in extravagance…’ (in Edwards, 1993: 25). I have already discussed the means by which this rhetorically positions Antony as effeminate by means of emphasizing that his transgressions are worse than Cleopatra, who personifies incontinentia and mollitia by virtue of being female, Eastern and a monarch accustomed to wealth and luxury,

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and it is possible to read Apollodorus’ positioning as an extension of this projection of Roman rhetoric. However, since Cleopatra is also Othered by her performance of Saidean Orientalism, Apollodorus, through his close affiliation with her, attracts a similar discourse, which is, arguably, more familiar to a modern audience. The net result is largely the same, although understood along different lines: Apollodorus’ performance of the hegemonic paradigm is compromised by virtue of his alignment with the Other, but it is still sufficiently superior to Antony’s gender performance that he is free to usurp the position of masculine authority. A more stable mechanism of Othering Antony, however, is that which contrasts his deficiencies in the masculine political sphere with his paradigm opposites. I want now to examine this trope. Political Masculinity Hegemonic masculinity in these texts, in common with Roman gender discourse, is closely affiliated with leadership and performance in the public sphere. In the previous chapter, I examined the mechanism by which Antony’s political ineptitude is used to position his performance of masculinity as deficient. I would now like to extend this argument to cover the political performance of the paradigm masculinities and their function in coding Antony as inept. As might be expected in a series of narratives which, if not always explicitly political, without exception pay at least lip service to the political and generally attempt to use the politics of the late Republic as a source of historical verisimilitude, political performance is a key signifier of masculinity in the diegesis of Antony-on-screen. Even where the political is marginalized (as, for example, in Serpent of the Nile) it remains to contextualize the narrative, and the associated discourse of fitness-to-lead is applied to Antony and to the paradigm. In fact, the discourses of political aptitude and fitness-to-lead are generally conflated, both in ancient and contemporary socio-political discourse and in the texts in general, although their manifestation on screen is often more clearly demarcated. Both discourses are strongly gendered masculine. There are two mechanisms by which Antony’s political performance is coded deficient vis-à-vis the paradigm. The first is an explicit or implicit

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comparison of political activity in both parties, and has been a mainstay of Antony’s screen appearances throughout the texts here under analysis. The second is a more recent phenomenon, limited – thus far – to Rome (2005–7), whereby other performances of masculinity that are positioned closer to the paradigm are made to usurp Antony’s place in the historical narrative, thereby instituting a concomitant discourse of political (and historical) redundancy. This second mechanism is manifestly an extension of the first, in that the outcome of both is to elide Antony’s contribution to the political events of the period, yet the result of the second is arguably the more powerful. By reassigning his actions to other, paradigm performers of masculinity, as is the case in Rome, Antony is not only rendered politically inept but is also stripped of his agency. Where Antony acts against the advice of more politically astute paradigms, he inscribes his own tragic arc (and disaster follows, without exception); yet where he fails even to act he becomes, at best, an irrelevance: an historical anomaly whose importance to Caesar and to the events of the late Republic is impossible to discern. That the public/masculine:private/feminine paradigm is deeply engrained into patriarchal discourse and forms part of the foundation of hegemonic masculinity need hardly be stated. ‘The public sphere of politics has historically been conceived in opposition to the private (and feminine) sphere of the home, and it is one of the central arenas in which American masculinity has been experienced and enacted,’ says Bret E Carroll in American Masculinities (2003: 362). ‘From the early colonial settlers to the most recent immigrants of the late twentieth century, engaging in political activity has been a way of becoming a man.’ Discursively, therefore, hegemonic masculinity and political activity remain closely linked. Political masculinity, indeed, is closely linked to notions of the protective father figure: George Washington, for example, is only one of many politicians to be known as ‘The Father of his Country’. Antony’s performance in the public sphere, as I have examined in the previous chapter, is best characterized as inept. Where he simply fails to perform political masculinity, he is feminized by his failure, and the function of the paradigm male is to underline his deficiencies, as I will show. However, where Antony begins to perform pathologized masculinity in

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the twenty-first century, he also begins to attract a discourse of political corruption. Rome is the most overt example of this. It is possible, perhaps inevitable, that the particular socio-political anxieties enacted in Rome’s mythic space may prove resistant to self-reflexive analysis while they remain current, and, in any case, issues of national provenance (already discussed) prohibit unproblematic analogizing. As such, it is difficult to quantify the extent to which Antony is deliberately made to enact (British) imperialist vice and/or the corruption of the privileged ruling class. What is unquestionable is that, however divergently, he follows the trope established in the preceding texts, which configures him as the nepotically appointed political incompetent. With this in mind, it is tempting to interpret Antony’s public-sphere performance in Rome as an extended commentary on contemporary politics: to read the sequence in which he enters Rome surrounded by adoring crowds, only to reveal his contempt for the political system as he is ordained as tribune of the plebs, as an articulation of socio-cultural discomfort with modern political artifice and the cult of personality; to read his relationship with Caesar and ultimate usurpation of Caesar’s position – however unsuited he is – after Caesar’s death as a vilification of the prevalence of yes-men and sycophancy.14 The text certainly supports such an analysis and warrants a reading under these terms. However, placed on a continuum alongside the preceding texts, Rome’s Antony continues to exhibit clear continuities with his previous incarnations, particularly as regards his displacement by performers of paradigm masculinity. I want to spend the rest of the chapter interrogating this trope. The Right Man for the Job I have argued above for two mechanisms by which Antony is compared against the hegemonic paradigm in terms of political performance: direct comparison and usurpation. Where the first is employed, it generally follows a specific and predictable format: the performer of paradigm masculinity – usually a close friend or at least advisor to Antony – will make several tactical or strategic suggestions to Antony throughout the course of the narrative, which Antony will dismiss out of hand. Viewer privilege will be invoked to oblige the audience to read Antony’s decision

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as flawed, and it will generally rely on an assessment of political realities (most often, Antony’s underestimation of Cleopatra’s power and influence) which is so manifestly at odds with the narrative thus far that, even if the paradigm male had not already painstakingly been established as such, Antony’s decision to ignore his advice would immediately be flagged as questionable. Towards the narrative climax, Antony’s successive errors of judgement will reach their apex in a clash with his paradigm colleague, who can clearly predict catastrophic results if Antony insists on following his stated path. Usually, this will be configured as the unnecessary loss of Roman lives (either by provoking a civil war or by a poorly judged military strategy), which will be unacceptable to the paradigm male. Nevertheless, possessed of an indomitable honour-code, his loyalty to Antony generally overrides his conscientious objections, and he remains by Antony’s side until his or Antony’s death.15 Rufio as Paradigm Male The above structure is broadly observable in Cleopatra (1934), Serpent of the Nile (1953), Cleopatra (1963), and Cleopatra (1999). 1963’s Rufio (Martin Landau) exemplifies the format, being characterized by the narrative from the beginning as a man who ought, by all standards of aptitude, to be in a position of leadership, but who has been displaced, essentially, by demagoguery and nepotism. Caesar is reliant upon him for advice and intelligence, and it is Rufio’s assessment of Cleopatra that positions her for the audience in the first act: RUFIO: In attaining her objectives, Cleopatra has been known to employ torture, poison, and even her own sexual talents, which are said to be considerable. Her lovers, I am told, are listed more easily by number than by name. It is said that she chooses in the manner of a man rather than wait to be chosen after a womanly fashion. Well, there’s more reason than I thought not to leave you alone with her, eh, sir? (Mankiewicz, 1963)

The speech neatly sums up the positioning of three important characters: Cleopatra has been explicitly divorced from the ‘womanly fashion’;

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Caesar’s desires have been exposed as potentially problematic (and certainly under less stringent control than Rufio’s); and Rufio, whose desires are closely managed – and therefore inaccessible to Cleopatra – has been positioned closer to the paradigm even than Caesar (which, as I have argued, is not unusual, Caesar representing a particularly ideologically unstable avatar). Crucially, though, Rufio’s attitude to Caesar’s poorly contained desire is indulgent. In one sentence – ‘Well, there’s more reason than I thought not to leave you alone with her, eh, sir?’ – Rufio has acknowledged both Caesar’s susceptibility to desire but also, critically, the manageability of Caesar’s desire. Although it may be poorly contained, it is containable. It will take some time to manifest, but Antony’s desires will prove more problematic, and Rufio’s indulgence of them much more qualified. When Antony asks, ‘Do I trouble you, Rufio?’ and Rufio replies, simply, ‘Yes you do,’ the ghost of this early scene hangs heavily over his words. Caesar does not trouble Rufio; Antony does. Rufio’s narrative function throughout the Caesar portion is to provide clarity and exposition to the viewer, and to thereby offer an ideological position. When Rufio claims that Caesar’s decision to acknowledge paternity of Caesarion amounts to his designation of Caesarion as his legal heir, he is not only expressing the reasons for Roman outrage, but his own rejection of Caesar’s decision. As Caesar’s actions must necessarily be read teleologically by the audience, Roman popular outrage equates to a direct causal link to the assassination, and Rufio’s distance from the outrageous decision – effected by his rejection of it – places him once again closer to the paradigm of fitness-to-lead, whilst his loyalty to Caesar, despite his rejection of Caesar’s decision, marks him as a man of honour. Thus, by the time of the Antony portion, Rufio’s position as almostomniscient political commentator has been well established within the narrative, and the pseudo-Oedipal trajectory played out by Antony and Caesar has positioned Antony further from the paradigm than his putative father. When Antony asks ‘Do I trouble you, Rufio?’ the answer comes as no surprise: Antony must trouble Rufio, since even Caesar required careful management and Antony has already proven himself far less suited to leadership. Why Antony and not Rufio has ascended to the position of leadership following the assassination is neither explained nor even

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raised as a question, relying, perhaps, on the historical record16 to provide a teleologically constructed answer; therefore, Rufio’s position remains constant – advisor to leaders and a source of leaders’ knowledge, but no leader himself. Rufio’s grasp of financial realities is much greater than Antony’s, and he understands that Antony and Cleopatra must reach an entente. An early sequence in the Antony portion has Rufio repeatedly attempting to drive home their dire financial straits, while Antony snaps: ‘Finances! You make my head hurt when you talk of money. Now change the subject.’ Rufio persists, insisting that Antony approach Cleopatra, whose wealth may be able to stem the tide of desertions amongst their unpaid soldiers. Antony’s reply invokes the Oedipal drama: ‘Then let her come to me! Am I so much less than Caesar?’ (Mankiewicz, 1963). Rufio, of course, is ultimately able to effect the meeting between Antony and Cleopatra at Tarsus; understanding Cleopatra, and her accurate assessment of her importance to Antony’s cause, he understands (as Antony does not) that it will most likely be on her terms. Tarsus, however, comes as a shock to Rufio (as it does not to Antony), for a number of reasons, summed up in a brief exchange between the two men as Cleopatra’s magnificent barge sails up the Cydnus towards them. ‘She said never, except on Egyptian soil,’ he says, bewildered. Antony, however, is buoyant: ‘“Never” – something women say to begin with,’ he says cheerfully. The sexual implication is revealing: Antony has convinced himself that Cleopatra’s capitulation is due to his own charms rather than her objective assessment of risk/reward. Cleopatra has also taken an accurate measure of what makes Antony tick, and pitched her performance accordingly: therefore, Rufio’s poorly concealed disgust at the opulence and waste of her royal barge is lost on Antony, whose uncontainable desires have manifested themselves once again. Rufio accompanies Antony to Egypt, where his attempts to intervene, as Antony falls further and further under Cleopatra’s thrall, largely come to nothing. Cleopatra’s actions, positioned as sympathetic within this text, are located along the same trajectory of inevitable defeat: as the breach with Rome widens, both ignore their advisors and both are given lines that contradict the historical record, allowing the audience to read their conclusions as erroneous. For example, as they debate the prospect of

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war with Octavian, Antony’s generals and Cleopatra’s advisor are united in their objections, but Cleopatra is insistent: CLEOPATRA: Why do you oppose transporting our armies to Greece? ANTONY: Because I do not want war against Rome. CLEOPATRA: One hundred thousand men, led by Mark Antony! Octavian is no fool, he won’t fight! ANTONY: He won’t want to, he’ll have to. Instantly. On the spot where they land. CLEOPATRA: Rome will not declare war against you! SOSOGENES: I do not agree. CLEOPATRA: I have not asked for your opinion! SOSOGENES: Not for some time. Not since I doubted the necessity of building three hundred ships. (Mankiewicz, 1963)

Cleopatra’s erroneous political position (and Antony’s unusually accurate assessment of political realities) are qualified by the fact that she alone has been obliged to manage their breach with Octavian as a result of Antony’s complete abdication of responsibility. Throughout the sequence he is drunken, uncoordinated, bitter and defeatist. A rare moment of political clarity is thereby undermined by a discourse of unfitness-to-lead; her determination to follow a path that will, historically, lead her to disaster, is recuperated somewhat by her pressing need to do something to mitigate their increasingly difficult position. Where the Battle of Actium is featured in the narrative (Cleopatra, 1934; Cleopatra, 1963; Cleopatra, 1999; Imperium: Augustus, 2003; Rome, 2007), it is often interpreted as an explicatory event within the meta-narrative of inevitable defeat, and is therefore configured as a moment of critical dispute between Antony and the paradigm. It is true that, prior to the publication of JM Carter’s The Battle of Actium: The Rise and Triumph of Augustus Caesar (1970), which reinterprets the Plutarchian version of events (Cleopatra flees the battle in terror and Antony’s emasculating love compels him to follow) as a strategic naval retreat, there was no widely available alternate historiography to which filmmakers might refer. Moreover, Carter’s alternative reading of events

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came too late for the 1963 movie, which at least attempts to find a proCleopatra interpretation. However, it is significant that later texts continue to utilize the Plutarchian/Augustan version, with the only mention of a variant reading appearing as a throw-away comment in Rome 2007.10, as Octavia and Livia debate the truth of the official report of events. The battle itself is not shown, leaving the truth/propaganda debate open to audience interpretation. The other Actium texts, however, as I have said, opt to follow the Augustan reading, which of course provides fertile ground for an interrogation of paradigm versus deficient masculinities. Cleopatra (1963) is a case in point. During a scene in which Cleopatra and Antony debate strategy with their advisors, the format is almost identical to the sequence cited above: Cleopatra remains regal and dignified, while Antony is again drunken and shambolic. Rufio is joined by Canidius, another Roman general, who is also disturbed by Antony’s reliance on Cleopatra’s faulty logic, and both attempt to dissuade him from his fixation with an engagement at sea. Antony’s response is to verbally abuse both men and forbid them from joining in the battle. It is notable that Cleopatra’s (unilateral) decision to disengage and retreat is taken after considerable soul-searching, and only after she has been convinced that Antony has been killed; she later defends herself to him, saying that her first thought was to return to Egypt and Caesarion, and that this is what she thought Antony would have wanted her to do. Antony’s decision to follow Cleopatra because he was mastered by love is given no recuperative dialogue, and it is this decision that leads to his symbolic emasculation on board the Antonia, as Apollodorus throws his sword into the sea. Rufio’s final, silent commentary on Antony’s unfitness-to-lead comes shortly before Antony’s death. Antony, reduced to two legions and preparing to make his last stand against Octavian, has drawn up his final plan – a pre-dawn attack – and has asked to be woken before sunrise. Opening his eyes to the mid-morning sun the next day, however, the camp is silent and completely empty: his troops have deserted in the night. Lying alone on the desert sand is Rufio, who has fallen on his sword. The conflation of suicide with despair has already been discussed in Chapter 4, but what recuperates Rufio’s act is that it is not affiliated with self-pity or excessive

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emotionality. Rufio bears no responsibility for the catastrophe that has left him without any alternative but death, and, without fuss or histrionics, he has quietly taken the only honourable path left open to him – the path to which Antony’s catalogue of errors has inexorably led. Antony, on the other hand, immediately remounts and rides into battle alone against Octavian’s forces. That his actions evidence a careless bravado is indisputable; elsewhere, they might carry a discourse of heroism or audacious courage. What undermines this here is the reaction of Antony’s opponents: not one can be goaded into raising a sword against him. Octavian looks on, impassive, as Antony hollers at the men to give him ‘an honourable death’ and the link to Rufio is underlined: his quiet, dignified suicide is contrasted with Antony’s noise and recklessness. The scene, particularly considered alongside one that follows shortly after, in which Antony calls upon Apollodorus to run him through with his sword, may well be an oblique reference to Plutarch’s Life, wherein Antonius makes the same request of his slave, Eros. However, taken together, they cannot help but imply that Antony, for all his bluster, lacks the courage to do the job himself. Antony Elided Rome (2005–7), as I have argued in Chapter 4, inhabits the most overtly politicized mythic space of any of these texts, and, as such, creates a site for the interrogation of issues of power, privilege and the ruling classes. This is not to argue that the previous texts were depoliticized; only that Rome’s considerable (22-hour) run-time allows for unprecedented focus on the social and the political as well as the key events of the period, which in turn permits sweeping analogies to be made with the contemporary socio-political context, even as the narrative ruptures the identification process with moments of history-as-spectacle (Haynes, 2008: 50). As noted in the Introduction, the format of Rome resembles a ‘familial soap opera’ (Raucci, 2008: 207) in its episodic narrative structure and its foregrounding of the micro- alongside the macro-historical, and this divergent format is important in that it differentiates the focus of the series from that of the earlier texts. Simply put: by focusing on the minutiae of Roman life (and Roman personalities), Rome is able to make Romans and

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Romanness familiar and known in a manner unavailable within the time constraints of the traditional historical epic. Kristina Milnor, writing in Rome Season 1: History Makes Television (2008), reviews her experiences as a putative historical advisor to the series. Discussing a lengthy conversation with one of the show’s producers over the historicity of Roman infant exposure, she came to the conclusion that: (T)he actual historicity of the custom was not the point; even if we had unimpeachable evidence for it, as an idea it was considered simply too bizarre, too alienating, for a modern audience to buy. The producers of Rome wanted Romans who were different, but not too different; unusual, but not frightening; titillating, even sometimes disgusting, but not ‘evil’ (Milnor, 2008: 45).

Her comments are revealing: the Romans of Rome are intended for a position somewhere between the ‘partly me’ and the ‘other mine’. Characters who practise infant exposure, whether or not there is historical justification for it, must necessarily occupy the ‘not me’ and are therefore rejected out of hand by the producers. ‘History’ (by which I mean an overt and conscious effort on the part of the show’s creators to remind the audience that they are watching a drama set in ancient Rome), where it occurs, is disruptive; it interrupts the narrative in the form of a spectacular religious rite or a sudden Latin expletive. As Milnor says, Rome’s history is intended to titillate. Its narrative is intended to emphasize the similarities between ‘Us’ and ‘Them’, and to elide any differences as spectacle. The paradigm of Rome, as given in Figure 5, is the Vorenus/Pullo dyad, in which Vorenus, as Antony’s inverse, becomes the vehicle for commentary on Antony’s behaviour specifically. Vorenus is the family man, valuing honour and family values and so on, but he is also emotionally distant and fastidious to a fault about rules and mores. Pullo, on the other hand, is ruled by the id: he embodies many of Antony’s fatal flaws (he is impulsive, mercurial and rash), but, critically, he is emotionally available and open. Separately, at the beginning of the narrative, each man represents an attractive ‘partly me’; together they achieve the ‘other mine’. However, as the narrative progresses, both undergo a character arc that leads them towards the paradigm, configured, as I will argue in

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Chapter 6, as a closer integration of the public and private lives of both men. Vorenus/Pullo is not, however, the only dyadic relationship within the series (see Figure 7 below). It should be noted that Antony is uniquely placed within this dyad-versus-dyad structure, which opposes Vorenus/ Pullo against Antony/Octavian: Pullo’s deficient behaviour mirrors Antony’s in many respects, but is recuperated through his incorporation into the Vorenus/Pullo dyad, and through his narrative distancing from the corruption of the ruling class. Likewise Vorenus: in addition to the recuperative structure of the dyad, although he is fit-to-rule, he is not of the ruling class and is uncomfortable as he attempts to transgress the class boundaries, thereby distancing himself from the immorality of the elite. Octavian is of the elite, and the dyadic structure to which he belongs is not recuperative; Octavian and Antony, in essence, represent a pathologized Vorenus/Pullo – yet Octavian, critically (as I have argued), exhibits a gender-appropriate political ability. While Antony is id-driven and entirely self-serving, Octavian’s political machinations, although ruthless, have as their primary motivating factor the enduring health of the res publica (which, as discussed above, carries considerable weight in socio-political terms). Antony is politically and strategically myopic, and his manoeuvring is conflated with the private-sphere oriented scheming of the likes of Atia and Servilia, thereby depriving him of any gender recuperation. If we consider Antony/Octavian as a horizontal matrix and Antony/ Pullo as a vertical matrix, then it becomes possible to view Antony at the centre of a cross-dyadic displacement. Simply put, Vorenus and Octavian both occupy a trajectory of fitness-to-lead; the fact that Octavian – who is not recuperated along the horizontal matrix – will ultimately end up in power is a component both of the text’s interrogation of the corruption of the political system and of his own (socio-politically benign) superior skill. Antony, whose membership of the ruling class places him in a position of power despite a near-constant discourse of unfitness-to-lead, is subject to the well-established trope of derogating his political authority by opposing him against masculinities of considerably superior political gift, yet in addition to a simple comparison of skill, Antony’s contribution is elided from the historical record. This occurs at two key moments, both closely connected to Caesar’s death.

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Figure 7 Rome’s Dyad-versus-Dyad Structure

The first is found in 2005.12, in the prelude to the assassination. Historically, Antonius represented a problem to the conspirators: his close association with Caesar meant that they would be likely to enter the Senate House together, and his close friendship with Caesar meant that he would be likely to defend him from the attack. Being determined not to sully the symbolic purity of tyrannicide with Antonius’ murder, the conspirators were resolved to attack only Caesar, and it therefore fell to Caius Trebonius to detain Antonius outside the Senate House after Caesar had entered. The sequence features regularly in Antony’s screen narrative, yet in Rome it is Vorenus who is Caesar’s constant companion and protector, and who must be distracted with gossip about his wife so that Caesar will be left undefended. Antony has already been established as a man of pliable principles: earlier in the season, Atia came close to convincing him to abandon Caesar as the latter prosecuted his war against Pompey in Greece, prompting Vorenus to lament his allegiance: ‘Mark Antony does not intend to go to Greece to help Caesar. I’ve sworn loyalty

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to a man of no honour’ (2005.6). If Antony is a man of no honour – as attested by the very man who will later displace him – then it is unsurprising that he would not represent a convincing deterrent to the conspirators. Nevertheless, the sequence is revealing of the depth of Antony’s corruption and also of the fragility – relative to his earlier, Oedipal constructions – of his bond with Caesar. The second sequence is found in 2007.1, in the immediate aftermath of the assassination. As argued above, the apportioning of run-time within the recurring two-act structure generally prohibits lengthy examination of the complex political manoeuvring that took place in the 48 hours following the Ides of March, in which Antonius’ superlative political gift played a critical role. Rome, however, has the run-time to allow a more comprehensive exposition and, within the limitations of the Rome universe, is reasonably faithful to the historical record, with a critical exception. Historically, Octavian was studying in Greece at the time of the assassination, and did not receive word of his great-uncle’s death until Antonius had effected his strategic coup and Caesar’s will had already been read. Rome, however, places Octavian within the city in March 44 bce, and is therefore able to hand the complex political reasoning to him instead of Antony. Indeed, Octavian’s conclusions contradict Antony’s instinct to flee Rome and lead Antony to verbally abuse him, before Atia, lured by the prospect of being ‘mother to the richest man in Rome’ (2007.1), decides that the family will remain in the city. The implications are obvious: Antony’s political authority is derogated, and his ability to rationalize and constructively analyse political events is comprehensively undermined. Octavian does not represent paradigm masculinity; however, at this point in the narrative the role is played by 16-year-old Max Pirkis, and Octavian’s distance from the paradigm, therefore, is quantified largely by his relative youth (as opposed to a specifically deficient performance of masculinity). The corollary of this is that Octavian remains a sympathetic character, and this, in conjunction with his previously sound assessment of political realities, allows him to convincingly maintain a discourse of fitness-to-lead – which will be undermined, though not obliterated, by the concomitant discourse of corruption-of-the-elite that will attach to him when he achieves maturity and his deficiencies begin to manifest.

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The elision of Antony’s historical acts is significant not only in terms of Rome and its configuration of Antony, but also in a wider sense, as regards the body of texts as a whole. Narrative and temporal restrictions undoubtedly play a central role in determining the excision and inclusion of material from the text, and it would be easy to over-extend the evidence of Rome and backdate its significance to cover the preceding texts. It is, however, revealing of Antony’s gender positioning that, even where the run-time permits a more leisurely exploration of his political successes, the will to present them is absent. Conclusion ‘Hegemonic masculinity is constructed in relation to women and to subordinated masculinities,’ says Connell in Gender and Power – Society, The Person, and Sexual Politics (1987: 186), and it is clear that the obverse also holds true: non-hegemonic masculinity is constructed in relation to the paradigm from which it falls short. Antony’s construction alongside the hegemonic male serves to highlight two points that are critical to understanding his function as avatar of masculine deficiency: firstly, of course, that his deficiency is underlined and made explicit. Not only are we given cues in the form of his excessive behaviour, but we are given a model of what hegemonic masculinity ought to look like, the better to understand that it is not embodied in Antony. But – crucially – we are not given its opposite in him. Antony is of the hegemonic set: he is a soldier like Rufio, Caesar, Vorenus and Pullo; a politician like Caesar and Octavian; a heterosexual lover like Lucilius, Caesar and Pullo. He is simply not as good at it as they are – not nearly good enough to personify hegemonic masculinity, and possessed of dangerously excessive proclivities which threaten to destabilize his masculine performance and even the res publica itself. As Steve Neale discusses in Masculinity as Spectacle: Reflections on Men and Mainstream Cinema, the figuring of the ideal – which, as I have already established, is aspirational rather than a functional model of real-world behaviour – carries with it the threat of symbolic castration, through its implicit discourse of emasculation (1983: 13). I would suggest that at least part of Antony’s appeal can be understood to be rooted in his failure to achieve the paradigm, thus affording his audience a measure

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of superiority and the ability to position themselves above Antony on the scale of hegemonic performance. The hegemonic man establishes the path that ought to be followed, which is understood as correct by virtue of the audience’s teleological foresight, and when Antony fails to follow the prescribed course of events, the audience’s superior understanding of hegemonic necessities is vindicated. However, the institution of a comparative performance of hegemonic masculinity is by no means unique to Antony’s screen incarnations – indeed, the function of Shakespeare’s Enobarbus is, arguably, to present the audience with a suggested reading of events and to act as, essentially, a kind of arbiter of Roman/masculine performance. This is just one means by which we can evidence a systematic process of cultural engagements with the icon according to contemporary mores. I want now to turn to some of the mechanisms by which screen narratives have adapted the Antony-icon to changing norms of masculinity throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and re-created him according to filmic gender conventions.

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6 A Modern Morality Tale: Embellishments from the Screen Age

Introduction: Masculinity/Masculinities There is an inherent danger, when discussing Antony’s performance of deficient masculinity, to assume that ‘masculinity’ itself is stable, coherent and, indeed, singular. This is particularly pertinent when using representations of Antony to construct a connotative idealized masculinity across the spectrum of his screen incarnations, and raises two important questions. Firstly, is it possible to negatively construct the idealized male from Antony’s deficiencies, when the non-Antonian ideal is constrained only by what is excluded from Antony’s persona? Clearly such a project must be limited by several key assumptions about what constitutes the sub-hegemonic, which by extension requires a number of analytical assumptions about the likely constitution of the idealized male. This in turn raises the second question: given that the screen texts under analysis comprise nearly eight decades of turbulent socio-cultural gender negotiations, how are we to infer these assumptions about the idealized male, when the boundaries of acceptable/unacceptable gender performance are constantly shifting? This chapter will address both questions, while acknowledging that the first can never be quantitatively established but must instead comprise an informed compromise, based on qualitative research, which will unavoidably retain a margin of subjective tolerance. As regards the second question, the answer lies in the very fact of the shifting boundaries of idealized masculinity represented within these texts, and by examining the means

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by which twentieth- and twenty-first-century mores are brought to bear on the tropological source legend I believe it is possible to roughly sketch the fluctuating parameters of the paradigm. This becomes particularly evident when the paradigm decisively shifts around the turn of the twenty-first century, and I will devote particular attention to the reconstruction of the archetype in line with the deconstruction of hegemonic masculinity. In Chapter 4, I outlined the iconography that informs Antony’s screen representations, and divided it into direct projections of Augustan rhetoric and items to which no discernible connection to the Augustan mythology can be traced. The latter are as follows: • the eradication of his children (either those by Cleopatra or by both Cleopatra and his Roman wives) from the narrative • his character’s infantilization • the two-act structure that privileges the shorter Caesar/Cleopatra affair by allotting it equal run-time with the longer Antony/Cleopatra affair • the commodification of Antony that presents him as a gift to Cleopatra • the narrative invention of fictitious rivals to Antony’s relationship with Cleopatra • the absence of Fulvia • the widespread omission of sequences depicting Antony in battle. • (more recently) a tendency to characterize Antony as overtly vicious and without conscience. I have already considered, in Chapter 5, the two-act structure, the love rival trope and Antony’s relationship with Caesar, and I examined the omission of Fulvia in Chapter 2. This chapter, then, will consider the remaining items in Antony’s iconography, and attempt to situate them within a continuum of constantly evolving ideas of acceptable masculinity. The Paradigm Shift Compare Cleopatra (1999)’s post-Actium Mark Antony (Billy Zane), drunkenly weeping in Cleopatra’s arms, with his Rome (2007)

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counterpart, drunkenly murdering an Alexandrian reveller who chose the wrong moment to giggle (2007.10), and there is a clear disconnect. Neither is positioned as an appropriate response, but the mechanism by which it is expressed is drastically different. Nor is this unique to Rome: the Antony of Augustus (2003) manifests similarly violent impulses, best encapsulated in his introduction to the narrative, as cited in Chapter 5, wherein Tutillius explains to a shocked Octavian: ‘That was Mark Antony. You’re lucky you still have your head’ (Young, 2003). Antony’s change of temperament is as swift as it is brutal, and it is interesting to note that his 1999 incarnation bears greater resemblance to his characterization in Cleopatra (1963) than it does to his appearances in 2002 and 2003 (Julius Caesar and Augustus respectively). In the space of three years, is it feasible to trace a paradigm shift in the representation of deficient masculinity, particularly one that specifically did not occur over the preceding 36 years in which the myth was abrogated? The answer is a qualified yes. Yes, in that a shift undoubtedly does occur, and it is so pronounced that it must be interrogated. Moreover, in structure and intent, the 1999 text is more appropriately situated alongside the 1963: both texts focus specifically on Cleopatra (and 1999 is the final text to do so) as opposed to the male, Roman players, and, aesthetically and narratively, Cleopatra (1999) owes an evolutionary debt to Cleopatra (1963). Qualified, however, in that, although the structuring of masculinity remains constant from the 1963 through to the 1999 text, the structuring of Cleopatra’s femininity in 1999 is more closely relevant to the twenty-first-century texts, in that the narrative (however problematically) specifically attempts to engage with third-wave feminism, and specifically the rallying-cry of ‘girl power’. Antony and Cleopatra’s gender positioning is, as I have argued, interrelational and it may therefore seem paradoxical to claim that one text may bifurcate its gender paradigms so profoundly, yet it is this very tension between the old and the new (Cleopatra as problematic embodiment of the positively positioned woman of power versus Antony as conventional embodiment of feminized masculinity) that, I would argue, makes sense of Antony’s transition and affords it a smoother segue. Just as Cleopatra’s twenty-first-century appearances can be read as an effort to re-situate her Augustan construction along broadly feminist lines, so the very fact of her dyadic affiliation

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with Antony serves to problematize his feminized positioning. Since the gender paradigm that informed Cleopatra’s usurpation of the masculine position of power has been challenged, it follows that Antony’s position of gender reversal must also be destabilized. Yet while Cleopatra has been the focus of scholarly and literary interrogation throughout the decade leading up to the 1999 text, Antony has not – therefore, it makes sense that the first text to explore Cleopatra’s recuperated position might well fail to interrogate, or even acknowledge the possibility of, any correlative gender re-positioning for Antony. The fact is that Cleopatra’s repositioning represents a conscious effort to reframe and recuperate the woman of power. This undoubtedly creates a knock-on effect whereby Antony’s gender reversal is problematized, but, since the reframed paradigm is so recent, Antony’s destabilized position is not yet recognized, and he continues to perform according to his traditional tropes. However, it is not possible, of course, to ignore the critical importance of the concurrent advancement of masculine self-reflexivity during the 1990s. Problematizing the hegemonic male began long before this period, but it has been a significant feature of third-wave feminist thought, and from the late 1980s a plethora of alternative masculine subjectivities have begun to materially challenge the paradigm and have led to a much-publicized putative ‘masculinity crisis’ over the past three decades. Numerous scholars (for example, Whitehead and Barrett, 2001; Beynon, 2002; Connell, 2005) have essentially debunked the notion of a literal crisis, for precisely the caveat listed at the start of the chapter: for there to be a crisis in masculinity, masculinity itself would have to be singular, coherent and stable, and, of course, it is none of these things, any more than a singular notion of femininity describes the experience and gender performance of all women. However, the very existence of a crisis hypothesis suggests two things: firstly, that there is a perception of trauma to some broadly configured notion of the masculine performance; and, secondly, that, although masculinity-as-performance is unquestionably plural and polysemic, the term masculinity, as colloquially used, describes a consensus of hegemonic behaviours that, while individual men may deny or embrace them in the construction of their own experience of masculine performance, comprise the essence of an ‘acceptable’ masculinity. Moreover, this is an ‘acceptable’ masculinity that is recognizable as such to the male and

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female population, regardless of whether or not each individual actually considers it acceptable in line with their own personal belief system. In short, when ‘masculinity’ is discussed in the singular, we must understand this as ‘hegemonic masculinity’, and any discussion of a crisis in masculinity, therefore, indicates a destabilization of the hegemonic consensus. In The End of Masculinity (1998), John MacInnes contextualizes the current tension by situating masculinity(ies) within an historical framework and identifying similar moments of crisis, always connected to a disruption of the male/female paradigm (1998: 1–23). We can see, therefore, that the paradigm itself exists in a state of flux and that a challenge (such as the current) is not a new phenomenon. The very fact that it is perceived as such evidences the totalizing nature of the patriarchal status quo: challenges are absorbed, naturalized and then denied. Of course, there is no reason that we cannot be currently witnessing both a crisis of perception and a fundamental shift in gender relations, and, in fact, the latter is generally offered as a causative factor in inducing the crisis-discourse – in other words, the crisis exists in the representative sphere because gender relations have shifted to the point that masculinity (singular, therefore hegemonic) has destabilized and men (all men; no allowance tends to be made for different masculine subjectivities) are uncertain about how to perform the masculine. In Cultures of Masculinity, however, Tim Edwards (2006) dismisses this notion as unsupported by the available evidence: On one level at least, the crisis of masculinity is a crisis of representation. There are in essence two sides to this question: first, the extent to which the crisis of masculinity exists simply as a matter of its representation as such; and secondly, the extent to which contemporary representations of masculinity fuel the sense that masculinity is itself in crisis. In the first case, this question is mostly answered with respect to the previous empirical documentation of shifts in relation to masculinity and the experiences of men which provide at least some evidence of at least some concern for at least some men, though very little which supports an overall crisis of masculinity thesis. In the second case, there is equally conflicting evidence concerning the ways in which men are represented. Though it is true that male incompetence and inadequacies with everything from household cleaning (advertisements

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for Mr Muscle) to personal relationships (a famous Volkswagen Golf advert) now form a key target in much television advertising and that many UK and US situation comedies now depict men as either emotionally inept (Men Behaving Badly) or simply less important (Sex and the City), the image of the heroic male in whatever form still dominates the movie industry, adorns magazines from Men’s Health to GQ, and fuels a myriad of aspirational desires from sport to corporate success (Edwards, 2006: 15).

If this is a crisis of perception rather than a fundamental shift in the male/ female paradigm, the focus of the questions is shifted somewhat. Rather than asking for evidence of a crisis, which is broadly the same as asking for evidence of a shift in the paradigm, we must ask the following: • What has provoked the crisis-discourse? • What is the imagery offered in support of the crisis-discourse? • What are the elements of hegemonic masculinity that are challenged by the imagery invoked? I want to spend some time now addressing these questions. The Crisis-Discourse Stephen M Whitehead and Frank J Barrett, in The Masculinities Reader, argue that ‘unlike feminist theories, which can be traced back at least to the eighteenth century writings of Mary Wollstonecraft… the sociology of masculinity is relatively recent, only coming into being in the latter half of the twentieth century’ (2001: 2). They further expand upon MacInnes’ historicizing context by identifying moments of masculine crisis within the twentieth century – and, critically, linking them to moments of national crisis: [I]t is apparent that whenever larger social and public concerns raise their head (ie. about possible war, economic recession, rises in crime, educational underachievement, or the moral fabric of a nation) then very quickly the issue of boys/men comes to the fore; usually how to change them, control them, provide them with purpose, or simply void the worst excesses of antisocial male behaviour. What emerges, in fact, is a moral panic around men

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and masculinity, which can quickly turn into a backlash against women and feminism… (Whitehead and Barrett, 2001: 8)

In fact, this ‘backlash’ against feminism was interrogated by Susan Faludi in her 1991 treatise of the same name, and, although Faludi’s argument has since come under extensive criticism, Whitehead and Barrett themselves identify three ‘waves’ of masculinities theorizing that closely coincide with post-1950s feminist movements, suggesting that, at the very least, interrogations of masculinity and femininity are closely linked. Significantly, Whitehead and Barrett identify the key theoretical structure of third-wave masculinities theory as closely linked to poststructuralist feminism, and argue that it draws heavily on pluralistic concepts of subjectivity. They argue that it seek[s] to understand the processes by which definitions and discourses reinforce gender inequalities; for example, by positioning men as strong and women as fragile; men as rational, women as emotional; men as disciplined, women as undisciplined; heterosexual men as normal, homosexuals as sick; and so on (Whitehead and Barrett, 2001: 17).

Tim Edwards (2006) develops this further, by arguing that the practice or experience of masculinity ‘may be in crisis due to its perceived tendency to, as it were, implode into femininity, whether through an overall undermining of any gender role distinctions or through feminization of some forms of masculinity as, for example, in the case of the rise of contemporary consumerist, fashion-conscious or sexually uncertain masculinities such as metrosexuality’ (2006: 17). Therefore, if we follow this line of reasoning, we must understand that the crisis-discourse is provoked less by exterior forces threatening to collapse the hegemonic status quo, but from the status quo actively being collapsed from within. Images of the Crisis-Discourse In such an environment, it might be expected that hegemonic masculinity might seek to socio-culturally reinforce itself by privileging images of the chaos induced by collapsing gender distinctions – precisely the images

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invoked by Antony’s traditional, feminized deficient masculinity. Yet this would be to mistake the nature of the crisis. For arguably the first time, the problem is not the threat to hegemony: the problem is hegemony itself. This is certainly in no small measure attributable to the destabilizing nature of the current masculinities discourse: by denying masculinity (singular) in favour of masculinities (plural), post-structuralist discourse inherently questions the logic and authority of hegemonic masculinity. The crisis discourse arises from the tension between the singular and the plural, rather than (necessarily) the male and the female. One need only investigate the avatars of the crisis for evidence: the ‘New Man’ of the late 1980s/1990s, whose sensitivity and family values were open to ridicule, but who was, nevertheless, held up as an aspirational ideal in advertising and popular culture (Shields, 2002: 125–126); the ‘New Father’, who accesses the care-giving parental space previously the domain of the mother, and yet retains a specifically separate, masculine discourse (Shields, 2002: 132–133); the ‘manly tears’ (Shields, 2002: 125) of several high-profile sportsmen and politicians, which reclaim and masculinize an iconic sign of femininity. All evidence Edwards’ idea of the collapse of gender distinction, yet all are specifically recuperated within the masculine sphere and, thus made safe, idealized. The Challenge to Hegemonic Masculinity To be clear, then: the crisis discourse describes a threat to hegemonic masculinity, and it is a crisis of perception, rather than an overarching crisis of men. Edwards summarizes it as follows: [T]here is little real evidence of anything that might constitute a crisis of masculinity within the terms of how this is most commonly specified. While changes in employment and the family are significant and even radical in some respects, their effects on men remain hard to measure and almost certainly highly uneven according to wider criteria of class, ethnicity, geography or sexuality (Edwards, 2006: 16).

There is, however, evidence of a crisis within hegemonic masculinity itself, or, to quote Edwards again, ‘the crisis of masculinity may relate to the sense

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that masculinity in terms of the male sex role is itself ipso facto crisis-inducing. In this sense, masculinity is not in crisis, it is crisis’ (2006: 17). It is, I would suggest, no accident that in the twentieth century moments of crisis (particularly those defined by Whitehead) have also tended to coincide with cycles of historical epics. The historical epic is, as I have argued in the Introduction, traditionally a site for negotiating contemporary socio-cultural or socio-political anxieties, and either exorcizing them or assimilating them into a new, coherent archetype that unites conflicting discourses and thus resolves the tensions between them. In the latter half of the twentieth century – the period that Whitehead and Barrett identify as the birth of masculinities study – the cycles of Hollywood historical epics have run neatly alongside two key waves of theorizing masculinity – the 1950s and the present.1 The historical epic not only essentializes gender roles, it also naturalizes them in their essentialist structure, by appealing to a rhetoric of an idealized past in which gender exists in a more organic form, free of the ambiguities associated with modern gender interrogation. It is therefore well-suited to the business of negotiating – and transmitting – adjustments in the performance of male and female. Since this is, inherently, a crisis of performativity – of disrupting the hegemonic performance of the male – it is not only possible but actively desirable to interrogate Antony’s performance of masculinity in order to trace out the shifting boundaries of the ‘not me’. Antony and the Paradigm Shift Not all of the screen-age embellishments to Antony’s narrative are linked to this paradigm shift, but most are impacted in some way. The two-act structure endures to an extent, although, since the focus of the narrative is no longer Cleopatra, it is less plainly delineated. Moreover, the anti-progeneration discourse that denied the existence of Antony’s children is entirely reversed, for reasons that I will discuss in depth. Finally, elements of the feminizing narrative – immoderate love, infantilization, commodification – give way to an entirely different discourse that posits not femininity but previously venerated tropes of masculinity as deficient. The paradigm shift therefore repositions Antony, essentially, as antiprogressive. If post-structuralist masculinities theory rejects the notion

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of masculinity as singular, and problematizes a hegemonic paradigm that idealizes physical strength, emotional inexpressivity and a polarization of public/private (note that I say problematizes these notions, rather than explicitly rejecting them), then Antony is deficient precisely because he embodies these problematic tropes. The pre-shift Antony was derided for experiencing emotion too deeply; post-shift, he barely experiences emotion at all. Pre-shift, Antony is rarely seen engaged in the masculine business of warfare; post-shift, he remains largely unengaged in warfare (which tends to be configured as politicized and therefore masculinized, albeit often problematically), but is prone to spontaneous and unpredictable bouts of destructive inter-personal violence. Pre-shift, Antony exists outside of the public sphere, and enters it only reluctantly and fully aware of his deficits; post-shift, Antony enters the public sphere with a clear sense of entitlement, but mistaking intimidation and brutality for political manoeuvring. It is, again, a question of performativity. Todd W Reeser (2010), in Masculinities in Theory, describes it thus: Gender can also be shown as performative when mechanisms of masculinity appear as overdetermined. If a man acts excessively masculine or performs too much or too well, it can become clear to the viewer or to himself that he is performing his gender. For in order to hide masculinity’s performativity, a man may have to limit his performance and contain it as non-excessive. I might say the same about the over-repetition of masculinity: a man who acts too often in a way perceived as hyper-masculine calls attention to his masculinity as something performed (Reeser, 2010: 89).

By performing excessive masculinity, therefore, post-shift Antony codes his performance as deficient. The clearest and most obvious way that this is effected is through his quasi-psychopathic use of violence. Antony as Psychopath One who demonstrates, from an early age and across various situations, egocentricity, grandiosity, deceptiveness, shallow emotions with poor frustration tolerance, lack of empathy, guilt, or remorse, impulsivity, irresponsibility,

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and the ready violation of social and legal norms and expectations… (Hervé, 2007: 50)

The above could be a character synopsis for James Purefoy’s Mark Antony in Rome (2005–7). It is, in fact, Robert Hare’s canonical definition of the psychopath (paraphrased in Hervé, 2007). This is, as I have discussed, an abrupt and startling transformation. On the twenty-first-century screen (Julius Caesar, 2002; Augustus, 2003; Rome, 2005–7), Antony is no longer divorced from Roman politics, perhaps because, to date, the twenty-first century has not yet retold Cleopatra’s story. Where Antony appears, he is a player in a wider Roman story, to which Cleopatra is the adjunct – yet, while he may move in political circles and participate in the key political events of the late Republic, he displays no fundamental political skill, and relies instead on brute force and threat. Simply put, any political power he retains is predicated on violence. I have examined the broader, socio-cultural reasons behind the shifting standards of masculinity. I want now to consider the specific reasons behind the reframing of violence as excessive, the limits of what constitutes excess (since male characters continue to rely on demonstrations of physical strength to assert their masculinity, and those without any recourse to physical violence are still liable to a feminizing discourse) and the re-bounding of the idealized male. Considering the difficulties and deficient masculinity associated with Antony’s performance of emotional expressivity in his earlier texts, it might seem anomalous to claim that, in the twenty-first century, the reversal of this archetype holds true. Yet this over-simplifies both the original deficient behaviour and the paradigm of masculine emotionality. As Stephanie A Shields, in Speaking from the Heart: Gender And The Social Meaning of Emotion (2002), explains: The current ideal of manly emotion is obvious in the exemplar of masculinity offered in popular culture. Media images suggest something other than a norm of inexpressivity for manly emotion. In fact, inexpressivity, in the form of absence of emotion expressed or inferred to be felt occurs far more rarely in depictions of strong male film and television characters than

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the prevailing emotion stereotype would lead us to expect. Expressions of strongly felt emotion are much more the rule (Shields, 2002: 126).

It is not, therefore, the expression of emotion that marks the male as deficient, it is the extent to which he is able to contain it and to recuperate it within a specifically masculine framework. Shields compares two archetypes of masculine emotion: one derided, and the other lauded: The current US version of the feeling male is markedly different from the quiche-eating Mr Sensitive so disparaged in the 1970s. The latter version achieves emotional capacity by adding feminine emotional style to the masculine repertoire. The aim is to be androgynous and manly, but avoiding campish parody. This is a tall order because simply grafting feminine emotionality onto the masculine role does not work: the man who adopts a feminine emotionality is not applauded as androgynous, nor congratulated for triumphing over constricted gender roles. He is viewed as weak or disingenuous (Shields, 2002: 125–126).

This indicates both a shift in the framing of masculine emotionality, and also a long-standing concern with the question of emotion and gender performativity. However, the question must be asked: why is one ridiculous and the other acceptable? It is, again, a question of excess, containability and the pervasive challenge to the hegemonic paradigm. Edwards (2006), while rebutting the notion of a crisis per se, acknowledges the centrality of questions of emotionality to the changing discourse of masculinity: Concerns relating to the family and men’s position within the domestic sphere relate strongly to underlying anxieties surrounding men’s sexuality. There are essentially two dimensions to this issue. The first of these concerns men’s ongoing difficulties in relation to emotional expression or communication and interpersonal intimacy. Though the New Man promised a new dawn in men’s inner emotional happiness and expression, as typified in the now overly common imagery of men holding babies, this often proved to be little more than a media invention and myth. Men’s difficulties with emotional expression are also not new historically and are well documented, yet what

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is newer here is the sense of increasing pressure surrounding men’s personal development and capacities in these areas… Of particular importance here is the perception of women’s rising expectations sexually and emotionally in the wake of second-wave feminism, often linked with a greater sense of their sexual and emotional independence from men (Edwards, 2006: 13).

Shields develops the idea, specifically linking the practice of male emotional expressivity with the active practice of bounding a new hegemonic subjectivity for men: Appropriating emotion expressivity and displacing extravagant expressivity with telegraphed emotion, thus doing emotion the ‘right way’ – as manly emotion – reclaims and reasserts a definition of ‘masculine’ when gender categories are up for grabs. Indeed, in an era when neither ‘masculine’ work nor ‘masculine’ clothing unambiguously define gender as difference, emotion is one of the few remaining contested areas left in which drawing a line between masculine/manly and feminine still works (Shields, 2002: 136).

Shields’ definition of ‘manly’ emotion is emotion that is ‘intensely felt, genuine, goal or context driven and time limited, and, most important, expressively economical’ (2002: 85). Moreover, while Shields’ concept of this idealized, ‘manly’ emotion is hardly a new phenomenon, she is able to identify instances of more recent emotional expressivity – in the form of tears – that have been recuperated (under a strict and specific set of criteria) as masculine. She identifies ‘consistent conditions that mark the difference between manly tears or weeping judged to be merely emotional (regardless of the sex of the weeper)’, and finds that ‘manly tears… are not indiscriminate, nor are they profuse’ (2002: 125). This is an important qualification of the emotional inexpressivity paradigm, and it castigates both twentieth- and twenty-first-century Antonies. Emotionally expressive Antony clearly does not do emotion the ‘right way’; he is both profuse and indiscriminate in his tears, which marks them, not only as non-manly, but as actively feminine. However, the Antony that fits the model of the Hare psychopath is equally emotionally deficient, but for the opposite reason. If we compare the two Antonies that fit the new archetype (Augustus, 2003; and Rome, 2005–7), we find that, converse

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to being overwhelmed by sorrow or shame or all-consuming love, both, for the most part, display a disengagement with not only feminizing but humanizing emotions. The Antony of Rome, for example, far from being grief-stricken at the death of Caesar, actively enjoys turning his funeral oration into an elaborate provocation of the assassins (2007.1). It is a political manoeuvre, yes, but it is predominantly a game; the solemnity of the occasion is indicated when Antony cheerfully refuses to get out of bed on the morning of the funeral until he’s ‘fucked someone’ (2007.1). Compare this with the reaction of Brutus, who shares a similar quasi-filial relationship with Caesar, and who is coaxed into the assassination only after considerable moral and philosophical anguish, and we see Shields’ idea of ‘manly emotion’ in his subsequent breakdown: contained, appropriate, and recuperated first by suffering and later by physical action. Furthermore, Antony’s new emotional vacuum opens up an intriguing corollary in Octavian: neither he nor Antony embodies paradigm masculinity, yet Octavian is configured as fit-to-rule, while Antony is not. Both men exhibit a similar emotional structure; Octavian is equally capable of ‘egocentricity, grandiosity, deceptiveness, shallow emotions… lack of empathy, guilt, or remorse… and the ready violation of social and legal norms and expectations’; however, what is missing from this list is ‘poor frustration tolerance… impulsivity, [and] irresponsibility’ (Hervé, 2007: 50). Octavian is unquestionably emotionally maladjusted, but, critically, he lacks Antony’s predilection for physical violence in the public sphere – his sadomasochistic tendencies are reserved explicitly for the domestic, marital space. This issue of public/private, more than any other, defines the boundaries of Octavian’s containable deficient masculinity and Antony’s excessive deficient masculinity. Where Antony is emotionally expressive, it is the accompanying feminizing discourse that precludes him from the political world (Octavian is emotionally contained, permitting him access to the public sphere); where he is inexpressive, his overdetermined, performative masculinity renders it chaotic – subject, in fact, to rampant incontinentia, which, as we have seen, disqualifies him from the public arena. Octavian, on the other hand, whilst undeniably exhibiting unsettling tendencies in his emotional expression (or lack thereof), which marks his masculinity as problematic under the new paradigm, is controlled, ordered and effective. His masculinity is undoubtedly some

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way short of the ideal, but it is neither excessive nor overdetermined, and it is, critically, contained. The differential is most explicit in the scene wherein Octavian banishes Antony from Rome. I have already considered the fact that twenty-first-century Antony does not consider himself politically inept, and therefore requires to be forcibly removed from the public, masculine sphere. However, the means by which this is articulated clearly underlines the two men’s gender performances. Octavian is calm and contained throughout the exchange, invoking standard tropes of Roman masculinity to underline Antony’s deficiencies. ‘You shall leave this city or I will declare our alliance is broken,’ he tells Antony: I shall have this sad story told in the Forum. I will have it posted in every city in Italy, and you know the people are not so liberal with their wives as you are. They will say you wear cuckold’s horns. They will say your wife betrayed you with a low born pleb on my staff. You will be a figure of fun. The proles will laugh at you in the street… your soldiers will mock you behind your back (2007.8).

Antony’s response is a recourse to violence: he seizes Octavian by the throat, but Octavian is unmoved. ‘Go on – strike me,’ he says. ‘See what happens.’ The exact consequences are unclear – Antony is physically more powerful than Octavian, and, although Octavian has stationed guards in the room, they are few in number and Antony has successfully used superior force in similarly difficult situations in the past. Yet, in this sequence, the balance of power rests squarely with Octavian: his display of emotion is controlled, judicious, whereas Antony’s is, as ever, chaotic and impulsive. This is not to say that Octavian is unproblematically the victor in the scene – Octavia underlines his contradictory position by snapping to Livia, ‘It was nice to meet you. Take care. You’re marrying a monster,’ thereby effectively subverting any discourse of idealized masculinity that his performance may have attracted. It is not ideal: it is simply less deficient. However, it is in the establishment of idealized masculinity – the ‘other mine’ – that we can most clearly see the boundaries of the deficient. As I have argued in Chapter 5, idealized masculinity in Rome is embodied in

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the Vorenus/Pullo dyad. This is very much in keeping with the new paradigm, configuring hegemonic masculinity as a plural subjectivity rather than one singular, proscriptive set of instructions, and, as I have discussed, both men serve to recuperate each other’s flaws, which lie in their privileging of either the public over the private (Vorenus) or the private over the public (Pullo). Edwards (2006) articulates the broader issue thus: Of particular significance here is the way in which this public-private division is configured in relation to masculinity more specifically or, to put it more simply, the problem for masculinity and men becomes precisely the difficulty of reconciling public and private needs, or career success and aspiration with emotional warmth and intimacy… the perceived problem for men is precisely the sense that successful public masculinity and private happiness cannot be combined as they are quite literally antithetical parts of masculine identity and practice (Edwards, 2006: 20).

These antithetical parts find their inverse in each man, allowing the audience to appreciate Vorenus and Pullo as an amalgamated embodiment of the paradigm. However, as the series progresses, Pullo is able to teach Vorenus about the niceties of interpersonal relationships with the opposite sex, and, consequent of the restoration of affections between Vorenus and Niobe, after his anger indirectly causes her death, his devastation at the loss of his wife (and his family’s kidnap by Erastes Fulman while he was incapacitated by grief) prompts him to seek a closer, more emotionally open relationship with his children and Niobe’s illegitimate son, Lucius. Pullo, on the other hand, through his affiliation with Vorenus, begins to contain his excessive behaviour, and to work towards the objective of establishing a mature, adult relationship with the slave Eireni and repositioning himself as a non-excessive family man. He also learns the masculine business of leadership, and, although in Season 1 his rejection from Vorenus’ house after he murders Eireni’s slave lover projects him back into excessive, savage behaviour, by Season 2, after Vorenus absents himself, Pullo’s character has sufficiently evolved that he is able to efficiently run the Collegia alone. These character arcs enable us to sketch the perimeter of idealized masculinity and thus, by a process of disidentification, map out the

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boundaries of the sub-hegemonic position that Antony now occupies. Paradigm masculinity, therefore, now includes: • Manly (appropriate, contained) emotion • Lack of excess • Honour (to rules, tradition, family, friends) • Successfully overlapping the public with the private • Family oriented values/aspirations • Leadership/proficiency in the public sphere. Antony embodies none of these; indeed, his only display of emotional expressivity is found in episode 2007.10, when he believes that Cleopatra is dead and sobs uncontrollably: not the masculine-oriented grief of Vorenus, who recuperates his position by privileging anger and revenge over weeping, but the excessive, abandoned tears of the feminized Antony. Antony-as-psychopath, while he may no longer attract a discourse of gender reversal, remains unable to negate the gender anxieties made manifest in his body. Rather, by realigning him in line with contemporary discourses on masculinity yet continuing to position him problematically, his status as signifier of deficient masculinity is underlined. Therefore, in Augustus (2003), Octavian is aware that Antony presents a threat on his return to Rome after Caesar’s assassination, but that threat is not political: it is physical. ‘Killing served him,’ remembers the older Augustus in voiceover. ‘He embraced it’ (Young, 2003). A similar volatility can be seen in Rome’s Antony. The text abounds with instances of unpredictable, extreme violence: his dangerous smile in the moments before he slashes Quintus’ throat (2007.1); the savage beating he inflicts upon Octavian (2007.2); his brutal murder of the Senator whose unfortunate task it is to read out Cicero’s letter (2007.3). As I have argued in Chapter 4, this Antony may move with a sense of entitlement within the public sphere, but, if he mistakes this for genuine political prowess, other, more astute political players understand his true usefulness: the physical threat he embodies. It takes the superior intellect of the likes of Caesar to corral his casual brutality into something focused and politically serviceable. ‘I don’t know how you tolerate that man,’ complains Brutus shortly after Antony’s introduction in the

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first episode of Season 1. Caesar’s reply sums up in four short words the primary usefulness of the twenty-first-century Antony: ‘He likes to fight’ (2005.1). The Wrong Kind of Violence The paradigm shift goes some measure towards explaining the problematic use of the iconography of battle or conventional warfare in Antony’s construction: although violence as a marker of physical strength is a key signifier of masculinity on screen, the problematization of hegemonic masculinity confuses the fetishization of the belligerent male somewhat. It is an extension, albeit presently marginalized, of the honour-code that informs positively or negatively positioned masculine screen violence. Kimmel and Aronsen (2004) describe the ideal of masculine honour as ‘one of the most basic social codes for prompting and regulating men’s competition for status’. They continue by situating it as a system designed to stabilize and regulate male behaviour within a community setting: ‘Unlike individualism, honor does not idealize solitary self-reliance. Instead, it rests on a man’s reputation in his community. The more a man enacts a shared ideal of manliness, the more honor he gains’ (Kimmel and Aronsen, 2004: 398). Kimmel and Aronsen’s notion of honour regulates the masculine display of violence by privileging behaviour that benefits the larger community, whilst rejecting behaviour rooted in self-aggrandizement or gratification. ‘A man gains honor to the degree that he can exemplify his society’s code of manly prowess,’ say Kimmel and Aronsen. ‘Typically this code praises manly valor, independence, and self-control, while blaming and shaming men who seem weak, vulnerable, or dependent’ (2004: 398). Clearly, this distinction serves to recuperate Vorenus’ murderous rage towards Erastes Fulmen and his associates after the kidnap of Vorenus’ family (2007.2), while vilifying Antony’s brutal bludgeoning to death of the Senator who reads out Cicero’s insulting letter (2007.3). However, whilst the configuration of Antony-as-psychopath serves to position his masculinity as performative (and therefore problematic), it is notable that his violent outbursts are seldom recuperated into the (appropriate) sphere of warfare.

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Discussing the eroticization of the body of the male combatant, Varda Burstyn (1999) locates the prestige afforded to the warrior in a masculine space ‘where males are often called on, by other men, to sacrifice their bodies and their lives. If boys must create a sense of masculinity largely out of extrafamilial experiences and fantasy construction, one that can serve them during perilous times, many will seize on the most obvious and extreme of masculine associations and masculine symbols. And those symbols and practices that link masculinity to violence, such as sport and military culture, qualify as such’ (Burstyn, 1999: 178). According to the historical record, Antonius was a gifted military tactician: he was a veteran of Gaul, where he distinguished himself as a general under Caesar, and later realized Caesar’s final dream of leading a Roman invasion of Parthia, the rogue eastern province that had defeated and shamed every Roman foray in living memory. JM Carter describes him as ‘the finest soldier of the day’ and states that he ‘spent a lot of his life with soldiers, in camp, in real wars’ (1970: 117). After the abortive siege of Mutina in late 44 bce, with his troops routed and apparently facing ignominious defeat, even Plutarch is prepared to praise him. Opting for a tactical retreat into Transalpine Gaul, Antonius and his legions faced a difficult winter march to join with Lepidus’ army on the far side of the Alps. Plutarch describes it thus: Antony’s army experienced terrible hardships in their retreat, and they suffered most of all from hunger. But it was characteristic of Antony to show his finest qualities in the hour of trial, and indeed it was always when his fortunes were at their lowest that he came nearest to being a good man. It is a common experience for men who have suffered some reverse to understand what virtue is, but it is rare indeed for them to find the strength to emulate the qualities they admire and to rid themselves of the vices they condemn: on the contrary, many people become so discouraged by adversity that they give way to their habits all the more and allow their judgement to collapse. At any rate, on this occasion, Antony set a wonderful example to his soldiers. In spite of all the luxury and extravagance of his recent life, he could bring himself without difficulty to drink foul water and eat wild fruit and roots. And during the crossing of the Alps, we are told, the army was reduced even to devouring the bark of trees and creatures that no man had ever tasted before (Plut. Ant. 17).

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The gamble paid off and Antonius and Lepidus joined forces, provoking a chain of events that would lead ultimately to reconciliation with Octavian and the establishment of the Second Triumvirate. However, Mutina, although it sets the stage for perhaps Antonius’ greatest reversal of defeat, is never shown on screen. Rome (2007) devotes the greatest screen time to the events, having the newsreader articulate the lead-up and outcome of the battle in heavily anti-Antonian propaganda, and then cutting to Pullo arriving at the recently vacated battlefield to search for Vorenus. The ground is littered with dead bodies, fully emphasizing the horror of the slaughter, and, as Pullo picks his way through them, the adult Octavian is introduced to the narrative for the first time, on horseback and wearing full Roman armour. He informs Pullo that Antony is ‘skulking in the hills’ (2007.4). The ignominy of Antony’s defeat is emphasized when the scene cuts to his chaotic encampment: soldiers mill aimlessly around and a surgeon stitches an open wound on Antony’s back as he receives the full details of his losses. ‘How many dead, in total?’ he asks. On hearing that the dead number at least 8,000, Posca, who is by Antony’s side, is horrified and suggests that Antony seek terms of surrender with Octavian: ‘While we still have the semblance of an army.’ Antony spits: ‘That’s fucking slave talk!’ Posca capitulates, asking, ‘North to the mountains, then – and after that?’, to which Antony merely smirks and says, ‘I’ll think of something’ (2007.4). A tactical retreat has become an impulsive act of injured pride. Later, Lepidus is coerced by the threat of violence into serving as Antony’s second in command and Antony’s entire camp is surrounded by Octavian’s troops in the night, after Atia has apparently diverted his attention with sex. The Battle of Philippi, in which the Caesarian forces of the triumvirate met the forces of Caesar’s assassins, is one of the rare battles that plays out in full on screen. Antony is not pictured fighting (neither are Octavian or Agrippa; however, both Brutus and Cassius have extended battle scenes preceding their deaths), but instead waits on the sidelines with an assortment of generals and cavalry to issue orders. He is delighted and excitable: not at the prospect of a military victory, but at the prospect of carnage. ‘Let’s have some fun!’ he says over his shoulder to Octavian, as he turns to give the order to advance. Later, while Octavian waits

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and watches anxiously, he turns to Antony, who is slumped in his saddle eating a loaf of bread. ‘What’s happening, do you know?’ asks Octavian. Antony throws away the loaf and answers, insouciantly, ‘No idea.’ As he unsheathes his sword, Octavian asks, nervously, ‘Where are you going?’ Antony smiles his dangerous smile and says: ‘When in doubt – attack!’ (2007.6). Antony-as-psychopath bears no relation to Antony the military tactician: battle decisions are made out of blood lust rather than tactical advantage, and he treats the entire enterprise as a game. It is not, however, only the discourse of inappropriate violence that informs Antony’s screen relationship with warfare. William Fitzgerald (2001), in his examination of ‘Oppositions, Anxieties and Ambiguities in the Toga Movie’, discusses the strategy employed by movies that spectacularize the male body (which is a speciality of the toga epic) of disavowing the homoerotic gaze through the use of sadism: violence enacted on the male body on display provides a heterosexual motivation for the male gaze. ‘In the toga movie,’ says Fitzgerald: the male body is spectacularized for an implicitly male audience; it is not only a body with which the male viewer identifies, but also the one that is presented as an object for his gaze, giving rise to an ‘unquiet pleasure’. The male look at the male body must be motivated in such a way that its erotic component is repressed, hence the sadism and violence connected with many of the scenes in which the male body is displayed (Fitzgerald, 2001: 37).

This is an extension of Steve Neale’s (1993) discussion of ‘Masculinity as Spectacle’, where he finds that ‘The repression of any explicit avowal of eroticism in the act of looking at the male seems structurally linked to a narrative content marked by sado-masochistic phantasies and scenes: Hence both forms of voyeuristic looking, intra- and extra-diegetic, are especially evident in those moments of contest and combat… The anxious ‘aspects’ of the look at the male… are embodied and allayed not just by playing out the sadism inherent in voyeurism through scenes of violence and combat, but also by drawing upon the structures and processes of fetishistic looking, by stopping the narrative in order to recognize the pleasure of

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display, but displacing it from the male body as such and locating it more generally in the overall components of a highly ritualized scene (Neale, 1993: 16–17).

Antony’s body is regularly on display: he bathes in milk in Cleopatra (1963); he has semi-nude scenes in Cleopatra (1999) and a full-frontal scene in Rome (2005.4), but he rarely has the opportunity to restate the heteronormative position – to deny the homoerotic – by displaying his body in combat. Rather, Antony’s body is more usually displayed as an object for display. That said, however, he is not entirely without battle sequences; Cleopatra (1934) shows him engaged in fighting during the final battle montage; Cleopatra (1999) has him fight in both Actium and, briefly, Philippi and the final Battle of Alexandria, and Rome (2005–7), as I have discussed, adopts the alternative discourse of inappropriate violence to position the audience reading of his minimal involvement in warfare. Nevertheless, with the exception of Philippi (in which Zane’s Antony does no actual fighting), the very selection of these battle sequences is ideologically determined: these are the sequences focused on by Augustan rhetoric precisely because these were the battles most open to propagandistic interpretation. Actium, in particular, has tended to be related in terms of Cleopatra’s cowardice and Antony’s emasculation by love as she flees the scene and he abandons the battle to follow her. An alternative reading of the battle, as presented by Carter in The Battle of Actium, has yet to be presented on screen (although Octavia references it in Rome, 2007.10). Cleopatra (1999) is particularly damning, having Antony sail blithely into an Augustan trap that Cleopatra is able to recognize from her position some considerable distance away: Antony’s ship is first penetrated by the prow of Octavian’s ship, and Antony is almost immediately thrown overboard in the ensuing violence. Meanwhile, Cleopatra’s ship is boarded and she is thrown down the steps to the hold, landing on a bed at the bottom, where she is quickly joined by a hostile soldier. In an anachronistic nod to 1990s ‘girl-power’, she is fortunately equipped with a sword and golden suit of armour, and manages to fight her way to safety by literally emasculating her attacker with a sword strike to the genitals.

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Antony’s prowess as soldier undoubtedly suffers from comparison with Caesar during narratives that focus on Cleopatra, as the battle fought jointly by Cleopatra and Caesar ended in victory, while the battles fought jointly by Cleopatra and Antony ended unanimously in defeat. It is notable, therefore, that even those narratives of the twentyfirst century that have other focal characters either omit or generally distort Antony’s military victories. Julius Caesar (2002), for example, has Antony lead the attack on the fortified Gaulish city of Alesia, only to immediately run into difficulties that require Caesar to come to his aid. Rome (2007), as I have discussed, reduces the Mutina sequence to a massacre that requires Antony to skulk in the hills (2007.4), and envisages his subsequent Alpine march and entente with Lepidus as an act of pride and intimidation respectively. It is a complicated and often inconsistent aspect to his iconography, but, considering that one of Antonius’ primary claims to the leadership of the Caesarian party was his enormous popularity as a successful general, it is revealing that the absence of military glory is a trope of his screen iconography. Given that, as I have argued, the ritualized display of violence is a marker, not only of masculinity, but of masculine honour, it is significant that, even when Antony is allowed to display physical violence on screen, it is violence of the wrong kind. Progeneration Denied: The Case of the Missing Antonii The paradigm shift in the positioning of deficient masculinity has an interesting corollary in Antony’s screen constructions: the gradual emergence of his children into the narrative. Antonius had at least eight children – one by Antonia, two by Fulvia, three by Cleopatra and another two by Octavia – but they make no screen appearance before Augustus (2003), and this text only makes mention of Iullus Antonius, Antony’s second son by Fulvia, in order to explore Iullus’ later affair with Augustus’ daughter, Julia. However, after a slow start, Rome has him father at least two (and possibly three) children in the final two episodes: Cleopatra’s twins, Helios and Selene, and, potentially, Octavia’s daughter, Antonia (2007.9).2 By eliding Antony’s children from their narratives, the earlier texts – particularly those that feature Caesarion, and therefore present a contrasting exemplar of Caesar’s reproductive capacity – covertly

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challenge Antony’s masculinity by, essentially, denying his sexual potency. This would seem to suggest an answer as to why his lechery, where it exists, is positioned negatively: virility may be read as the positively connoted flip side of sexual promiscuity, but the word is also heavily invested with the implication of progenitive ability, as I will argue below. Antony’s sexual excess, therefore, describes not only a pathological behaviour (the inability to control the sexual urge, which is an element of incontinentia), but also, where it does not lead to reproduction, it implies emasculation through a discourse of lack of virility. This paradigm is complicated, of course, by the emergence of Antony’s children in the later narratives, which would seem to recuperate his sexual excess somewhat. To understand why it does not, it is necessary to understand the semiological positioning of screen fatherhood more generally, for fatherhood, it seems, is every bit as gender-loaded a term for positioning masculinity as motherhood is to femininity. Lechery and Fatherhood I have already argued that lechery is differentiated from masculine sexual desire by a set of sociological codes that broadly specify the terms of healthy and pathological sexual congress. For example, a vigorous sexual appetite is coded healthy, and indeed is a key signifier of masculine performance – witness Octavian’s sexual rite of passage in 2005.6, what Barbara Weiden Boyd refers to as the culmination of his ‘three-step process of maturation and masculinization’ (Weiden Boyd, 2008: 95 – this process also includes learning to fight and hunt), after which he is permitted to wear the toga virilis, the symbol of manhood. However, historically, the passage from the boyhood tunic to the adult toga was marked by a series of ‘familial and military rituals’ (Raucci, 2008: 214), not the loss of virginity. Stacie Raucci suggests that ‘Octavian’s visit to the brothel is an age-appropriate rite of passage for an American audience familiar with movies dealing with teenagers and the loss of their virginity’ (2008: 214). It is certainly true that, as a sequence, Octavian’s transition to manhood is more effectively signified by the brothel scene, for which modern viewers are likely to have some form of cultural reference system, than through a set of obscure and unfamiliar Roman rituals. It also demonstrates,

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however, the primacy placed on sexual experience as a screen signifier of masculinity. As Anise K Strong has argued (2008: 219–230), Rome sets out to use sex-as-spectacle in a manner consistent with receptions of ancient Rome, and in a manner designed to draw the widest possible viewing audience. However, this focus on foregrounding sexual behaviour, as I argue elsewhere (Kelly, 2013), allows the text to use sexuality as a marker of gender performance: Octavian’s sadomasochism, for instance, marks him as Other, while Vorenus’ sexual relations with Niobe, as they move from awkward and perfunctory to loving and passionate, describe his progress in approaching (though not fully achieving) paradigm masculinity across Season 1. It is notable, then, that, amidst this abundance of on-screen sexual congress, very few pregnancies result. Moreover, and most intriguingly, of the four children born across the two seasons (not including Julia Caesaris’ or Eirene’s miscarriages), three are either potentially or explicitly Antony’s. Since Antony’s gender position is no more appropriate in the twenty-first century than in previous texts, and since his sexual behaviour is, if anything, more pathological than ever, we must account for the sudden shift from non-progenitive to progenitive lechery. Paradoxical as it may seem, both the absence and subsequent presence of Antony’s screen children are differential aspects of the same marker of gender deficiency. As I have already argued in Chapter 5, the standard two-act structure of the majority of these texts requires the Antony portion to be rigorously condensed, vis-à-vis the Caesar-portion, and, at a superficial level, the concomitant time constraints may serve as a partial explanation for the decision to excise the conception and birth of Antony and Cleopatra’s three children from the screen narrative. Rome, while following a different imperative to those texts which foreground Cleopatra (and therefore structure the narrative around her relations with first Caesar and then Antony), can nevertheless be roughly divided into Caesar (Season 1) and Antony (Season 2). Moreover, while Season 2 covers the events of 44–30 bce, the final 11 years play out over only two episodes (2007.9 and 2007.10), arguably obliging the most radical abridgement of the Antony/Cleopatra affair of any text analysed in this study.3 Clearly the intricacies of the political situation must be lost to narrative expedience, and the plotline, which up to this point had had 20 hours of run-time to

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explore the nuances of the highly complex politics surrounding the end of the Republic, defaults to the standard tale of corruption by love. However, as numerous studies have shown (for example, May and Strikwerda, 1992; Clatterbaugh, 1997; Segal, 1997), fatherhood is such a contested and contradictory site for masculine performativity that we are obliged to attach greater significance to the fatherhood-discourse available in Antony’s narratives. ‘Father’, as a semiological construct, is no more stable than is ‘masculinity’, and it has been similarly interrogated and negotiated as masculine sociology has sought to reposition the male within a contested gender framework. Antony’s status as father (or non-father), therefore, is extremely significant in seeking to understand his position relative to the paradigm. Moreover, the operation of this discourse remains, for the most part, entirely covert in his screen narratives, since the ability to recognize it is entirely dependent on familiarity with the fact of his historical status as a father. The connection of fatherhood to hegemonic masculinity is longstanding and, regardless of any repositioning of signifiers of the hegemonic, shows no signs of yielding any of its semiological significance. Indeed, van Hoven and Hörschelmann (2005), in Spaces of Masculinities, describe it as ‘one of the key signifiers of masculinity’. They continue: ‘For many men becoming a father is an important part of their masculine identity… It is a powerful symbol, reinforced through popular culture in diverse ways…’ (2005: 209). This is achieved through an intimate connection with the concept of virility, which shares an etymological root with virtue, and which is derived from the Latin word vir, meaning manliness (Williams, 1999: 132). ‘The virile body becomes a representative of control and power,’ says Kelly Oliver (1997) in Family Values: Subjects Between Culture and Nature: It is an antibody insofar as its virility defies the uncontrollable passions and flows of the body. It is the body that represents the overcoming of boy. The virile body is the symbol of manliness; manliness is associated with culture; culture is associated with overcoming the body (Oliver, 1997: 128).

In Chapter 4, I argued that excessive desire is bound up with a discourse of loss-of-masculinity. Reproductive or not, uncontrollable sexual desire,

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according to Oliver, is philosophically linked to the animalistic. ‘Bodies and animals are governed by the laws of the natural world, but the mind and human beings are governed by the higher principles of reason,’ she says. ‘With its emphasis on reason against body, philosophy has insisted on a sharp distinction between nature and culture… The identification of sex and nature leads to the philosophical notion of Eros as disembodied reason rather than embodied passion’ (1997: 3–4). Moreover, she expands this idea of the separation of reason and passion to describe its reification in the body of the father: The association between father and culture, and the opposition between nature and culture or body and mind, disembodies the father. His body must be evacuated to maintain images of his association with culture against nature. From Plato to Arnold Schwarzenegger, paternal Eros has been figured as virility (Oliver, 1997: 5).

In other words, ‘virility’ exists separately from sexual desire. Virility is understood as masculine reason existing outside of the bodily passions – to be ruled by the body, therefore, is to be less than masculine. I have argued a variation on this theme under the discussion of lechery in Chapter 4; however, Oliver’s argument expands upon this by specifically situating the construct of the Father as an abstraction outside of the body, and, by extension, outside of sexual desire. Procreation requires the existence of sexual desire, of course, and the male body must be subject to sexual desire in order to procreate; however, that desire, in configuring the father, is situated outside of virility, which exists concurrent with but outside of bodily urges. Virility and Progenitive Ability In Barren in the Promised Land: Childless Americans and the Pursuit of Happiness, Eileen Taylor May (1997) considers the stigma of infertility in the US across a series of historical moments and the connotations of childlessness for husbands. In the socio-political upheaval of the 1950s, in particular – the period of the Baby Boom – she notes: ‘Fatherhood was not just a matter of pride… it, too, was an important responsibility

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and evidence of maturity, patriotism, and citizenship’ (Taylor May, 1997: 136). Such loaded terms suggest a high level of anxiety about the significance of fatherhood to the construction of the American male self, at a time when the construction of the American self was itself a site of negotiation and instability. Taylor May situates the anxiety in a sociohistorical context: Men also understood that fatherhood was a mark of good citizenship and that the absence of children was a sign of possible subversion of the American way… Procreation reflected optimism and abundance, a sign of faith in a better future. But the emphatic, almost desperate pronatalism of the era suggests that anxieties and fears about the future remained. The same sort of defensive nationalism that fuelled the race-suicide panic now spurred the postwar baby craze. Governmental policies and major social institutions did everything possible to keep the baby boom booming. Countless incentives, from federally financed mortgages to tax deductions, supported the establishment of nuclear families with children (Taylor May, 1997: 137).

It is in this environment that the theme of Antony as non-father first emerges. We can discount Cleopatra (1934) and Caesar and Cleopatra (1946) on the grounds that neither engages with the theme of masculine virility as embodied in fatherhood: Caesar and Cleopatra adopts a paternalistic tone, undoubtedly, but the paternal is manifested in a quasi-colonialist, rather than a specifically gendered,4 sense. Moreover, the sexual is specifically elided in the text, the better to allow the father/child paradigm to play out between Caesar-as-West and Cleopatra-as-Orient. Yet while the sexual is not only present but actively insistent in Cleopatra (1934), the fatherhood paradigm is noticeably absent – to the extent that Brutus and Octavian are configured as potential peers rather than putative sonfigures to Caesar (all three actors are of a similar age; indeed, Arthur Hohl, as Brutus, is older than Warren William as Caesar), and neither Caesar nor Antony fathers a child by Cleopatra. It is possible to read a theme of underlying frivolity into the absence of any children in the text – these are, after all, adults who have elected to abandon the mature world of marriage and family in order to carry on a hedonistic life of pleasure and abandon,

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to the extent that critic Charles Hopkins was moved to describe DeMille’s Antony and Cleopatra as ‘a playboy and a spoiled heiress in a Lubitsch farce’ (Charles Hopkins in Magill [ed], 1980: 359) – but the emphasis here is on interrogating the irresponsibility of the rich and powerful, and the contrast in the masculinities of Caesar and Antony is not, ultimately, underlined by their respective virilities. For the first mention of Caesar’s son, and the absence of Antony’s, we must look to Serpent of the Nile (1953). Serpent of the Nile forms an uneasy bridge between the lack of progenitive focus in the positioning of Antony’s masculinity and the more structured, Caesar-vs-Antony reproductive discourse that characterizes the later texts. While Caesarion appears in the text, he, like Caesar, spends very little time on screen, and he is more closely connected to Cleopatra’s gender positioning than Antony’s. Firstly, his birth is legitimized through a conversation between Cleopatra and Lucilius stating that Cleopatra and Caesar were married (although his phraseology, calling Cleopatra ‘a fresh young bride’ and Caesar ‘aged’, implies that there was an element of coercion in the match, a reading which is underlined by Cleopatra’s stated love for Lucilius himself). Cleopatra can therefore be understood as having rejected the hegemonic nuclear family for an extra-marital relationship with Antony, and an implied adulterous lust for Lucilius. Secondly, Caesarion is openly invested as the seat of her ambition – she may demonstrate tenderness towards him, but Cleopatra operates outside of the domestic sphere and her motherhood is consequently suspect. Finally, the story makes little attempt to adhere to the historical record and is more closely in keeping with the conventions of the B-movie than the historical epic. Nevertheless, we cannot ignore the fact that Caesar’s relationship with Cleopatra is configured as both legitimate and progenitive, whilst her relationship with Antony is illicit, barren and actively disingenuous. Cleopatra (1963), by contrast, foregrounds the issue of progenitiveness in the first act, and establishes Caesar’s fertility by both acknowledging his (legitimate) childlessness and ascribing blame for it, both explicitly and implicitly, to his wife. Discussing Brutus, Cleopatra comments, ‘You’ve spared his life more than once. People say it is because Brutus is your son. Is that true?’ Although Caesar denies this, saying, ‘I have no

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son’, the dialogue that follows infers the possibility that this might more correctly be qualified as ‘I have no legitimate son’, since it is made clear that Caesar’s lack of heirs is his wife’s responsibility. ‘It is well-known that Calpurnia is barren,’ says Caesar. Cleopatra then invokes the imagery of the fecund Nile as a metaphor for her own fertility: CLEOPATRA: A woman who cannot bear children is like a river that is dry… A woman, too, must make the barren land fruitful. She must make life grow where there was no life, just as Mother Nile feeds and replenishes the earth. I am the Nile. I will bear many sons. Isis has told me. My breasts are filled with love and life. My hips are rounded and well apart. Such women, they say, have sons. (Mankiewicz, 1963)

Two scenes later, it is revealed that Cleopatra is carrying Caesar’s child and that they have married according to Egyptian rite (although the fact that this information is revealed by a composed but evidently affected Calpurnia undermines the validity of the marriage); two further scenes, and Cleopatra has given birth to Caesarion and Caesar has acknowledged paternity. Within four scenes, Caesar has been able to deny the question of his fertility, to refute the evidentiary doubt and establish his own virility through the production of a son. Cleopatra has also established her own fecundity – provided her partner is able to impregnate her. With Antony, by contrast, the subject of offspring is entirely elided. There is no equivalent discussion of his previous paternity, nor is there any mention of Cleopatra’s incredible fertility. His progenitive capacity is not so much questioned as completely omitted. No similar sequence between he and Cleopatra allows him to account for his evident childlessness, and Cleopatra, who was destined to ‘bear many sons’ (Mankiewicz, 1963), conceives no children with her second lover. As I have already argued, for this omission to be conspicuous, we would have to assume a high degree of audience awareness of Antony’s status as father, and, given the degree to which he has (at least in comparison to Cleopatra and Caesar) been largely ignored by historiography of the late Republican period, this would require a level of specialized knowledge that it is unrealistic to expect of the viewing population at large.

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Nevertheless, considered in historical context, the specificity afforded to Caesar’s ability to father children, and the absence of any equivalent discourse around Antony, creates a larger significance. Since the screen texts actively invert the historical record (Caesar’s fertility is widely believed to have been sub-par, while Antony’s reproductive capacity was amply attested in his eight children), the implication of the absence of Antony’s offspring cannot be overlooked. As Oliver (1998) argues in Subjectivity Without Subjects: From Abject Fathers to Desiring Mothers: ‘Some time in the mid-twentieth century, fatherhood became almost synonymous with responsibility’ (Oliver, 1998: 3). Her words echo Tyler May’s idea of fatherhood as ‘a mark of good citizenship’ – and remember that she qualifies this idea with its obverse, that ‘the absence of children was a sign of possible subversion of the American way’ (Tyler May, 1997: 137). ‘Possibly the quintessential virile subject is the figure of the patriarchal father,’ argues Oliver in Family Values. ‘He has proven his virility through his paternity and he takes on the control of himself and his family’ (1997: 162). She continues: It is the power associated with traditional paternal authority that makes the father’s body and his phallus/penis represent power and authority. In Freud (and Lacan) this power is explicitly associated with the phallus/penis. Paradoxically, the ultimate virility of this masculine power is the sublimation of aggressive sex drives into productive and reproductive social economy (Oliver, 1997: 168).

This linking of ‘productive’ to ‘reproductive’ is key: Antony does not explicitly choose to evade the responsibilities of fatherhood, but the connection of fatherhood to responsibility/authority (and thus, via control, to virility) implicitly positions him as less than masculine. An identical thematic runs through Cleopatra (1999), despite the fact that the source text explicitly acknowledges seven of Antony’s children, and implicitly questions Caesar’s fertility (whilst never specifically challenging his paternity of Caesarion). Indeed, the literary text (The Memoirs of Cleopatra) makes a significant feature out of the birth of Antony’s twins, implying that they were so robust that their birth actively threatened their

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mother’s life, while Caesarion, by contrast, arrives prematurely, although in good health (George, 1997). The screen text, however, echoes the 1963 narrative in equating Caesarion with the abundance of the Nile, by having Cleopatra go into labour while doling out grain from the palace supplies to the starving Alexandrian populace. No such sequence exists in The Memoirs of Cleopatra. However, the twenty-first-century texts are largely informed by an alternative discourse, in which Antony’s performance of masculinity is challenged by virtue of the fact that he does produce children. Augustus (2003) begins the process with Iullus Antonius; however, Rome (2007) is considerably more explicit in its construction of Antony-as-father, and it is from this text that the majority of examples will be drawn. The New Fatherhood The role of the father has varied along and across lines of racial ethnicity, social and economic class, and religion at all points in history, and the new father is just one among many images that capture how men today enact their position as fathers (Mintz, 1998). Lamb (1986) places the rise of the motif of the new nurturant father in the mid-1970s, although LaRossa (1997) locates the change as occurring between the two World Wars, and Griswold (1993) argues that in the 1920s the image of father as nurturant pal was already commonplace. The new nurturant father, today a fixture of the lifestyle section of the newspaper and films and TV, is portrayed as offering emotional support to mom so that she can be a happier and more effective caregiver, but also and more importantly, he interacts directly with the children in caregiving and in play and emotional support (Shields, 2002: 131).

It is no accident that the two Antonies to appear as fathers in the twentyfirst-century texts are also the two Antonies who evidence the shift from feminized to hyper-masculine (Augustus, 2003; and Rome, 2007). The tropes are intimately connected. Shields locates the changing rhetoric of fatherhood within a contested space of masculine identity, in which claims and counter-claims abound

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as to what constitutes the beginning of the new paradigm. She notes, however, that ‘most of the evidence for the new nurturant father that had been amassed by the mid-1980s was anecdotal’ (2002: 131) and, indeed, many commentators (Segal, 1997, for example) acknowledge that the ‘New’ Fatherhood, as it is currently recognized, has its roots in the 1970s. The ‘New Man’ as envisaged in the earliest days of re-imagining the male archetype was initially a point of vehement disidentification (see Shield’s idea of ‘the quiche-eating Mr Sensitive’, quoted above); however, the early disavowal of this particular template of masculinity, rather than obliterating it entirely from the performance of masculinity, has, Shields argues, enabled the new discourse of masculinity (and especially fatherhood) to sketch the boundaries of acceptable performance of a repositioned archetype. In Shields’ words: The lesson from the 1970s is that, in the US, one cannot successfully retain masculinity and do emotion in the feminine way… It does not work simply to appropriate a style of emotional extravagance – the expressive style of nurturance that identifies the feminine prevailing emotion stereotype (Shields, 2002: 126).

Shields continues by analysing Jerry Maguire (Crowe, 1996), which, she argues, epitomizes the visibility of this new paradigm of manly emotion and its relationship to the performance of fatherhood. She positions the movie, which received critical acclaim and box-office success on its release, within a thematic framework of similar movies of the past two decades, and argues that responses to the film have tended to normalize the performances of manly emotion/nurturing fatherhood within the film, indicating that these are not representative of a break with audience experience, but are in fact indicative of a new hegemony of manly emotion performed as socially acceptable (and even ideal). ‘Media images cannot tell us what people do,’ says Shields, ‘they can only tell us what people value or what they strive (consciously or nonconsciously) to be. Hollywood films by virtue of their narrative form and their aim for mass appeal, are the perfect place to see how and when emotion is valued, and how emotion figures in the performance of an idealized mature masculinity’ (2002: 126).

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Taking Shields’ example as a template, it is possible to trace out parallel performances of masculinity in Rome, particularly as embodied in Vorenus. Vorenus, as I argued in the previous chapter, partially performs the standard of masculinity against which Antony’s is measured, and his performance of fatherhood – being one of only a few fathers within the text as a whole – is revealing. Barbara Weiden Boyd’s analysis of Rome draws attention to the absence of the father figure within the series, most especially with regards to Octavian and his upbringing in a female-dominated and matriarchally led household. In particular, Weiden Boyd draws attention to the problems inherent in raising Octavian to a masculine standard when there is no male role model within his immediate family on which he might model his performance (Weiden Boyd, 2008: 92). In total, five men are actively positioned as fathers within the two series: Caesar, Pompey, Vorenus, Timon and Antony. Of those five, two can immediately be discounted in terms of this argument due to the fact that their fatherhood is referenced tangentially only, in that commentary on Timon as father and Pompey as father is neither particularly positive nor particularly negative, and their children are pictured as peripheral signifiers of a larger familial discourse – Timon’s children are referenced when it becomes necessary to recuperate his initial position as opportunistic lecher and re-establish him as flawed but well-intentioned family man, in order to explore the conflict between his loyalty to his brother, a Zionist extremist, and his loyalty to the res publica, with which, it is made clear, he identifies himself. Similarly, Pompey’s children are not presented on screen specifically to demonstrate his performance as nurturant father, but to position him as fatherly protector and thus appeal to audience sympathy during his flight east after defeat at the battle of Pharsalus. This is particularly evident during the final scene of 2005.7, in which Cornelia covers her children’s eyes in horror as they watch from the boat while Pompey is beheaded on the Egyptian beach. We are left, therefore, with Caesar, Vorenus and Antony. Caesar’s performance as father is the most marginal, yet, arguably, also the most complex. Although he is introduced to the narrative as the victor of Gaul, the very next sequence positions him as grieving father, as Pompey relates in voiceover/flashback that Caesar’s only child, Julia (Pompey’s wife),

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has died in childbirth. However, there is no explicit interaction between Caesar and his daughter, and we are left to infer his paternal relationship with her by his reaction to her death, which is available to two contradictory readings. The sequence runs as follows: Caesar, fresh from the glory of Vercingetorix’s surrender, returns to his camp quarters, where he is intercepted by a messenger carrying a note from Pompey. Caesar takes it with a half-smile, but, as he reads it, his face immediately falls, registering his (controlled) distress before the information of Julia’s death is made available to the audience. He tersely arbitrates a monetary dispute between Posca and a slave-dealer and enters his tent, where Mark Antony finds him moments later. Antony enters, grumbling about the slavedealers’ avarice, but stops abruptly when he sees that Caesar is sitting, motionless, facing away from him. Realizing that something is wrong, he asks ‘News from Rome?’: CAESAR: Pompey writes. My daughter, Julia, has died in childbirth. ANTONY: [Crosses the room to stand behind Caesar, and lays a hand on his shoulder] I grieve with you. [Pause] The child? CAESAR: A girl. Stillborn. [Pause] Pompey will be needing a new wife. (2005.1)

The interaction and the atmosphere between the two men make it clear that Caesar is deeply affected by the loss of his daughter, yet the scene ends with Caesar bluntly defaulting to the observation that Julia’s death has created a political situation that he would be wise to use to his own advantage. The variant potential readings either require us to reject Caesar’s expedient treatment of the death of his child – which is unquestionably a position that the ambiguity of the scene makes available to the audience – or else to read it as a laudable sublimation of the private (emotional) to the public (political); the masculinization of the feminine, or Shield’s conception of the idealized, manly emotion. ‘In order to assert emotional superiority without relinquishing masculine privilege it is essential that the desirable or ideal form of emotion be distinguished from its weaker, ineffectual, or “merely emotional” version,’ Shields argues (2002: 126). It is possible, therefore, to read the heavy air of grief in the scene as the ‘true’ emotional heart of the sequence, and to understand

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Caesar’s closing remark as a superficial attempt to remasculinize his emotionality. I would consider the variant readings to be indicative of Caesar’s ideological instability, as discussed in Chapter 5, and submit that neither reading is necessarily more or less correct than the other. Indeed, it is the very mutability of Caesar’s performance of masculinity, of which his performance as father is a component, that informs the fluidity of his construction in Western texts. Vorenus, on the other hand, is characterized by his desire to perform the idealized family man, and to meet not only the practical but also the emotional needs of his wife and children. This character arc embodies the paradigm of the ‘ “fatherhood” film’, as constituted by Deborah Lupton and Lesley Barclay in Constructing Fatherhood: Discourses and Experiences: The ‘fatherhood’ film replicates the heroic narrative of other films (and popular texts) about men, in that it portrays the (male) heroes undergoing tests, overcoming obstacles and chaos and finally emerging triumphant, restoring order. Unlike most heroic narratives, however, which tend to represent their male protagonists as espousing the principles of absolute individuation and solitude… the men in fatherhood films are portrayed as heroic in their very desire to be good fathers – that is, to seek a closer and better relationship with their children, and in most cases requiring others’ help to do so (Lupton and Barclay, 1997: 71).

Vorenus’ narrative, furthermore, references Kaplan’s notion of the sacrificing mother (1992: 27–56). Niobe’s suicide, an effort to protect her illegitimate son from Vorenus’ patriarchal rage, is the quintessential act of the sacrificing mother, and Vorenus’ fatal wounding, as he protects another woman’s child (Caesarion) from a similarly themed successional dispute (the filiation of Caesarion and Octavian and their respective claims to Caesar’s legacy), is both his restitution for his wife’s death and the act of atonement that allows his children to ultimately reconcile with him. Vorenus’ primary motivational concern is repeatedly articulated as the welfare of his family: he murders Erastes Fulmen when he believes Fulmen has had his children murdered (2007.1), and, later, a substantial narrative arc focuses on his attempts to rescue them from slavery and reintegrate them into family life. When Vorena Major’s betrayal is exposed

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and she reveals her loathing for her father to his face, Vorenus reacts violently and almost kills her; it is this act of violence, and his contrition, that compels him to absent himself from Rome in Antony’s service, rather than risk his family’s safety and/or distress by remaining. The ‘new fatherhood’, then, holds the physical capacity to father children in lower esteem than the ability and desire to act as paternal protector and care-giver. Vorenus’ performance of fatherhood incorporates the production of children, but, more importantly, he is also driven by the urge to nurture and defend them. Furthermore, this urge extends to children in his care that are not biologically related to him (Lucius and Caesarion). This emphasis on the father as nurturer/protector is critical, and begins to outline the connection between the progenitive and nonprogenitive Antonies. More importantly, it begins to specify the manner in which the progenitive Antony can be said to lack virility. The fertility of Rome’s Mark Antony is not in question: of the four children born during the two-season arc, three are explicitly or potentially his, and, in a broader sense, his relationship with Atia affords him the status of de facto stepfather to Octavia and Octavian. Each paternal or quasipaternal relationship, however, evidences his sub-paradigm behaviour. As I argue in Kelly (2013), his relationship with Atia’s children is problematized by both the Oedipal discourse imposed upon his political struggles with Octavian through his ahistorical affair with Octavian’s mother, and by the discourse of inappropriate sexual desire that attaches to the consummation of his marriage with Octavia. Although she clearly does not consider him a father figure, Antony, by this stage, has been her mother’s sexual partner for a period of several years at least, and his approach to her, as they lie stiffly on opposite sides of the marital bed, underlines his awareness of the transgressive nature of the situation. ‘This is strange, isn’t it?’ he muses cheerfully, to which Octavia makes no response. After a long pause, he adds: ‘Look, I know you’re not exactly happy about all this, but… um… it is our wedding night.’ She answers, indifferently, ‘Do as you like.’ That she has no emotional or physical investment in their subsequent intercourse is made clear by Antony’s explicit use of his own saliva as lubricant and his vocal efforts to achieve penetration (2007.7). His increasingly difficult relationship with Octavian in the wake of Caesar’s death, moreover, results in a spectacularly brutal fight early in

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the second season (at which point Octavian is still played by a teenage Max Pirkis), after Octavian has set himself up as Antony’s rival by borrowing the equivalent of his bequest in Caesar’s will, which Antony has yet to ratify. What begins as an interrogation by Atia and Antony quickly spirals into a vicious assault in which Antony first holds Octavian’s head underwater in a basin and then pins him against a table while he rains blows onto his face. It takes Atia to drag Antony bodily away from Octavian, who lies, bleeding and barely able to move, while Antony screams back over his shoulder: ‘You’re lucky you’re breathing!’ (2007.2). Even without his parting words, however, it is evident that Antony, but for Atia’s intervention, would have killed his putative stepson. Nevertheless, it is in his relationship with his biological children that the discourse of Antony as inappropriate father is most explicit – though (and in fact because) his screen interaction with them is either extremely limited or non-existent. His abandonment of his daughter by Octavia is a case in point: Octavia is pregnant when Antony leaves Rome, and Antonia is perhaps four or five years old when she appears on screen (2007.9); the implication is that Antony spends the intervening years in Egypt with Cleopatra and, by extension, that he never meets his child. Whether or not Antony is, in fact, Antonia’s biological father is, essentially, beside the point: Octavia is Antony’s wife, and her daughter bears his name. As such, his casual indifference recalls the rhetoric of the ‘deadbeat dad’, who assumes neither financial nor emotional responsibility for his child. Likewise, his relationship with his twins by Cleopatra is one of demonstrable disinterest. They appear on screen as toddlers, perhaps two years old, entering Antony and Cleopatra’s private quarters immediately after their parents have attempted to provoke war with Rome via Octavian’s emissaries. Antony and Cleopatra, presumably for greater shock value in front of the modestly dressed Roman visitors, are heavily Orientalized – she wears a metal brassiere that evokes the outlandish costumes of Theda Bara in Cleopatra (1917) and a gauzy skirt; he wears a linen kilt and a diaphanous robe, open at the front to reveal his bare, shaven chest. Both wear heavy eye make-up and extensive henna tattoos on their hands. Antony throws himself face-first onto a day bed in the middle of the room and Cleopatra climbs on top of him, straddling his back and massaging his neck muscles. They have a brief exchange over the relative merits of

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declaring war on Octavian versus waiting for Octavian to declare war on them, and, as Antony complains of tiredness, the children arrive, giggling, and climb onto the bed beside their parents. Cleopatra scoops her son into her arms and kisses him, before sending them both off with an indulgent ‘Helios, Selene, off with you, off with you! Can’t you see your father needs to sleep?’ The twins exit, accompanied by Charmian and a nurse, and are not seen again until after Antony’s death, when Cleopatra is making arrangements to have them sent out of the city for their safety. There is no narrative justification for their appearance in this scene; unlike Caesarion, they play no functional role in driving the narrative arc of the final two episodes, and, unlike Antonia, their birth has not been set up by an earlier narrative development. The purpose of the exchange, it would seem, is solely to determine their existence – and to allow Antony to completely ignore them. He barely raises his head to acknowledge their presence, and, while Cleopatra fusses over them, demonstrating obvious maternal affection, Antony’s reaction implies apathy, even irritation. In his study of the sociology of fatherhood, Ralph LaRossa describes the ‘functionally absent’ father, who is physically present but actively disengaged from family life. Antony’s response to his children in this scene might be described in similar terms. Recall, that Oliver argues that ‘the quintessential virile subject is the figure of the patriarchal father’, who ‘has proven his virility through his paternity and… takes on the control of himself and his family…’ (Oliver, 1997: 162), and it is clear that Antony’s reproductive ability is not sufficient to signify virility. Where Antony’s sexual excess was nonprocreational, his lack of virility was manifested by his implied inability to father children (and, by extension, to create Taylor May’s ultimate signifier of responsible, adult hegemonic masculinity: the nuclear family). Under the new paradigm, however, the production of children is not enough: to perform the virile father, it is necessary to assume paternal responsibility, to embody Shield’s notion of the ‘new father’ as ‘a public symbol of caregiving as reflecting a progressive set of values’ (2002: 131). Considered in this light, Antony’s new-found progenitive capacity is not only thematically possible, it is inevitable. Indicative of changing norms of behaviour (and the decreased emphasis on male fertility as signifier of masculinity), for Antony to perform deficient masculinity by manifesting

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his lack of virility, he must now reproduce – and fail to rise to the challenge of performing Father. Commodified and Infantilized: Antony as Object The final two items in Antony’s iconography – his infantilization and his commodification – appear only infrequently, but are, nevertheless, unambiguous in their construction on screen. Antony does not appear in Caesar and Cleopatra (1945), yet the narrative essentially commodifies him in absentia when, in the closing scene, Caesar offers to send him to Alexandria in response to Cleopatra’s earlier, wistful reminiscences about the beautiful man she remembers from her youth, with ‘round strong arms [that] shine in the sun like marble’ (Pascal, 1945). Not only is Antony subjected to a kind of meta-gaze, whereby he is objectified and eroticized without actually appearing on screen, he is also specifically denied agency, in that he is bound to go where Caesar tells him, even if Caesar requires that he absent himself to Egypt to be, essentially, a gift for an overexcitable girl-queen. Cleopatra (1999), however, goes one step further and has Antony commodify himself. From the moment of his arrival in Alexandria, shortly after he has assumed control of Egypt in a perfunctory discussion with Octavian (who muses, dryly, ‘Who better to govern a land of such decadence and luxury?’), Antony’s objectives and proclivities are contrasted with Caesar’s: where Caesar arrived at the head of a Roman legion, marching purposefully and directly to the palace, Antony’s procession through the city streets is cheered by adoring crowds, who shower him with petals as he grins and waves. ‘Why have you come?’ demands Cleopatra as he approaches her dais. ‘Are you here to collect taxes? Steal grain for Egypt’s debt? Inspect your conquest?’ Antony’s answer is, arguably, the most overt example of his commodification in any of these texts. ‘I’m here to taste Egypt’s pleasures,’ he says. ‘And to bear you a fine gift: myself ’ (Roddam, 1999). It is also in 1999 that Antony’s infantilization is most explicit. The discursive tendency towards infantilization of the Other as a mechanism for legitimizing a project of domination/subjugation is well-attested in post-colonialist studies,5 and is closely related to the feminizing discourse,

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already explored, which seeks to affiliate a colonized population with femininity (and thus subordinacy). It could, therefore, be argued that any attempt to Other Antony (from paradigm masculinity) implicitly infantilizes him to some extent (by associating ‘non-male’ with ‘non-adult’). However, there are also more overt attempts with various texts to position him as childlike. Antony’s impulsive, unpredictable outbursts of violence in Rome (2005–7) recall a toddler subject to the demands of the id, without a fully developed superego to moderate his mercurial behaviour. Colbert’s Cleopatra exchanges conversation with Wilcoxon’s Antony that explicitly evokes a mother and child. ‘Oh, now be a good boy and stop frowning,’ she tells him. ‘I have to dress… Now run along’ (DeMille, 1934). Much of Antony’s excessive behaviour, in fact – from his post-Actium tears to his insatiable appetites to his prioritization of play over work – may be read as childlike. 1999’s Cleopatra is unique, however, in explicitly labelling him as such. The text has Cleopatra watching, unobserved, as Antony play-fights with Caesarion, who is around seven years old at this point. Both are clearly enjoying themselves, and Cleopatra, delighted with the bond that has developed between them, comments contentedly to Olympos: ‘He’s wonderful with the child.’ ‘I shouldn’t wonder,’ answers Olympos dryly. ‘He’s a child himself ’ (Roddam, 1999). I have already discussed (in Chapter 4) Olympos’ positioning as the voice of reason throughout the narrative, and his performance of (adult) masculinity is one of those against which Antony’s is measured in this text. Indeed, for all that the narrative repeatedly insists on her political intelligence and leadership ability (which is considerably more apparent in the source novel), this Cleopatra is herself regularly prone to childlike behaviour in the pursuit of her objectives: witness the temper tantrums she throws when she doesn’t get her way, her petulant sulks or the manner in which her dynastic struggle with her sister Arsinoë is reduced to a squabble over which of them loved their father more. Olympos’ function, then, is to mitigate Cleopatra’s more impulsive decisions, both diegetically by directly challenging her, and non-diegetically by referencing, through his acerbic remarks, the teleological discourse of impending disaster that accompanies any Cleopatra narrative. Her tragedy, consequently, is her

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failure to recognize and defer to his superior political wisdom; he is, in effect, the responsible adult of the Alexandrian court. Antony, after the death of Caesar, has no similar adult voice to recuperate his ill-considered choices. Indeed, much of his decision making is predicated on Cleopatra’s imperfect reading of the political situation and subsequent strategizing: he breaks his alliance with Octavian at her demand, for example, and later ignores the pleas of his generals in order to follow her into war with Rome. Olympos is not the only member of Cleopatra’s court to speak out against her questionable tactical manoeuvring, but he is the most prominent, and his assessment of political realities repeatedly bears out as the narrative progresses. It is he, for example, who understands the ramifications of Cleopatra’s determination to oblige Caesar to recognize paternity of Caesarion, while she blithely assures him that ‘[Caesar] can do anything he wants’ (Roddam, 1999). Though Caesar does, in fact, publicly claim his son, it sets in motion the destabilization of the fragile political consensus in Rome, and is a causative factor in the conspirators’ decision to act against him. Therefore, when Olympos explicitly denies Antony’s ability to assume his adult responsibilities, his position as quasi-omniscient commentator grants him significant credibility. Cleopatra’s immediate rejection of Olympos’ warning – as she has been wont to do throughout the narrative, with poor results – only adds weight to his words, and reinforces his reading of Antony: childlike and weak; too weak to act as Egypt’s protector, in which role she has cast him. ‘You’re wrong, Olympos,’ Cleopatra insists, but he has always been right before. In the face of such wilful delusion, how could disaster possibly be averted? Conclusion: Augustus’ Unexpected Triumph If it is significant that the twenty-first century has yet to reimagine the life of Cleopatra on screen, it is worth remembering that Antony himself has never been elevated from his position as side-player in the stories of other people’s lives. Rome (2005–7) comes closest, granting him a central role in an ensemble without a clear lead. However, there is no escaping the fact that the title credit has been almost exclusively Cleopatra’s throughout the twentieth century (with the exception of Shaw’s Caesar

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and Cleopatra), and, in the twenty-first, when the focus has shifted to the Romans, it has been Caesars Augustus and Julius that have taken the limelight and advanced their various claims on the construction of the Roman Empire. Antony, the also-ran, has yet to be the star of any reworking of the key events of his life. In essence, this chapter forms the evidentiary lynchpin of my argument, by which I mean that the Augustan tropes, predictable, repetitive and receptive to reading in line with hegemonic masculinity as they are, need not necessarily evidence either a modern engagement with the source legend or a specific functionality assigned to the Antony-avatar. However, read in line with specifically modern additions to the legend, all of which are significant in gender terms, it becomes more difficult to refute the notion that the body of Mark Antony is being culturally manipulated as a site for the negotiation of gender anxiety. The precise positioning and encapsulation of that anxiety remains fluid and ultimately unstable, yet Antony himself remains the embodiment of masculinity gone wrong – th’ abstract of all faults, however variously conceived.

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Conclusion: ‘A Tale of Modern Times in Fancy Dress’1

As gender norms shift, so does the standard by which gender performance is measured as acceptable (natural) or unacceptable (unnatural). The past hundred years have witnessed a series of rapid and paradigm shifts in hegemonic power relations in the western world: first there was female suffrage, then there was the unrest precipitated by the temporary economic independence of a largely female workforce during World War II, which paved the way for The Feminine Mystique (Friedan, 1963) and Second-wave feminism. Today, it seems, we are further than ever from establishing a consensus on Western gender roles. Can gender equality exist? Is feminism still relevant? Is it desirable even to retain gender as a category? And where does masculinity sit alongside the shifting, contested and volatile system of femininity? This is the hegemonic chaos against which these films should be read. ‘Masculinity’, as I have argued, is no more a useful term with which to describe a universal male experience than ‘femininity’ describes the collective reality of womankind. Yet, as scholars such as Steven M Whitehead and Frank J Barrett (2001: 8) have shown, there is an insistence in the popular consciousness that it is a singular, substantive category – and that it is under threat. This is not a recent development. For as long as the categories male and female have been discursively imposed, an ideal has been constituted by what it is not, and the is not – the ‘not me’, as it has been referred to in this study – represents a troubling counter narrative. Antony may not embody masculinity’s Other, but he skirts along those lines, expressing, as I have argued, anxieties about the threat to hegemony 249

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embodied in modern-day challenges to the paradigm. He is the spectre of the failure to police hegemonic masculinity, given corporeal form – teleologically exorcised and made safe. Indeed, Rome goes so far as to reinstitute him into the fold of hegemonic masculinity after his death: Vorenus, who is present when Antony falls on his sword, takes a moment to contemplate the man he has followed for most of his adult life, dressed in the gauzy tunic and eyeliner of the Alexandrian court, and, without a word, wipes the make-up from his commander’s face and buckles him back into his Roman armour (2007.10). No longer able to perform deficient masculinity according to his own flaws, Antony is re-equipped in death in the visible, tangible costume of the paradigm male. Such is the anxiety engendered by his deficiency – it must ultimately be contained, then elided and denied. For all that masculinity itself is ephemeral, hegemonic masculinity displays a remarkable stability of tropes. The means by which they are idealized, and the relative value afforded to each, varies, but the Western hero-myth remains as potent in the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves in the twenty-first century as it was in the earliest days of the written word. The hero is strong, heterosexual, white, appropriately emotional (‘male’ emotionality is fine), proactive, public-sphere and virile. This essentialist, ‘non-female’ male is so enduring, indeed, that his presumed existence in the toga epic – which appeals to historical ‘accuracy’ to legitimize its essentialism – is part of the reason that the genre is so intrinsically linked to moments of politico-cultural uncertainty. He is paradigm masculinity, and his is the icon that shadows Antony throughout his screen appearances. Antony is supposed to be an object of desire. He is supposed to be an attractive ‘partly me’ in which men can see themselves and which woman can desire. This is part of his appeal. Hegemonic masculinity is aspirational and unattainable for the vast majority of men, whether or not they consciously subscribe to its manifesto; Antony is comfortably flawed, and he does get the girl (temporarily). But deficient masculinity is subject to the censure of the paradigm: Antony’s ultimate reward is contempt and ignominious defeat. Sometimes, it turns out that the girl was playing him all along, and we are asked to collude with her to an extent – after all, who would have an Antony when they have once had a Lucilius (Serpent of the Nile, 1953)? Moreover, Antony’s status as an object of desire renders him

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vulnerable to the emasculating gaze: his body is spectacle – as male bodies are spectacle throughout the toga epic – but he is given little opportunity to reclaim the gaze through action or violence. Instead, he stands naked and arrogant in a full-frontal nude shot (Rome, 2005.4), smugly smiling as he obliges Vorenus to observe his nudity, unaware that the joke is ultimately on him and that the availability of his body metaphorically robs him of the penis of which he is evidently so proud. Just as the relative values of what comprises the hegemonic shift according to historical moment, so we can trace elements of that shift in Antony’s constructions. In the pre-Baby Boom 1930s, pre-World War II and (just about) pre-Hays Code, we see Antony and Cleopatra configured as ‘a playboy and a spoiled heiress’ (Charles Hopkins in Magill [ed], 1980: 359). Paternity is denied Antony, but it is denied Caesar also in this representation, because it has not yet become so insistent a sign of hegemony in the popular consciousness as it will become in the era of the Baby Boom. Instead, Antony’s deficiencies are indicated by a refusal to conform to adult masculinity – he rejects the male-oriented sphere both literally and metaphorically, and elects to relocate himself to the Never-Never land of Egypt, where masculine work is rejected in favour of sensual luxury. A similar rhetoric is employed in 1953’s Serpent of the Nile, where Antony-the-sensualist turns away from the masculine business of soldiery to wallow in drunkenness and increasing self-disgust in Alexandria. Here, of course, the rhetoric of Caesarion is introduced in Cleopatra’s repeated reference to her son and seat of her dynastic ambition, and Lucilius is afforded commentary on Antony not only through his superior performance of masculinity, but through his status as Cleopatra’s ex-lover and the man she truly loves. Antony’s dissolution is given physical form in his increasingly dishevelled (non-Roman) appearance – a common trope in signifying the rejection of masculinity embodied in his relocation eastwards, and indicative of the theme of East-as-Other that plays a major role in constituting the male/female dichotomy of West/East that these films repeatedly invoke. Serpent of the Nile, however, was a B-movie, made cheaply for a limited audience. The next major English-language production, by contrast, is infamous in film history as the movie that almost bankrupted Twentieth Century Fox. Cleopatra (1963) is a lavish, exorbitantly budgeted affair

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and was one of the highest grossing movies of the 1960s. Like 1934’s Cleopatra, it expresses a tension around Caesar’s performance of masculinity; however, in this case it must be considered in terms of its position at the end of the cycle of big-budget historical epics of the 1950s and early 1960s, where the concept of ‘Rome’ is used to evoke the horrors of totalitarianism and the anxieties associated with America’s new superpower status. Caesar, personifying Rome-as-empire-builder, must be treated with extreme caution, but he is not the Nero of Quo Vadis (1951) or the Caligula of The Robe (1953). These were power-hungry figureheads of an oppressive regime, but 1963’s Caesar is representative of a more introspective tendency towards the end of the genre’s cycle. William Fitzgerald examines the trend of these later movies of invoking a fatherson dynamic, which he attributes to the Baby Boom generation coming of age and questioning the legacy left to them by their war-era parents (2001: 44–46). This is also the first clear instance of the Antony/Caesar trajectory configured as Oedipal, with Antony struggling and failing both to live up to and exorcise the ghost of his putative father. Thus Caesar, although he is allowed moments of imperialism, is essentially sympathetic and provides a clear instance of the paradigm that Antony, performer of deficient masculinity, cannot attain. Moreover, with Cleopatra positively positioned and Rome (or rather Caesar-as-Rome) neutral, Antony’s defeat is teleologically foretold throughout the narrative as a consequence of his deficient performance of masculinity. This same theme is carried into 1999’s Cleopatra, which represents a liminal space wherein Cleopatra’s positioning diverges into a Third-wave feminist reading of the woman of power, while Antony’s remains fixed as an extension of earlier constructs of the hegemonic male. The advent of the twenty-first century, however, represents a break in terms of Antony’s deficiencies conceived of as gender reversal. While the core tropology of hegemonic masculinity remains centred on the Western hero-myth, socio-cultural challenges to the desirability of some essentially ‘male’ traits have begun to influence the construction of the hero. Excessive violence is rejected as socially unacceptable without – critically – mitigating factors (such as a threat to some component of the hegemony, be it familial, legislative or Other) and we see evidence of a reclamation of male emotional expressivity. This remains patriarchally coded and is

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recuperated through traditionally hero-mythological activity (such as protection of the home, defence of personal honour or performance of the Good Father), but allows for (and in fact, where hegemonically appropriate, demands) a considerably greater emotional range that includes displays of sadness and tears, and potentially emotional breakdown – so long as this can be reclaimed as masculine through (usually violent) action. As such, Antony’s ‘feminine’ emotionality is no longer enough to censure him, and therefore, particularly in Rome (2005–7), we find that Antony’s deficiencies are repositioned as excessive, performative masculinity. Excessive behaviour is coded non-masculine elsewhere through a projection of the Roman concept of incontinentia, which is a key component of the historical invective against Antonius; however, in this instance the behaviour is coded non-masculine due to its uncontainability and concomitant threat to the public sphere. Antony’s performance of masculinity under this paradigm is undesirable because it is incompatible with the function of the status quo: he is subject to unpredictable rage and violence, and his sexual behaviour repeatedly invites moments of crisis (through his relationships with Atia and Cleopatra). Indeed, rather than emotional inexpressivity, Antony’s active lack of appropriate emotionality denies him access to concepts such as honour and familial bonds, which are critical to the constitution of the hero. Moreover, his single instance of emotional expressivity – found in episode 2007.10 after he receives word that Cleopatra is dead – is similarly uncontained; his grief is huge, and, in contrast to recuperated grieving as evidenced, for example, by Vorenus after the loss of his family, is not masculinized by appropriately male emotionality, such as anger, or appropriately male behaviour, such as restorative action. This twenty-first century-specific construction of the non-hegemonic Antony is one of a collection of screen-age embellishments to the Antony-icon. As argued in Chapter 1, the core tropology of Antony’s masculine performance is rooted firmly in Roman gender invective. This positions him as an ideal avatar of deficient masculinity, and enabled first Plutarch and then Shakespeare to enshrine him as such. However, for all that it could be argued that the screen age simply reproduces this longstanding mythology of Antony as deficient performer of masculinity,

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modern engagements with the mythology, as discussed in Chapters 5 and 6, argue for a deeper consideration of the functionality of Antonyon-screen. This is more than reproduction, this is active utility – this is reshaping and re-inventing an ancient avatar so that he continues to be actively relevant to the socio-cultural moment. As masculinities develop, so does Antony’s deficient performance of their paradigm tropes; like his dyadic colleague Cleopatra, he is mutable – always ‘becoming’ (Royster, 1993). As evidenced in the remarkable level of conflation between Richard Burton the film star and Antony-on-screen, Antony’s performance of masculinity matters in a socio-cultural and socio-ideological sense. Burton-as-Antony indicates a utilization of the tropology of gender performance in transmitting and interrogating anxieties around crisis-provoking male behaviour: where Burton’s actions invoke socio-cultural anxiety, they can be negotiated and exorcised by mapping them onto the iconographical construct of the Antony-icon. Antony explains and, to a certain extent, mitigates Burton’s gender transgression, by providing not only a blueprint for the transgressive behaviour but also promising its containability. It is notable, therefore, that, while the ‘grand romance’ stuttered and devolved into divorce, this is not the narrative embedded in the popular consciousness. Rather, on the deaths of both parties, it was their undying love that was referenced, while their subsequent remarriages to others were elided (to the chagrin of, in particular, Burton’s widow). Divorce and remarriage collapses the mapping of Burton onto Antony and vice versa, and renders their conflation incoherent, and the risk to the Burton-as-Antony paradigm must be denied in order to elide the hegemonic tension his actions invoked. If the active utility of the Antonian gender paradigm evidences its continuing relevance to hegemonic masculinity’s project of manufacturing consent and denying difference, Burton-as-Antony is that process reified. Recently, scholars such as Pierre Sorlin and Robert Rosenstone have advocated a different kind of engagement with the historical text than that which has traditionally been adopted by historians (which Rosenstone describes as ‘trying to assess why a particular film did such violence to a topic without considering the nature of the medium or its possibilities’ – 2006: 7), and it is this approach that, I would argue, opens the text up to

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the kind of interrogation that can situate the importance of the Antonyicon in debates about masculinity. How often (and how clearly) do we understand history films as ‘fanciful or ideological renditions of history’ (Rosenstone, 2006: 4)? For the most part, this is precisely what the traditionally conceived historical film seeks to avoid – witness the lengths to which the studios’ publicity departments regularly go to emphasize the veracity of their screen narratives. A publicity pamphlet for Cleopatra (1963) contains a five-page outline of the historical record, followed by a four-page précis entitled From History to This Story, complete with reproductions of contemporaneous busts and a page-long timeline of events. Meanwhile, Kristina Milnor’s chapter in Rome Season 1: History Makes Television, entitled ‘What I Learned as an Historical Consultant for Rome’, recounts the producers’ extraordinary efforts to impose historical verisimilitude within the series (for which it received much critical praise) through attention to details such as correct Ubuan grammar and Roman attitudes to infant exposure (2008: 42–48). The fact that recent years have seen an increasing interest in post-modern treatments of the historical narrative, in which verisimilitude is established and then deliberately ruptured – for example, Marie Antoinette (dir. Sofia Coppola, 2006), Walker (dir. Alex Cox, 1987) or (though it does not purport to deal with actual historical figures, although it does reproduce a classical Chaucerian text) A Knight’s Tale (dir. Brian Helgeland, 2001) – in fact underlines the inherent ideological potential of the historical film, for these moments of rupture are designed to call attention to the allegorical nature of the narrative – Marie Antoinette, for example, places a conspicuous pair of Converse trainers alongside period shoes within a montage of courtly decadence in order to insist upon the continuing relevance of Coppola’s themes in contemporary society. This specific method of narrativizing history on film remains, however, relatively rare in mainstream Hollywood cinema (and, indeed, Walker is a low-budget movie with an extremely limited audience and would certainly not qualify for inclusion as a mainstream Hollywood film). For the most part, when engaging with historical themes, filmmakers have elected to emphasize that which is ‘historical’ about their narrative, and this carries with it a powerful appeal to ‘truth’, however ephemerally conceived. In the case of an historical epic that features Antony and Cleopatra, the audience

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is presented with a story with which they are almost certainly broadly familiar – I have explored the pervasiveness of the Shakespearean text in popular culture, but Shakespeare notwithstanding, there is a reason he was able to have Caesar declaim: ‘No grave on earth shall clip in it/A pair so famous’ (Antony and Cleopatra, 5.2.422–423). The story of their love and suicides is so widely recycled within western socio-cultural mythology that it can confidently be expected that the casual viewer, who may have no other knowledge about their lives or the historical period in which they lived, will have at least a passing familiarity with their tragic end, and will certainly be aware of their existence. It is, I would argue, to this familiarity that the ideological backdrop of the Antony/Cleopatra film makes its appeal: since the narrative is attempting to reconstitute the lives of two flesh-and-blood figures on screen, it has already situated itself outside of the specifically fictional and invested itself with a discourse of ‘authenticity’ before the opening credits roll. To be clear, I am not attempting to evaluate the extent to which an individual spectator can or does analyse the veracity of an historical film, merely to postulate that its appeal to historical ‘truth’ (occasionally through an explicit insistence on its painstaking historiographical research and verisimilitude, as in Cleopatra (1963) and Rome (2005–7), but more generally by virtue of its institution as a ‘true story’) creates an inevitable meta-discourse about the paradigms enacted by the players within the narrative. This is not a story imaginatively conceived out of the minds of the writers – this is real life, these events really occurred, and thus the moralizing invective of Antony’s gender performance is more firmly underscored. This is what actually happened when a great man allowed his hegemonic masculinity to be undermined. This is, I would argue, fundamentally the reason for the centuries of recycling of the Antony-myth in popular culture: he has become a kind of fable for the circulation of a gender paradigm. In much the same way that the fairy tale enacts a specific threat (for example, DL Ashliman describes Charles Perrault’s Red Riding Hood as ‘a cautionary tale with an obvious didactic function: to teach young girls the dangers of getting involved with strange men’ – 2004: 49) as both a pedagogical tool and a means of containing the specific anxiety it expresses, Antony-on-screen performs, demonstrates and exorcises the constant state of anxiety that surrounds the performance of the hegemonic. As I have argued in Chapter 6,

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hegemony is consistently under pressure from without and within, and part of its ‘project’ is the denial and elision of this continuous state of flux. As Amy M Davis says in Good Girls and Wicked Witches: The historian can learn a great deal about what types of stories have been made into films, but also how the stories were presented, what was left in the story, what was altered, what was left out altogether, and what new elements were added to it. For folklorist Vladimir Propp, these successive ‘variants’ (as he called them) were crucial to understanding a society, since examining the differences between variants revealed much about both the internal and external changes society had undergone (2006: 12).

By examining the various permutations in the Antony-myth, from 1934’s playboy dilettante, through the helpless dissolution of Serpent of the Nile (1953), through Burton’s (1963) Byronic aspirant who seeks the comfort of alcohol to anaesthetize his masculine failings, through the ‘child’ Antony of 1999’s Cleopatra, and into the hyper-aggressive, hyper-sexual masculine threat embodied in the twenty-first century small-screen retellings of the myth, we can trace the evolution of ideals of the hegemonic male throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. Antony’s repeat appearances offer us the opportunity to trace Propp’s ‘variants’ in real time – to examine the subtle but significant shifts in emphasis that underpin the construction of deficient masculinity, and to understand the specific threats to hegemony that were sufficiently present within the fabric of socio-cultural life at the time of the film’s production that they were able to find expression in terms of the historical epic’s mythic space. It is here, I would argue, that we begin to see the wider significance of Antony-on-screen: not just as a functional referent for masculinity-gonewrong, but as an artefact of evolving social paradigms. In Antony, we can, to an extent, trace hegemony’s troubling counter-narrative: not the villain of the piece, for the villain has no place within hegemony, but the anthropomorphized fear that this is the corollary of challenging, eliding, and dismissing hegemony. As a discrete meme, Antony-on-screen is supported by (and distinguished from) his earlier, non-screen incarnations by both the gender paradigms of the historical epic, and by the non-diegetic information that

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surrounds the film text and mediates its reception. Casting Antony from the ranks of the Hollywood ‘heart-throb’ not only aids in his positioning as the ‘partly me’ (through audience familiarity and the semiology of the startext), but also helps to render his attraction as primarily aesthetic and thus, potentially, feminine. Genre conventions entrench this meta-discourse, by constraining Antony’s opportunities to reclaim his subjectivity (through violent, recuperative action), and by displaying his body in a manner conventionally coded ‘female’ – for example, Burton’s bath-scene in Cleopatra (1963) or Purefoy’s nudity in Rome (2005). Finally, the gender discourse of the toga epic is mobilized to institute within the narrative alternative, paradigm performers of masculinity – the idealized ‘other mine’ – against which Antony’s gender performance is compared. These avatars of the hegemonic, as discussed in Chapter 5, exhibit many of the same tropes as the non-Roman ‘Us’-performers in other toga epics in which non-Rome/Rome is broadly conflated with identification/disidentification. As I have argued in the Introduction, Cleopatra’s presence complicates a straightforward Rome/Them:non-Rome/Us binary, and thus the gender-slippage common to constructions of Roman masculinity in the toga epic (‘Them’) is often elided. This allows for paradigm masculinity to be situated unproblematically within a Roman body, and permits an uncomplicated comparison to be effected between masculinity as exhibited by Antony and masculinity as exhibited by his hegemonic opposite, without confusing the discourse with notions of the non-Roman Other. That is to say, where both Antony and his opposite are, broadly speaking, ‘Us’, then the question of how one of ‘Us’ comes to manifest non-hegemonic masculinity cannot be elided or obfuscated with a justificatory discourse of Otherness. It therefore becomes all the more immediate, all the more pronounced. In this matter, arguably, the historical epic, with its entrenched paradigms of masculine performance (and its specifically situated paradigms of non-masculine gender deviance), is perhaps ideally suited to play out questions of masculinity and challenges to the hegemony: the very gender-essentialism of the genre clearly and insistently defines ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ in gendered terms, but situates Antony as ‘not-Them’, and thus allows his performance of masculinity to be understood as a threat to ‘Us’ by virtue, simply, of the fact that, although he is Othered, he is not the Other. His story must

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be understood as a real possibility to ‘Us’, should ‘We’ fail to police the hegemonic. The Antony-icon inhabits a polysemous mythic space, re-invented according to socio-cultural (and socio-political) need. I have argued in Chapter 6 that cycles of the historical epic tend to coincide with moments of paradigm gender shifts, and this is no accident. As Cleopatra is constantly ‘becoming’ (Royster, 1993), so is Antony adaptable to the changing requirements of gender anxiety, and Antony-on-screen is only the latest manifestation of a process that was set in motion in the turbulent politics of republican Rome, where to be less than masculine was to be unfit for public office. This is his legacy: to be the vehicle for the expression of an invisible discourse of acceptable versus unacceptable gender performance. Eleanor Goltz Huzar argues that Antony is like Shakespeare’s Banquo: although he did not ultimately rule the Roman Empire, his descendents were the emperors of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, and she suggests that, as a result of this quasi-immortality, ‘Antony’s ghost could find content’ (1978: 232). I submit that it is a poor sort of immortality for a man who almost ruled the known world to be remembered through the millennia as not quite man enough.

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Appendix: Timeline of Historical Events

100 bce 100

Birth of Caius Julius Caesar 90 bce

85 83 82 80

Caesar marries Cornelia (Estimated) birth of Marcus Antonius Sullan proscriptions – Caesar leaves Rome Ptolemy XII Auletes ascends the throne of Egypt 80 bce

78 73 71

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Caesar returns to Rome – captured by pirates en route Spartacus’ slave revolt begins Death of Marcus Antonius Creticus, father of Marcus Antonius Julia, mother of Marcus Antonius, remarries Publius Cornelius Lentulus Sura (date uncertain)

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70 bce 69

67 66 63

Birth of Cleopatra VII Caesar elected quaestor Cornelia dies Caesar returns to Rome after quaestorship in Spain Caesar marries Pompeia First Catiline conspiracy Second Catiline conspiracy – execution of P Cornelius Lentulus Sura Birth of Caius Octavius (future Caesar Octavianus) 60 bce

59

58 55 54 53 51

Caesar elected consul Auletes deposed by his daughter Berenice – driven out of Egypt Formation of First Triumvirate (Caesar, Pompey and Crassus) Caesar marries Calpurnia Pompey marries Julia Caesaris Pompey marries Julia Caesaris Auletes seeks refuge in Rome (with Cleopatra?) Auletes restored to the Egyptian throne Marcus Antonius in Egypt under Aulus Gabinius Death of Julia Caesaris in childbirth Death of Crassus during abortive Parthian campaign Antonius marries his first cousin Antonia (date is disputed) Death of Auletes Cleopatra VII marries her younger brother Ptolemy XIII – co-rulers of Egypt 50 bce

50 49

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Cleopatra driven out of Alexandria Caesar crosses the Rubicon Death of Caius Scribonius Curio Civil war in Rome

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47

46

45 44

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Caesar dictator 6 June: Battle of Pharsalus: Pompey defeated Pompey flees to Alexandria 28 September: Pompey murdered by advisors of Ptolemy XIII 2 October: Caesar arrives in Alexandria Caesar and Cleopatra begin their liaison Battle of Alexandria – Library of Alexandria partially destroyed Death of Ptolemy XIII Cleopatra marries her brother Ptolemy XIV – co-rulers of Egypt Caesar dictator Antonius Master of Horse Publius Cornelius Dolabella proposes debt relief for the masses and occupies the Forum Rioting and political chaos in Rome – 800 dead (Huzar, 1978: 67) Antonius divorces Antonia on the grounds of adultery with Dolabella Antonius marries Fulvia Antonius falls out of favour with Caesar (possibly due to Dolabella affair) Birth of Caesarion Caesar pursues Pompeians into Africa Death of Cato Caesar dictator Cleopatra arrives in Rome Antonius joins Caesar in Munda (Spain) – back in favour Antonius co-consul with Caesar February Lupercalia: Antonius offers Caesar a diadem in front of crowds in the Forum; Caesar refuses three times 15 March Assassination of Julius Caesar; conspirators retreat to the Capitol and send emissaries to Antonius and Lepidus (who is Master of the Horse and in command of the only troops permitted within the city walls)

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16 March Lepidus occupies State Treasury Antonius negotiates with Lepidus; acquires Caesar’s papers and monies; negotiates with conspirators; calls a meeting of the Senate for the following day 17 March Senate meeting: Antonius persuades conspirators that to declare Caesar a tyrant would be to negate their own political standing, since Caesar had appointed them to high-ranking political positions, but the acts of a tyrant are automatically invalid Antonius effects public reconciliation with conspirators 18 March Senate meets again: Antonius and conspirators jointly praised 20 March Caesar’s will read out in Senate: Octavianus (in Greece) named Caesar’s heir Antonius delivers Caesar’s funerary oration – pro-Caesarian rioting and mob violence results April Cleopatra returns to Egypt Octavianus returns to Italy Decimus Brutus and Trebonius obliged by pro-Caesarian sentiment to leave Rome for their provinces June–December Antonius manoeuvres Decimus Brutus out of his gubernatorial province of Cisalpine Gaul Cicero delivers Philippics Antonius and Octavianus manoeuvre and counter-manoeuvre Decimus Brutus refuses to hand over Cisalpine Gaul. Antonius obliged to march north with his legions Antonius besieges Decimus Brutus’ forces in Mutina. Senate authorizes consuls to lead troops against him Fulvia campaigns for Antonius in Rome

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43

42 41

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Antonius obliged to strategically retreat; declared Enemy of the State Death of Ptolemy XIV (assassinated by Cleopatra?) Antonius crosses the Alps into Gaul. Unites with Lepidus, Plancus and Pollio. Decimus Brutus killed in battle Octavianus requests consulship – denied. Begins to march on Rome, forcing Senate to capitulate November: formation of Second Triumvirate (Antonius, Octavianus and Lepidus) Proscriptions – death of Cicero Battle of Philippi – death of Brutus and Cassius Deification of Julius Caesar Antonius begins a tour of his eastern provinces, raising tributes and settling disputes Antonius and Cleopatra meet at Tarsus and begin their alliance Death of Arsinoë, Cleopatra’s last surviving sibling – dragged from sanctuary at the Temple of Diana at Ephesus and executed on the orders of Antonius, at Cleopatra’s request Antonius winters in Alexandria. Society of Inimitable Livers established Perusine War 40 bce

40

38 37

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Conclusion of Perusine War Treaty of Brundisium restores civilities in Triumvirate; divides Roman world among the triumvirs Death of Fulvia in Athens Antonius marries Octavia Birth of Alexander Helios and Cleopatra Selene, Cleopatra’s twins by Antonius Octavianus marries Livia Pact of Tarentum: Antonius replenishes Octavianus’ navy with 120 ships, in exchange for the promise of 20,000 troops Antonius returns to the east to prepare for the Parthian campaign Cleopatra joins Antonius at Antioch

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36

35

34

32

31

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Expiry and renewal of Second Triumvirate Parthian campaign a disaster c.30,000 troops lost Birth of Ptolemy Philadelphus, third child of Cleopatra and Antonius Lepidus stripped of command after abortive coup in Sicily Defeat and death of Sextus Pompey, last surviving son of Pompey Magnus Octavianus sends Octavia to Athens with 2,000 troops for her husband (10 per cent of promised 20,000). Antonius sends her back to Rome without seeing her Antyllus joins Antonius in Alexandria Antonius invades and captures Armenia as retribution for perfidy during Parthian campaign ‘Donations of Alexandria’ Propaganda war between Antonius and Octavianus begins in earnest Pro-Antonian consuls Domitius Ahenobarbus and Caius Sosius obliged to flee Rome. Join Antonius and Cleopatra in Ephesus, where they are wintering. Antonius now no longer has any political support remaining in Rome Antonius divorces Octavia Octavianus seizes Antonius’ alleged will from Vestal Virgins and reads it out to scandalized Senate: Antonius apparently requests to be buried in Alexandria (which is anathema for a Roman statesman). Also recognizes Caesarion as the son of Caesar and makes (illegal) provision for his children by Cleopatra Octavianus declares war on Cleopatra Octavianus begins to ferry troops across to Greece, where Antonius’ army have been wintering Agrippa effects a series of victories in Octavianus’ name, crippling Antonian forces Summer passes in stalemate – disease further decimates forces of Antonius and Cleopatra

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2 September: Battle of Actium. Cleopatra and Antonius escape Octavianus’ naval blockade of the Gulf of Ambracia, suffering heavy losses. Land troops defect on the march back to Egypt 30 bce 30

Reformation of The Society of Inimitable Livers – renamed Those Who Are Inseparable By Death Caesarion and Antyllus celebrate their Coming of Age Octavianus advances – Cleopatra offered her kingdom if she will have Antony killed; she refuses Caesarion sent out of Egypt for his safety Octavianus arrives outside Alexandria in July Final Battle of Alexandria: Antonius initially successful, but suffers a crippling reverse on the second day Egyptian Navy defects to Octavianus 1 August: Antonius, believing Cleopatra to be dead, falls on his sword. Mortally wounded, he is carried to her mausoleum, where she is barricaded, and dies in her arms 1 August: Octavianus enters Alexandria as victor. Cleopatra imprisoned Cleopatra attempts to negotiate a settlement with Octavianus, but learns that he plans to parade her in triumph in Rome 12 August: Cleopatra commits suicide Antyllus dragged from sanctuary in an Alexandria temple and put to death Caesarion, en route back to Egypt, is betrayed by his tutor and killed 20 bce

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Octavianus awarded honorific title ‘Augustus’

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Notes

Introduction 1 2

3 4 5

Opening quotation is from Joshel, Malamud and Wyke (2001: 3). The 22-part series, spread over two seasons, follows a format similar to that typical of a soap opera. This sets Rome apart somewhat from the other texts under analysis in that the condensed run-times of the preceding films and mini-series obliged them to adhere more closely to the structure of the historical epic – privileging what might be termed the macro- over the microhistorical – whereas the long-term, episodic structure of Rome permits (or obliges) greater diffusion of narrative focus: over characters, events and the niceties of historical difference. Raucci (2008) discusses the fact that from the opening sequence of Episode 1, Rome ‘conflates the private world with the public into a familial soap opera’ (2008: 207). While the devolution of the toga epic from the large to the small screen in the twenty-first century is undoubtedly worthy of close investigation, it is outside the remit of this study, and the differential imperatives do not sufficiently deviate from the generic conventions of the preceding historical epics to disqualify Rome from this study; indeed, I would argue that the series has more in common with the historical epic than the soap opera, and this point is raised as a matter of due diligence only. For example, Due Notti Con Cleopatra (Italy, 1953); Astérix & Obelix: Mission Cléopâtre (France, 2002). For example, Cleobatra (Egypt, 1943); Cléopatra (TV, Brazil, 1962); Kleopatra (Czech Republic, 2003). While I acknowledge that significant cultural differences exist between the UK and the US, only one of the texts in question is specifically a UK production (Caesar and Cleopatra, 1946), and the practice of cultural

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exchange from the US to the UK (and, to a much lesser extent, back again) is well enough established that it seems reasonable to assume a broadly common encoding/decoding practice in both countries, and specific differences in cultural signifiers (for example, ancient Rome) will be discussed. For a discussion of spectacle in the historical epic see, for example, Eldrige (2006: 68). Other Anglophone countries are absent only on the grounds that they have not, to date, reproduced the narrative on screen.

Chapter 1 1 2

3 4

5

See, for example, Sinha (1995); Gouda (2002); Flood (ed) (2007: 73–76); Reeser (2010: 171–199). This is a rough estimate only and a meaningful comparison of the denarius to modern currency is extremely complex; however, the formula of 1 sesterce to $1.50 is from Everitt (2003: ix). Demetrios of Macedon, reigned 294–288 bce. His is the Life that Plutarch chooses to parallel with Antonius/Antony. It should be noted that feminized is not used to mean feminine or effeminate, but rather to situate Antony’s behaviour as in some way discursively non-masculine, as he is situated in Roman political discourse. Note, however, that the reader is never expected to explicitly and entirely reject Antony as a point of identification. This will be further explored in Chapters 2 and 5.

Chapter 2 1 2 3

Opening quotation is from Antony and Cleopatra (1.2.129). An Eastern queen with whom Antonius allegedly had an affair in the months before he began his alliance with Cleopatra. Carroll describes the anti-hero as ‘represent[ing] masculinities outside of the standardized republican ideal’ and calls him ‘a contrasting interpretation of masculinity, one that provides alternative definitions outside of white, mainstream contexts’ (2003: 34). Clearly, a superficial reading of this definition could incorporate the Antony-icon under its aegis, but for the fact that Antony’s masculinity is specifically located within ‘white, mainstream contexts’, and uses the white, hegemonic paradigm both as the boundaries of its construction and as the semiological framework from which it draws its meaning. Antony is not, therefore, an alternative way of performing

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masculinity as compared to the hegemonic ideal: he is the hegemonic ideal deficiently performed. The fact that Octavian exhibits many of the tropes of the Roman Other, including sexual ‘deviance’, excessive cruelty and disingenuousness, despite being ostensibly the mediator of the Antony-myth, is intriguing, and certainly deserving of scholarly attention; however, it is outside the remit of this project to investigate fully. Therefore, suffice it to say that, generally speaking, Octavian is positioned as politically astute – and better placed than Antony to lead Rome out of the chaos of the late Republic – but he is also cold, calculating, ruthless and quasi-sociopathic in his ability to stifle emotion when emotion is inconvenient.

Chapter 3 1 2

3

Opening quotation is from Antony and Cleopatra (1.4.8). The casting of Brando in Julius Caesar (Mankiewicz, 1953), of course, complicates this simplified dichotomy, since his star image carries with it an implicit debate about performances of masculinity. The casting of Brando, in fact, is an excellent example of the ways in which the circulation of the Antony-icon works within popular culture: by casting an actor whose persona is linked with problematic masculinity in the role of Shakespeare’s Antony one might argue that Mankiewicz is simply following the cultural conventions theorized within this project, whereby the body of Antony-on-screen is used to interrogate performances of deficient masculinity. However, as I have indicated above, this is not the primary imperative of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, and therefore the decision to introduce the theme of problematic masculinity – as embodied in Brando – into a text primarily concerned with interrogating performances of political authority evidences at least a tangential engagement with the socio-cultural function of the Antony-icon. It also indicates an alignment with the generic convention of masculine performance as a marker of imperialism/tyranny, as discussed in Chapter 2. For a fuller discussion of Brando’s Antony, please see Kelly (2011). Royster’s argument assumes that Cleopatra embodies black female sexuality – if not literally, then figuratively as the body of an anthropomorphized Egypt.

Chapter 4   1 For a more detailed discussion of the dyadic gender paradigm embedded in Antony/Cleopatra, please see Kelly (2009).

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  2 This more simplistic reading of the Society’s aims is also to be found in the final episode of Season 2 of Rome (2007), which will be discussed in greater detail under Despair.   3 I have not been able to source actual viewing figures for the movie, but given its relative obscurity – particularly as regards the other movies considered under this analysis, and as regards the difficulties of finding any information on the movie itself (which is now, incidentally, deleted from Columbia’s catalogue and available only on VHS from collectors) – a limited viewing audience at the time of its release would seem to be a fairly safe assumption.   4 This less licentious sexual positioning is problematized by James Buselink’s (1988) assessment of the lost material from the 1963 movie, which included additional footage, shot but edited from the release print, of Antony’s casual sexual relationship with another Eastern queen prior to Tarsus. However, since it is absent from the cinematic release, it is not considered here.   5 The only exception is Pullo, who personifies the lovable rogue, whose worst transgressions – including brutal and unprovoked murder – are recuperated by the narrative, and whose sexual language is used most often for comic effect.   6 See, for example, Basinger (1993).   7 See, for example, the All Roads Lead to Rome function of the DVD special features, which inserts onto the screen ‘pop-up’ captions offering additional historical information pertinent to the screen.   8 Indeed, it might be argued that Shakespeare’s famous ‘Friends, Romans, Countrymen’ speech provides a blueprint for such an abridgement. However, the difficulties in incorporating this into texts informed by the gender positioning of Antony and Cleopatra are discussed in this chapter.   9 For Caesar’s unstable embodiment of the paradigm, see Chapter 5. 10 Pace the works of, for example, Buselink (1988) and Hughes-Hallett (1990), who argue that the text is in fact apolitical. Certainly, per Buselink, it would appear that the shooting script was much more explicitly concerned with the politics of the era, and the release print was edited to emphasize the romantic narrative; however, compared to the texts that precede it, the 1963 film is practically unique in seeking not only to situate Cleopatra as a head of state (rather than using ‘queen’ as a descriptor of privileged but ultimately powerless femininity), but also in using the politico-historical moment to drive the narrative. Previous incarnations of the mythology have tended to divorce the action from any specific sense of history in order to more effectively map contemporaneous gender paradigms onto the bodies of the lead

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characters. While Cleopatra (1963) certainly negotiates issues of gender, it exhibits a more overt concern with issues of historical verisimilitude in creating its historical mythic space. Chapter 5 1 2

Opening quotation is from Julius Caesar (3.2.219). For purposes of clarity, references to Caesar within this project refer only to C Julius Caesar and not to Octavianus/Augustus, regardless of how this individual may be referred to in any of the texts in question. 3 Although note that this is problematized at times by his antipathy towards Cleopatra, who, notwithstanding DeMille’s (possibly apocryphal) description of her as ‘the wickedest woman in history’ (Hughes-Hallet, 1991: 269), is generally sympathetic. 4 It should be noted that Antony does not figure directly in this text, which is concerned only with Caesar’s sojourn in Alexandria in 48–47 bce (during which period Antony was in Rome). However, significant mention is made of Antony within the narrative, and the text is included for this reason. 5 The exception is, again, Caesar and Cleopatra (1945), which is generally considered a UK production. It is worth noting that this production was not well-received on its release. Rome is a UK/US co-production, jointly produced by the BBC and HBO. Its affiliation is problematic: the majority of the major roles are filled by British or Irish actors; however, while there is a mixture of British and US directors and writers, the majority are US-born or based and the series originally aired first in the US, a fact that Anise K Strong (in Rome Season One: History Makes Television) highlights as a key consideration for the ‘incest episode’ (2005.9) in which Octavia seduces her brother. Strong’s opinion is that the sequence, which has no basis in the historical record, was envisioned as a response to the notorious ratings war on US television in November (the episode aired in the US on 30 October 2005), which suggests that American audiences were foremost in the series’ creators’ minds. The series creators are also US-born or based, and the majority of the executive producers are from the US. All of the above presents a strong case for considering the series as primarily a US production, at least in terms of cultural imperative, although it is recognized that this affiliation will be contentious.  6 Warren William’s Caesar in Cleopatra (1934) is similarly problematic, although the anxiety-discourse invoked in his construction is better understood as an interrogation of the spectre of corporate greed rather than postwar imperialist tensions (Ford and Mitchell, 2009).

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 7 The single exception is in Cleopatra (1999), wherein it is embodied in Olympos, Cleopatra’s Greek physician.  8 Cleopatra (1934), Cleopatra (1963) and Cleopatra (1999) follow this paradigm, as do the two seasons of Rome (2005–7) – albeit obliquely, since the measure of Rome’s narrative is not the affair with Cleopatra but the political primacy of either man.  9 Rome (2005–7) does not configure the relationship in specifically quasipaternal terms, although it makes clear on several occasions that Antony – whether or not he consciously acknowledges as much – is reliant on Caesar’s superior diplomatic and political ability. Throughout Season 1, Antony’s judgement is repeatedly contrasted with Caesar’s and found wanting, and, in Season 2, Brutus articulates this narrative pattern, saying of Antony: ‘He’s a vulgar beast. Without Caesar he will destroy himself soon enough’ (2007.1). 10 The casting of Marlon Brando as Antony in Julius Caesar (1953) is clearly important in terms of his star persona and the non-diegetic baggage he brings with him to his performance, and is omitted with reluctance only on the grounds that the text does not conform to the parameters outlined in the Introduction. However, see Kelly (2011) for a full discussion of Brando’s specific discourse of masculinity, the divergent gender paradigms of Julius Caesar versus Antony and Cleopatra, and the impact of both on the politico-cultural rhetoric of the film. 11 Warren William, in Cleopatra (1934), presents an intriguing alternative discourse of the ‘cad and reprobate’ (Stangeland, 2010: 134). DeMille, according to Birchard (2004), considered several actors for the role, all of whom were known for playing womanizing rogues, suggesting a clear non-diegetic discourse at work in framing Caesar for this text – Ford and Mitchell call him ‘a CEO motivated by ruthless ambition’, and state that DeMille framed him as such to exploit ‘the anticorporate prejudices of his time’ (2009: 77). Nevertheless, William’s casting continues to invoke a hierarchical discourse: Henry Wilcoxon as Antony was a virtual unknown at the time of release and, as such, his star presence was significantly less than William’s. Moreover, of the central male players, Brutus and Octavian are (per the historical record) generally played by actors of a similar age or younger than the actor playing Antony, whereas Arthur Hohl (playing Brutus) was 16 years older than Wilcoxon and Ian Keith (playing Octavian) was six years older. Finally, DeMille’s autobiography specifies that Wilcoxon was cast for his ‘look’. ‘While waiting in the [projection] booth,’ he writes, ‘I heard, coming from the sound track of the test film, a resonant, manly voice… I peeked through the projectionist’s little window toward the screen,

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and saw that the owner of the voice that had caught my ear was a young actor, with a handsome, strong, sensitive face, a finely-shaped head, and a powerfully-built frame’ (1959: 336). That Wilcoxon was, essentially, cast for his external signifiers of male attractiveness (which are conflated with Antony) is clear when DeMille remembers that he framed his decision with the words ‘he is Marc Antony’ (1959: 336). For Antony’s problematic positioning as a soldier, see Chapter 6. Pace Stacie Raucci who, in Spectacle of Sex: Bodies on Display in Rome (2008: 207–218), reads the body of Caesar as manifesting a relative lack of virility when compared with the body of Antony, which is regularly depicted engaging in vigorous sexual activity. She extends her argument to the question of Caesarion’s paternity, suggesting that the spectre of Caesar’s lack of virility foreshadows his assassination, which is fast approaching. I feel that this reading relies on an assumption that Antony is in control of the gaze, which the text does not support. On the contrary, I read Antony’s exhibition of sexual activity as pathologized, not solely as regards to Caesar’s (which is undertaken as a result of his deep and longstanding love – for Servilia – or, politically, in response to Cleopatra’s suggestion), although this comparison is particularly relevant here. As such, with Caesar’s depiction of sexual virility recuperated under this reading, I find that Cleopatra’s sexual duplicity comments on her use of her sexual power, rather than Caesar’s. For a discussion of Antony’s problematic performance of political masculinity, see Kelly (forthcoming). Cleopatra (1934)’s Enobarbus, however, cannot reconcile his objections to Antony’s decisions and deserts, saying: ‘You, who might have been the world’s great man, ends all for a woman. For that, I give you the world’s contempt. But for what you might have been, I give you my last salute’ (DeMille, 1934). The historical Rufio was an ex-slave and friend of Julius Caesar. After securing Egypt under Cleopatra’s rule in 47 bce, Caesar left three legions in Alexandria under Rufio’s control in order to safeguard her throne (Grant, 2000: 80).

Chapter 6 1

2

I would also be inclined to suggest, per Flanagan (2011: 89), that the 1980s, Whitehead and Barrett’s second-wave period, were characterized by quasiepics in the form of a cycle of fantasy films. For a discussion of Antony’s performance of lecher/father in Rome specifically, see Kelly (2013).

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It should be noted that this was not the original narrative intent, however, and was the result of HBO’s decision to cancel the show mid-way through production of Season 2. Indeed, Hibberd (2008) suggests that a further two seasons were planned, and Antony’s death was intended to close Season 4. Notwithstanding the gender anxieties encoded into colonialist discourse, as discussed in Chapter 1. See, for example, Carr (1985: 50); Stampp (1989: 327); Pennycook (1998: 60); Said (2003: 40); Chowdry and Beeman (2007: 20–21). Beauvoir (2009: 3–19) is particularly useful in terms of situating the woman as Other and describing the mechanisms by which a discourse of infantilization is applied to naturalize this positioning.

Conclusion 1

Opening quotation is from Hamer (1993: 119).

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Filmography

300 (2006) Dir. Zach Snyder, US: Warner Bros Pictures [DVD] A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) Dir. Elia Kazan, US: Charles K Feldman Group, Warner Bros Pictures [DVD] Alexander (2005) Dir. Oliver Stone, US: Warner Bros Pictures [DVD] Antony and Cleopatra (1972) Dir. Charlton Heston, UK/Spain/Switzerland: Folio Films, The Rank Organization, Transac, Izaro Films [DVD] Antony and Cleopatra (1974) Dir. Jon Scoffield, UK: Incorporated Television Company, Royal Shakespeare Company [DVD] Astérix & Obelix: Mission Cléopâtre (2002) Dir. Alain Chabat, France: Canal +, CNC, Chez Wam [DVD] Asterix et Cléopatra (1968) Dir. René Goscinny, Lee Payant and Albert Uderzo, France: Belvision, Dargaud Films [DVD] Ben-Hur (1959) Dir. William Wyler, US: Metro Goldwyn Mayer [DVD] Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925) Dir. Fred Niblo, US: Metro Goldwyn Mayer [not viewed] Bugsy (1991) Dir. Barry Levinson, US: Tristar Pictures, Mulholland Productions, Baltimore Pictures Carry on Cleo (1964) Dir. Gerald Thomas, UK: Peter Rogers Productions [DVD] Cleobatra (1943) Dir. Ibrahim Lama, Egypt: Condor Film [not viewed] Cleopatra (1917) Dir. J Gordon Edwards, US: Fox Film Corporation [No copy exists] Cleopatra (1934) Dir. Cecil B DeMille, US: Paramount Pictures [DVD] Cleopatra (1999) Dir. Franc Roddam, US: Babelsberg International Film Produktion, Hallmark Entertainment [DVD] Cleopatra (1963) Dir. Joseph L Mankiewicz, US: 20th Century Fox [DVD] Cléopatra (1962) Dir. Walter George Durst, Túlio de Lemos, Brazil: TV Tupi [not viewed]

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F ilmography

287

Cléopatra (2007) Dir. Júlio Bressane, Brazil: Grupo Novo de Cinema e TV [not viewed] Cleopatra: The Film That Changed Hollywood (2001) Dir. Kevin Burns and Brent Zacky, US: Prometheus Entertainment [DVD] Cléopâtre (1914) Dir. Maurice Mariaud, France: Société des Etablissments L Gaumont [BFI Film Archive] Due Notti Con Cleopatra (1953) Dir. Mario Mattoli, Italy: Excelsa Film, Rosa Film [DVD] Gladiator (2000) Dir. Ridley Scott, US: Dreamworks SKG, Universal [DVD] Imperium: Augustus (2003) Dir. Roger Young, Germany/Italy/France/Austria/ Spain/UK: EOS Entertainment, Lux Vide, Radiotelevisione Italia, Telecinco, Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen [DVD] Jerry Maguire (1996) Dir. Cameron Crowe, US: Tristar Pictures, Gracie Films [DVD] Julius Caesar (1953) Dir. Joseph Mankiewicz, US: MGM [DVD] Julius Caesar (2002) Dir. Uli Edel, US/Germany/Italy/Netherlands: DeAngelis Group, Degeto Films, Five Mile River Films, Global Entertainment Productions Holland BV, TNT, Victory Media Group [DVD] Kleopatra (2003) Dir. Filip Renc, Czech Republic: Jupa Videofilm [not viewed] Marie Antoinette (2006) Dir. Sofia Coppola, US: Columbia Pictures, American Zoetrope [DVD] Private Gold #61: Cleopatra (2004) Dir. Antonio Adamo, US: Private Gold [DVD] Quo Vadis? (1912) Dir. Enrico Guazzoni, Italy: Cines [not viewed] Quo Vadis? (1925) Dir. Gabriello D’Annunzio, Georg Jacoby, Italy/Germany: Arturo Ambrosio [not viewed] Quo Vadis? (1951) Dir. Mervyn LeRoy, USA: Metro Goldwyn Mayer [DVD] Quo Vadis? (1985) Dir. Franco Rossi, Italy: RAI [DVD] Quo Vadis? (2001) Dir. Jerzy Kawalerowicz, Poland: Chronos Film [not viewed] Rome: Season 1 (2005) Dir. Michael Apted, Allen Coulter, Alan Poul, Steve Shill, Timothy van Patten, Alan Taylor, UK/US: BBC/HBO [DVD] Rome: Season 2 (2007) Dir. Michael Apted, Allen Coulter, Alan Poul, Steve Shill, Timothy van Patten, John Maybury, UK/US: BBC/HBO [DVD] Spartacus (1960) Dir. Stanley Kubrick, US: Universal [DVD] Spartacus (2004) Dir. Robert Dornhelm, US: USA Network Pictures [not viewed] Spartacus: Blood and Sand (2010) Dir. Michael Hurst, Rick Jacobson, Jesse Warn, US: Starz Media [DVD] Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991) Dir. Nicholas Meyer, US: Paramount Pictures [DVD]

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The Robe (1953) Dir. Henry Koster, US: 20th Century Fox [DVD] Troy (2004) Dir. Wolfgang Petersen, US: Warner Bros Pictures [DVD] Walker (1987) Dir. Alex Cox, US/Mexico/Spain: In-Cine Compañia Industrial Cinematográfica / Northern / Walker Films Ltd [not viewed]

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Index

300 (2006) 71 Actium 44, 106–7, 120, 123–6, 188–9, 197–8, 227 Augustan reading of 44, 123–4, 197–8, 227 Cleopatra (1934) 197, 227 Cleopatra (1963) 120, 125–6, 188, 189, 197–8 Cleopatra (1999) 197, 227 Despair and 44, 106, 107 Rome (2005–7) 123 Agrippa, Marcus (character) 113, 127, 153, 186, 225 Alcohol use (see Drunkenness) Alexander (2005) 71–2 Alexandria 45–7, 64, 74, 90–2, 102–3, 105, 107, 123, 132–6, 138, 149–50, 227, 245, 250–1 Antony and 45, 46–7, 74, 90–2, 105, 132–3, 134–6, 149–50, 245, 250 Battle of 227 Caesar and 133–4, 138, 245 Donations of 150 Emotionality and 64, 92, 107 Feminizing influence of 45, 74, 102–3, 132–3, 134–6, 250

Hedonism and 102–3, 105, 107, 123, 251 Anti-hero 67, 268–9 Antonius, Iullus 55, 228, 237 Antonius, Marcus (see Antony (historical figure); for the son of Antony and Fulvia see Antyllus) Antony (historical figure) 1–2, 15, 16–65, 92, 101–2, 106–11, 119, 123–4, 130–1, 136–8, 149, 163, 174, 199, 202–3, 224–5, 228, 268 Actium 1–2 Caesar and 24, 27, 42, 48, 49, 202–3 Children of 32, 107, 123, 228 Cicero and 19, 24–7, 32–7, 38, 40–3, 45–6, 47–8, 110, 119 Cleopatra and 50–1, 59, 92, 106, 107–8, 119, 123–4, 149, 163, 228 Curio and 32–7, 45–6, 53 Death 199 Descent from Hercules 38, 44, 130 Drunkenness 41–2, 101–2 Early life 30, 32–7 Egypt and 47, 107–8, 149

289

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290

I ndex

Family 27, 49, 136–7 Fulvia and 53–65, 228 ‘Knowability’ 15, 17–9 Marriages 32, 55 Military career 37–8, 48–9, 55, 149, 224–5, 228 Octavian and 56–60, 109 Perusine War 56–7 Philhellenism 131 Political career 47–51, 55, 61, 136–8, 149, 203, 228 Plutarch and 22, 24, 27–30, 38–40, 42–5, 48–51, 224–5 Profligacy 32–4, 42–3 Promiscuity 109–11, 268 Timoneum 107 Antony (popular culture) 1–5, 7–8, 14–5, 17, 19, 21–7, 27–74, 77–94, 95–156, 157–205, 206–48, 249–54, 256–9, 268–9, 270–4 Abandonment of Rome 14, 31, 38, 59, 65, 74, 82, 91–4, 148–54, 251 Actium 106–7, 120–1, 123, 125–6, 188, 197, 227 Atia (see Rome (2005–7)) Audience identification with 67–8, 72–3, 154–5, 157–8, 204–5, 250, 258–9, 268 Augustus (2003) 64, 150–2, 168, 208, 222 Bathing in asses milk 132–3, 177, 227 Bodily display 3, 133, 183–5, 226–7, 250–1, 259 Burton, Richard 158, 178–82, 184, 254 Caesar and 53–4, 105, 111, 114, 133–5, 137, 142, 145, 148, 158–9, 162–78, 193, 219, 222–3, 245, 252, 272

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Caesar and Cleopatra (1945) 166–8, 245, 271 Casting 174–82, 272–3 Childlessness 117, 214, 228–45, 251 Ciceronian invective 40–2, 51, 110–1, 155 Cleopatra and 36–7, 38, 44, 58, 59–63, 70, 82, 85–94, 100, 104–9, 111–2, 116–7, 120–30, 134, 138–9, 141–2, 144, 149, 150–2, 163–5, 167–70, 186–91, 196–8, 208–9, 234–7, 243–7, 252 Cleopatra (1934) 59, 64, 94, 104, 125, 138–42, 149, 194, 233–4, 246, 251 Cleopatra (1963) 49, 59–60, 64, 94, 104–6, 120–2, 125–6, 132–3, 142–3, 169–70, 183–5, 186, 188–91, 194–99, 234–5, 252, 270 Cleopatra (1999) 53–4, 60, 94, 106–9, 111–2, 126–7, 133–5, 143–5, 149–50, 169–70, 194, 227, 236–7, 245–7, 252 Commodification 135, 169, 245 Compared against paradigm 43, 120–1, 157–78, 185–205, 258 Curio and 53–4, 55, 65–74 Despair 107–9, 118–23 Donations of Alexandria 150 Drunkenness 31, 38, 41, 101–9, 120, 142, 145, 197, 198 Elided (see Political performance) Emotionality 21, 31, 36–7, 44, 82–3, 117–30, 215, 216, 218–9, 222, 253 Fatherhood 228–45 Feminized dress 31, 130–6, 151, 250

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I ndex Fulvia and 53–65 Gender reversal 40, 44–5, 60–1, 65, 85, 187–8, 208–9 “Heart-throb” 175–9, 258 Hegemonic masculinity 7–8, 15, 40, 47, 57, 65–74, 99–100, 110, 117, 119–20, 132, 135, 145, 156, 157–205, 213, 214–5, 249–51, 256–8, 268 Hypermasculinity 40, 207–245, 252–3 Iconography 100–156, 207–248 Infantilization 167–8, 245–7 Julius Caesar (2002) 170–4, 228 Lechery 31, 41–2, 109–17, 219, 229–37, 244–5, 273 Love (immoderate) 36–8, 82–3, 117–8, 121–2, 123–30, 187–91 Love rivals 185–91 Military career 24, 48–9, 174, 223–8 Octavia and 61–5, 74, 86, 126, 242 Octavian and 60–1, 144–5, 150, 151–4, 163, 201, 203, 219–20, 242–3, 269, 272 Oedipal discourses 115, 142, 143, 165–74, 195, 252 Plutarch 3, 24, 28–30, 38, 40–2, 44–5, 48–51, 78–81, 89–90, 103, 187, 197, 199 Political ineptitude (see Political performance) Quasi-psychopathy 208, 215–28 Rome (2005–7) 38, 41, 58, 73, 112–7, 123, 127–30, 135–6, 138, 145–8, 152–4, 186, 193, 198, 199–204, 208, 219–23, 225–6, 228, 229–31, 239–44, 250, 272, 274

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291

Serpent of the Nile (1953) 111, 124–5, 132, 186–8, 194, 234 Sexual consent 114–5, 145 Shakespeare 2, 4, 21, 77–94, 95–8, 102–3, 130–1, 143, 149, 256, 259, 269 Suicide 87, 120, 199, 250 Tarsus 103–4, 107, 125, 142, 196 Two-act structure 77, 104–5, 107, 163–5, 214, 230 Violence 146, 148, 152, 168, 208, 220, 222–8 Antony and Cleopatra (play) 2, 4, 21–2, 63–4, 75–98, 102–3, 130–1, 149 Gender 2, 21–2, 63–4, 80–81, 82–94, 96, 97, 130–1 Hedonism 102–3, 149 On screen 4, 75–6, 77–9, 94–6, 98 Orientalism 77–8, 91–94, 149 Plutarch 21–2, 78–81, 92, 93 Rome/Romanness 90–94 Queen Elizabeth I 85 Antyllus (also Marcus Antonius, son of Antony and Fulvia) 55, 107, 228 Apollodorus (character) 120–1, 160, 185–91, 198 As love rival 185–7, 188–191 Performance of masculinity 160, 186–7, 188–91, 198 Phallic symbolism 120–1, 188, 198 Augustus (2003) (for Augustus Caesar see Caesar, Augustus (historical figure) and Caesar, Augustus (popular culture)) 2, 58, 64, 145, 150–2, 160, 168, 175, 197, 208, 216, 218–9, 222, 228, 237

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292

I ndex

Bara, Theda 4, 13, 243 Bodily display 3, 70, 133, 182–5, 226–7, 251, 253, 258 Disavowal mechanisms 70, 183, 185, 226–7 Female 183–5 Feminizing discourse 133, 182, 185, 227, 251 Homoeroticism 70, 182–5, 226–7, 251, 253 Male 3, 70, 133, 182–5, 226–7, 251, 253, 258 Brando, Marlon 96−7, 269, 272 Brutus, M. Junius (character) 113, 138, 140, 219, 222–3, 225, 233–5, 272 Cleopatra (1934) 140, 233 Cleopatra (1963) 234–5 Rome (2005–7) 113, 138, 219, 222–3, 225, 272 Bugsy (1991) 76, 97–8 Burton, Richard 2, 158, 178–84, 254 Audience identification with 158, 183–4 Cultural conflation with Antony 178–182, 254 Love affair with Elizabeth Taylor 2, 179–182, 254 Star-text 179 Caesar, Augustus (historical figure) (also Octavian, Octavianus) 1, 18–9, 51, 56–9, 61–2, 109, 159 Champion of morals 61–2 Early principate 18, 62, 159 Lex Juliae 62 Perusine War 56–7 Propaganda 1, 18–9, 51, 58–9, 109 Caesar, Augustus (popular culture) (also Octavian, Octavianus) 21–2,

Mark Antony.indb 292

54, 58–61, 64, 74, 77, 85, 90–1, 99, 105, 107, 113, 138–9, 141–2, 144–5, 148–54, 163, 168, 199, 201–3, 208, 219–20, 222, 225–6, 229–30, 233, 239, 242–3, 245, 268–9, 272 Antony and 60–1, 144–5, 150, 151–4, 163, 201, 203, 219–20, 242–3, 269, 272 Augustus (2003) 150–2, 168, 208, 222 Cleopatra (1934) 59, 64, 138–9, 141–2, 149, 233, 272 Cleopatra (1963) 59, 77, 105, 199 Cleopatra (1999) 60, 107, 144–5, 150, 245 Fitness-to-rule 61, 201–2, 203, 219–20 Livia and 54, 58, 220 Masculine performance 60, 61, 152–3, 201, 203, 219–20, 230, 239 Perusine War (absence of) 74 Rome (2005–7) 113, 138, 148, 152–4, 201–2, 203, 225–6, 229, 230, 242–3 Sexual deviancy 230, 269 Shakespeare 21–2, 85, 90–1, 99, 153 Caesar, C. Julius (historical figure) 22, 24, 35, 37, 42, 48–9, 62, 110, 137, 148–9, 190, 202, 228, 236 Antony and 24, 37, 42, 48, 49 Assassination of 49, 137, 202 Civil Wars 24, 37 Cleopatra and 190, 228 Fertility of 236 Nicomedes of Bithynia 35, 148–9 Roman invective and 22, 35 Caesar, C. Julius (popular culture) 5, 8–9, 49, 54, 77, 78, 79–81, 90–1,

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I ndex 102, 111, 113, 114, 127, 130, 133–5, 137–8, 139–46, 148–9, 158–79, 184, 193, 194–5, 202–3, 219, 222–3, 228, 233–6, 239–40, 245, 247, 252, 271–3 Antony and 111, 114, 133–5, 145, 148, 158, 163–78, 193, 219, 222–3, 245, 252 Assassination 49, 54, 137–8, 140, 203 Augustus (2003) 168 Caesar and Cleopatra (1945) 166–8, 233, 245 Casting imperatives 174–8, 179, 184, 271, 272 Cleopatra and 78, 143, 139–41, 166–8, 252 Cleopatra (1934) 139–41 Cleopatra (1963) 78, 133, 142–3, 169–70, 194–5, 234–6 Cleopatra (1999) 54, 133–4, 143–4, 169–70, 247 Father-figure 142–4, 165–74, 233, 239–40, 252, 272 Fertility 234–6, 273 Funeral 114, 142, 143–4, 219 Imperialism and 159–62, 252 Julius Caesar (2002) 170–4, 228 Nicomedes of Bithynia 148–9 Rome (2005–7) 113, 114, 127, 138, 145–6, 148, 202, 203, 222–3, 239–40, 272, 273 Signifying system 8–9, 159–62 Shakespeare and 77, 79–81, 90–1, 102 Unstable paradigm 158–63 Caesar and Cleopatra (1945) 2, 166–8, 175, 233, 245 Caesarion (also Ptolemy Caesar, Ptolemy XV) 107, 116, 163–4, 195,

Mark Antony.indb 293

293

228–9, 234, 235, 236–7, 247, 251, 273 Cassius Dio 24, 190 Cato (character) 145–6, 171–4 Julius Caesar (2002) 171–4 Rome (2005–7) 145–6 Cicero (historical figure) 17, 19, 22–3, 25–7, 28, 32–8, 40–8, 51–2, 55, 57, 101–2, 110–1, 118–9, 131 Antony and 17, 19, 25–7, 32–4, 35–7, 38, 40–3, 45–6, 47–8, 51–2, 57 Emotional expression and 44, 118–9 Philippics 17, 26–7, 32–3, 38, 41, 42, 45–6, 47–8, 51–2, 55, 101–2, 110–1 Tusculan Disputations 44, 118–9 Cicero (popular culture) (see entry under Rome (2005–7)) Cinaedus 36 Cleopatra (1917) 4, 13, 243 Cleopatra (1934) 2, 59, 64, 77, 94, 96, 100, 104, 125, 138–42, 149, 160, 175, 194, 197, 227, 233–4, 246, 271, 272–3 Cleopatra (1963) 2, 28, 49, 59–60, 64, 77–8, 94, 104–6, 120–2, 125–6, 132–3, 142–3, 158, 160, 163, 167, 168–70, 175, 177, 183–5, 186, 188–91, 194–9, 208, 227, 234–5, 251–2, 255, 270–1, 272 Cleopatra (1999) 2–3, 53–4, 60, 94, 100, 104, 106–9, 111–2, 126–7, 133–5, 143–5, 149–50, 160, 163–4, 168, 169–70, 175, 194, 197, 208, 227, 236–7, 245–7, 272 Cleopatra (historical figure) 1, 14, 27, 37, 47, 50–1, 92, 103, 107, 119, 123, 131–2, 149, 163–4, 190–1, 197–8, 227–8, 237, 269

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294

I ndex

Actium 1, 197–8, 227 Antony 37, 47, 50–1, 119, 123, 149, 163, 228 Caesar 163, 228 Children 123, 163–4, 228, 237 Duplicity 50–1 Easternness 131–2, 190–1 Plutarch and 47, 50–1, 92, 103, 197–8 Race 14, 269 Cleopatra (popular culture) 4, 12–4, 18, 38, 44, 53, 58–64, 70, 74–5, 77–8, 82, 85–94, 96–7, 100, 103–9, 111–2, 113, 115–7, 120–30, 132–5, 138–44, 149–52, 159, 161–70, 180–2, 186–91, 194–8, 208–9, 227, 233–7, 243–7, 251–2, 254, 256, 258, 271, 273 Actium 120, 125–6, 188, 197–8, 227 Antony and 38, 44, 58, 59–63, 70, 82, 85–94, 100, 104–9, 111–2, 116–7, 120–30, 134, 138–9, 141–2, 144, 150–2, 163–5, 167–70, 186–91, 196–8, 208–9, 234–7, 243–7, 252 Augustus (2003) 150–2 Caesar and Cleopatra (1945) 166–8, 233–5, 245 Caesar and 139–43, 161–2, 164–8, 186, 194–5, 234–7 Cleopatra (1917) 4, 13, 243 Cleopatra (1934) 96, 104, 125, 138–42, 149, 234, 246, 251, 271 Cleopatra (1963) 59–60, 64, 77–8, 105–6, 120–2, 125–6, 132–3, 142–3, 169–70, 186, 188–91, 194–7, 198, 234–5 Cleopatra (1999) 106–7, 108–9, 111–2, 126–7, 133–5, 149–50, 169–70, 227, 236–7, 245–7

Mark Antony.indb 294

Duplicity 124–5, 128, 186–8, 234, 251, 273 Femininity and 12, 62–3, 85, 87–90, 121–2, 143, 187–8, 194–5 Force for ruin 61, 74, 85–90, 100, 139–41, 161–2, 187–8 Gender reversal 44, 85, 121–2, 138, 180, 187–8, 208–9 Historical epic and 12–4, 161–2, 258 Motherhood and 78, 116, 163–4, 234–7, 243–4, 246, 251 Offered clemency if she will have Antony killed 125, 127, 129 Orientalism and 13–14, 38, 93–4, 190–1, 233, 243 Other 85, 93, 162, 190–1, 258 Plutarch 86, 92–4 Political ability 123, 127, 133, 142–3, 197, 246–7 Pre-Shakespearean texts 86–90 Promiscuity 116, 194–5 Rome (2005–7) 113, 115–7, 123, 128–30, 186, 243–4 Serpent of the Nile (1953) 124–5, 186–8, 234 Shakespeare 53, 63–4, 75, 77–8, 82, 85–6, 88–94, 96–7, 256 Tarsus 103, 111, 196 Taylor, Elizabeth 180–2 Third-wave feminism 96, 208–9, 252 Clothing 26, 31, 32, 44, 45–6, 52, 70, 130–1, 132, 133, 135–6, 151–2, 154, 218, 229, 250 Antony 26, 32, 44, 45–6, 132, 133, 135–6, 151–2, 250 Caesar 133 Feminization 32, 45–6, 130–1, 135–6

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I ndex Orientalism 151–2, 250 Roman gender discourse 32, 45–6, 52, 229 Symbolism 32, 45, 70, 132, 135–6, 151–2, 154, 229, 250 Colbert, Claudette 96, 125, 139, 246 Colonialism 20, 68, 92–3, 110, 131, 233, 245–6, 274 Curio, C. Scribonius 32–3, 34–7, 43, 45–6, 53–4, 55, 65–74 Dalton, Timothy 175, 176 Despair (see Emotionality) Dionysus 106–8 Antony and 106–7 Worship of 108 Donations of Alexandria, the 150 Drunkenness 23, 31, 34, 38, 41, 59, 101–9, 120, 127, 129, 142, 145, 179, 197–8, 207–8, 251, 257 Antony and 31, 38, 41, 101–9, 120, 142, 145, 197, 198 Ciceronian invective 38, 41, 101 Despair and 107–9, 120, 127, 251 Dionysian worship and 108 Plutarch 101–2 Roman discourse 23, 34, 102 Shakespeare 102–3 Tarsus 103 Dyadic Structures 80, 100, 115, 160, 162–78, 179, 200–2, 208–9, 220–1, 254, 269 Antony/Caesar 162–78, 179 Antony/Cleopatra 80, 100, 208–9, 254, 269 Antony/Octavian 200–2 Vorenus/Pullo 115, 160, 200–2, 220–1 Easternness 7, 13–4, 20, 38, 46–7, 65, 74, 85, 93–4, 103, 131–4, 141–2,

Mark Antony.indb 295

295

144–5, 148–9, 151, 153, 162, 166, 190–1, 243 Antony and 38, 93–4, 103, 131, 132, 133, 134, 141, 144–5, 149, 151, 153, 243 Binary with westernness 65, 74, 85, 93, 141–2, 144–5 Cleopatra and 13–4, 38, 132, 133, 134, 141, 149, 166, 190–1 Colonialism 13–4, 20, 131 Decadence and 103, 132, 133, 134, 144, 149, 151, 153, 243 Greece 20, 93, 131 Orientalism 7, 13–4, 46–7, 65, 149, 162, 166 Othering discourse 7, 13–4, 46–7, 93–4, 132, 141, 148–9, 162, 190–1 Roman discourse 46–7, 74, 93–4, 132, 190–1 Effeminacy (see also Mollitia) 6–7, 11, 20–3, 35–6, 57, 103, 119–20, 131, 154, 190, 268 Antony and 119–20, 131, 154, 190 Colonialism and 6–7, 20, 190 Historical epic and 11 Othering discourse 6–7, 103, 190 Roman discourse 20–3, 35–6, 57, 103, 119–20, 154 Egypt 13, 45, 63, 65, 74, 77–8, 82, 88, 90, 92, 91–4, 102−3, 107–8, 132, 134–6, 144, 149, 162, 233–4, 245, 250–1, 269 Cleopatra as embodiment of 77–8, 269 Egyptomania 13 Fecundity and 77–8 Gender and 45, 65, 74, 91–4, 103, 132, 134–6, 250, 269 Never-never Land 233–4, 251

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296

I ndex

Orientalism (see Easternness) Roman discourse 144 Shakespeare and 77–8, 82, 88, 90, 91–4, 102–3 Emotionality 7, 21, 23, 31, 33, 36–8, 44, 50, 74, 83–4, 88–9, 90–2, 97, 100, 107–9, 117–30, 132, 139, 141, 155, 181–2, 186–9, 198–200, 207, 211–2, 215–9, 221, 222, 227, 238, 240–1, 246, 250, 252–3, 269–70 Alcoholic excess and 107–8, 120 Ancient texts and 21, 23, 50, 118–9 Cicero and 37, 44, 118–9 Cleopatra and 44, 90, 92, 97, 108, 120–3, 125–7, 128, 129 Despair 100, 107–8, 117–23, 270 Gender and 7, 21, 44, 90, 117–20, 132, 139, 182, 212, 215–9 Incontinentia 44, 141 Love, immoderate 33, 36–7, 38, 50, 74, 83–4, 88–9, 100, 123–30, 227, 141, 181, 186–9 ‘Manly tears’ 216–7, 218, 222, 238, 240, 250, 252–3 Masculine emotionality 7, 21, 119–20, 186–7, 198–9, 200, 211, 212, 215–9, 221, 222, 238, 240–1, 250, 252–3 Shame and 120–4, 155, 218–9 Virtus and 21, 118 Weeping 33, 100, 108–9, 118–9, 129, 207, 218–9, 222, 246 Enobarbus 63–4, 77, 90, 92, 96, 102–3, 125, 139, 142, 149, 160, 205, 273 Cleopatra (1934) 77, 96, 125, 139, 142, 149, 160, 273 Shakespeare 63–4, 77, 90, 92, 96, 102–3, 205

Mark Antony.indb 296

Fatherhood 137, 142–3, 163, 165–74, 192, 195, 213, 228–45 Absence of discourse in Julius Caesar (2002) 170–4 Antony and 228–45 Authority and 165, 167, 236 Baby Boom 232–3, 236 Caesar and 174, 228–9, 234–6, 236–7, 239–41 Colonialist discourse and 166–8, 233 Emotionality and 237–45 “Fatherhood film”, the 241 Masculinity and 165–6, 192, 229–232 “New Dad”, the 213, 237–45 Oedipal discourse (Antony/Caesar) 137, 142–3, 163, 165–74, 195 Patriarchy 165, 236, 244 Phallic power 236 Promiscuity and 229–32 Responsibility and 232–4, 236, 244 Rome (2005–7) 228–31, 237–45 Statesmanship and 192 Virility and 166, 167, 174, 228–45 Vorenus and 239, 241–2 Femininity 12, 18, 20, 23, 42, 47–8, 53–65, 69, 74, 85, 87–90, 95–6, 102, 120–2, 132, 143–4, 157, 183–5, 187–9, 194–5, 208, 212–4, 246, 249, 269–71 Cleopatra and 12, 18, 62–3, 85, 87–90, 121–2, 143, 187–8, 194–5, 208, 269–71 Fulvia and 53–65, 74 Hegemonic 12, 65, 69, 74, 87, 157 Historical epic and 12, 69, 183–5 Octavia and 61–5 Roman discourse 20, 23, 42, 47–8, 55, 57, 62, 65, 74, 102, 144, 157

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I ndex Shakespeare and 90, 95–6 Feminism 12, 14–5, 18, 77, 93, 95–7, 123, 208–9, 211–2, 218, 249, 252–3, 269 Cleopatra and 12, 18, 93, 208 Female sexuality and 93 Paradigm shifts in gender relations 209, 211–2, 253 Post-structuralism and 212 Second wave 218, 249 Third wave 12, 97, 208, 249, 252 Woman of colour, the 93, 269 Woman of power, the 96, 208–9, 252 ‘Women’s genres’ and 123 Feminization 7, 23, 40, 44–7, 50, 53, 57, 84, 91, 98, 100–2, 119, 127, 130–6, 139–40, 148–9, 154–5, 178, 187, 207–9, 212, 214, 245–7, 250, 254, 268, 274 Colonialism 7, 91, 131–2, 148–9, 245–7, 274 Gender reversal 50, 57, 139–40, 208–9 Infantilization 101, 207, 214, 245–7, 274 Roman discourse 23, 40, 44–7, 53, 100, 127, 130–6, 148–9, 155 Visual (dress, cosmetics, etc) 44–6, 100, 102, 130–6, 154, 246, 250, 254 Fitness-to-rule 23, 31, 34−5, 38–9, 40, 44, 47–8, 102, 132, 136–48, 201, 219–20 Flavius Josephus 24 Fulvia 53–65, 74, 101, 207, 228 Gallic Wars 37–8, 110, 224, 228, 239 Gaze, the 98, 133, 177, 178, 182–5, 226–7, 245, 250–1, 273

Mark Antony.indb 297

297

Antony and 133, 177, 183–5, 227, 245, 250–1, 273 Bodily display 133, 182–5, 226–7, 250–1 Feminization 98, 133, 177, 178 Gender reversal 31, 36, 40, 43–6, 50, 57, 121–2, 180, 187–8, 208–9, 222, 252–3 Ghini, Massimo 151, 175 Gladiator (2000) 71–2 Harrison, Rex 175, 178–9, 182, 184 Hays Production Code 72, 111, 251 Hegemonic Masculinity 5–8, 11, 15, 19–52, 53, 56–7, 65–74, 82–94, 99–100, 110, 117, 119–20, 132, 135, 145, 154–205, 206–248, 249–53, 256–8, 268 Antony and 5, 7–8, 15, 40, 47, 57, 65–74, 99–100, 110, 117, 119–20, 132, 135, 145, 156, 157–8, 169, 174, 185–6, 188, 190–1, 193, 204–5, 213, 214–5, 249–51, 256–8, 268 Caesar and 5, 158–63, 165–70, 174, 178 Colonialist discourse and 6–7, 19–20 Crisis 209–14, 217–8 Definition 5–8 Early Modern 82–94 Effeminacy 6–7, 132 Emasculation/castration threat embodied in 204–5 Embodiments of 157–205, 258 Emotionality 7, 21, 119–20, 216–8, 222, 238, 253 Fatherhood 165–70, 174, 231–3, 244–5, 251, 253

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298

I ndex

Femininity and 7, 11, 20, 23, 47, 51, 57, 69–70, 88, 90, 132, 188, 192, 204, 210–4, 246, 249–51, 258, 268 Hero and 7, 70–1, 135, 162, 210–1, 250, 252–3 Heteroperformance 70 Historical epic and 5, 8, 15, 68–74, 182–5, 214, 257–8 Homosexuality and 5–7, 53, 68–74 Mobile boundaries of 6, 99–100, 154, 251 The Other and 6–8, 249–50, 258 Paradigm shift 155, 207–11, 214–5, 249 Performativity 214–5, 217 Political ability and 191–3 Post-structuralism 213–5 Problematized 15, 117, 135, 145, 207, 209–15 Roman discourse and 19–52, 56–7, 110 Rufio and 194–9 Singular vs plural masculinities 6, 99–100, 206–7, 209–10, 213, 221, 250 Violence 135, 223–4, 253 Virility 117, 135, 231–2, 244–5 Hercules 39, 44–5, 130–1, 136 Antony and 39, 44–5, 130–1, 136 Omphale and 130–1, 136 Hero 7, 67, 70–1, 135, 162, 187, 199, 211, 241, 250, 252–3, 268–9 Heston, Charlton 94, 96–7 Hinds, Ciarán 175 Historical Epic Film, the 8–14, 15, 25, 51, 68–73, 155, 161–2, 183–5, 193, 199–200, 214, 226–7, 230, 250, 252, 257–9, 267, 268, 271, 273 Cleopatra and 12–4

Mark Antony.indb 298

Cycles 11, 12, 69, 214, 252, 259, 273 Gender 8, 11–2, 15, 68–73, 183, 185, 214, 226–7, 250, 257–8 Imperialism 9–11, 68–9, 161–2, 252 Mythic space 8, 25, 51, 193, 199, 257, 271 Nazism 10–1, 161, 252 Politico-cultural uncertainty 8–14, 214 Spectacle and 11, 155, 183–5, 199–200, 230, 268 Historicity 3, 12, 17, 28–9, 30, 34–5, 78–9, 127–8, 164, 191, 199–200, 202, 254–6, 260, 270–1 Cicero and 34–5 Evaluating the historical epic text 164, 254–6 Historical accuracy 12, 17, 200, 255–6, 270–1 Plutarch and 3, 28–9, 30, 78–9 as Spectacle 12, 199–200 ‘Truth claims’ 17, 127–8, 191, 200, 202, 255–6, 260 Homoeroticism 35–7, 65–73, 182–5, 226–7 Homosexuality 6, 23, 26–7, 32–7, 56–8, 65–73, 212 Antony 26–7, 32–7, 65–73 Hegemonic masculinity 6, 26–7, 69–73, 212 Roman discourse 23, 34–6, 56–8 House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) 161, Hypermasculinity 40–2, 44, 51, 158, 214–245, 257 Ides of March 54, 137–8, 203 Impudicitia 35–6

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I ndex Incontinentia 22–3, 26, 33–4, 40, 42–3, 44, 57, 102, 108, 109–10, 118, 132, 137, 141, 155, 190–1, 219–20, 229, 253 Infantilization 101, 167–8, 207, 245–7, 274 Caesar and Cleopatra (1945) 167–8 Cleopatra (1934) 246 Cleopatra (1999) 246–7 Colonialism 245–6, 274 Feminization 274 Intertextuality 81, 87, 94–8 Inventio 22 Julius Caesar (play) 77, 79–81, 96–7, 269, 272 Adapted for screen (1953) 96–7, 269, 272 Deviations from Plutarch 79–80 Kinsey Report, the 69–70 Lechery 17, 23, 31, 38, 41–2, 48, 56–7, 62–3, 73, 93, 102, 109–17, 135, 145, 155, 165–6, 174, 181, 219, 229–45, 253, 270, 273 Antony and 31, 41–2, 109–17, 135, 219, 229–37, 244–5, 253, 270, 273 Ciceronian invective 17, 110 Fatherhood and 165–6, 174, 229–45 Female sexuality and 56–7, 62–3, 93, 102, 181 Plutarch 38, 48 Propaganda war 109–10 Roman discourse 23, 109, 181 Sexual consent and 111, 113–5, 145 Virility and 110, 117, 229–45

Mark Antony.indb 299

299

Lepidus, M. Aemilius 59, 60, 102, 144, 152, 224–5, 228 Historical figure 224–5 Popular culture 59, 60, 102, 144, 152, 225, 228 Linguistic paradigm, the 68 Love (see Romance) Lucilius (character) 124–5, 132, 160, 186–8, 204, 234, 250, 251 Masculinity (see Hegemonic Masculinity) Memoirs of Cleopatra, The (novel) 28, 106, 236–7 Mollitia 22–3, 26, 35, 42, 44, 57, 154, 157, 190–1 Mutina, Siege of 48, 224–5, 228 Nicomedes of Bithynia 35, 148–9 Octavia 60, 61–5, 73, 74, 86, 113, 126, 127, 138–9, 153, 186, 198, 220, 228, 242–3 Augustus (2003) 64 Cleopatra (1934) 64, 138–9 Cleopatra (1963) 64 Historical figure 61–3, 74, 228 Rome (2005–7) 64–5, 73, 113, 127, 153, 186, 198, 220, 228, 242–3 Shakespeare 63–4, 86 Octavian (see Caesar, Augustus) Octavianus (see Caesar, Augustus) Olympos (character) 127, 160, 246–7, 272 Opium 135 Orientalism (book; for Orientalism as a discourse, see Easternness) 7, 13–4 Other, the 6–8, 9–10, 13–14, 40, 46–7, 63, 66–73, 85, 91, 93–4, 110, 133, 143–4, 148–9, 151, 157, 162,

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300

I ndex

190–1, 200, 230, 245–6, 249, 251, 258–9, 269, 274 Antony 40, 66–73, 93–4, 133, 143–4, 151, 157, 245–6, 249, 258–9 Cleopatra 13–14, 63, 85, 162, 190–1, 258 Femininity 91, 245–6, 274 Masculinity 6–8, 40, 91, 157, 230, 249, 269 Non-white ethnicities 7, 91, 93, 143–4, 148–9, 162, 190–1, 245–6, 251, 274 Rome 9–10, 14, 66–73, 162, 258 Sexuality 6–8, 13, 46–7, 66–73, 110, 230, 269 Perusine War 56, 58–9, 74, 92 Pharsalus, Battle of 240 Philhellenism 20, 93, 131–2 Philippi, Battle of 59, 128, 137, 143, 225–6, 227 Pirkis, Max 138, 203, 243 Plutarch 3, 17, 22, 24, 27–30, 37–45, 47–51, 77–81, 86, 89–90, 92, 101–3, 187, 190, 197, 199, 224, 268 Antony and 3, 17, 22, 24, 27–30, 38–45, 47–51, 78–9, 89–90, 101–2, 103, 187, 197, 199, 224 Cleopatra and 50–1, 92, 103, 197 Historical accuracy 3, 29–30, 39, 42, 78–9 Lives 17, 22, 39, 77, 89, 92, 101–2, 103, 190, 199, 224, 268 Shakespeare and 3, 28–9, 78–81, 86, 89 Political invective (see Roman political invective)

Mark Antony.indb 300

Political performance 1–2, 31, 46–51, 55, 58–63, 74, 77, 92, 100, 101–2, 104–7, 114, 116–7, 123–5, 127–30, 133, 136–55, 165, 170–4, 187, 191–204, 216, 219–20, 222–3, 246–7, 269, 271–3 Antony usurped/elided 138, 165, 191–2, 193–204 Cleopatra and 77, 104–6, 107, 116–7, 123–5, 127, 129–30, 133, 149, 187, 196–8, 246–7 Compared with paradigm 193–204, 269, 272 Corruption and 47–8, 49, 170–4, 193, 202–3, 269 Historical (Antonius) 1–2, 55, 58–9, 114, 136, 137 Ineptitude 31, 46–51, 59–61, 74, 92, 100, 101–2, 104, 105–6, 116, 136–48, 155, 191–204, 216, 219–20, 222–3, 247, 272, 273 Romance and 124–5, 125, 127–8 Signifier of masculinity 46–51, 74, 192 Pompey Magnus, Gnaeus 23, 37, 57, 146–7, 172, 239–40 Historical figure 23, 37, 57 Popular culture 146–7, 172, 239–40 Pompey, Sextus (son of Pompey Magnus; character in Antony and Cleopatra (play)) 91, 102 Posca (character) (see entry under Rome (2005–7)) Proscriptions, the 37, 80, 119, 148 Psychopath, Antony as 135, 155, 215–28 Ptolemy Caesar (also Ptolemy XV; see Caesarion) Pullo, Titus (character) 113, 115, 147, 160, 200–1, 220–1, 270

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I ndex Problematic masculinity 147, 200–1, 220–1, 270 Public/private conflict 115, 220–1 Relationship with Eireni 115, 221 Vorenus/Pullo dyad (see Rome (2005–7)) Purefoy, James 112, 136, 154, 158, 175, 216, 258 Quo Vadis (screen adaptations) 11–2, 14, 161, 252 Robe, The (1953) 14, 161, 178, 252 Roden, Jay 171, 175 Roman political invective (see also Incontinentia, Mollitia, Inventio) 14–52, 54–65, 83–4, 96, 100, 102, 109–10, 130–2, 136–7, 144, 155, 157, 191–2, 253, 259 Antony and 15, 16–52, 57, 61, 100, 109–10, 130–2 Bodily excess (see Incontinentia) Cicero and 17, 19, 22, 25–7, 32–51, 55, 110, 155 Cleopatra and 14, 50–1, 63 Effeminacy (see Mollitia) Fulvia and 54–65 Gender reversal 42, 43–6, 50–1, 56–7, 63, 130–2 Masculinity 19–21, 136–7, 253 Perusine War 56–7 Problematic mapping onto modern discourse 14, 15, 26–7, 45–6, 51–2, 83, 84, 102, 110, 157 Public/private sphere 20–1, 23, 44, 47–8, 51, 61, 131, 191–2, 259 Reproduced in Plutarch 27–30, 38–51 Sexuality 22–3, 33–7, 45–6, 109–10

Mark Antony.indb 301

301

Romance (see also Emotionality) 36–7, 50–1, 74, 83–4, 88–9, 93, 97, 100, 112–3, 117, 120–30, 139–41, 169–70, 178–82, 186, 187–91, 199, 231, 251, 273 Caesar and 139–41, 169–70, 273 Cleopatra and 50–1, 88–9, 121–2, 124–5, 129–30, 187, 251 Duplicity and 124–5, 129, 186, 251 Femininity and 97, 123, 121–2, 187–8 Gender reversal and 50–1, 117, 121–30, 180–1, 187–8, 189 Political ability and 50–1, 74, 84, 124–5, 141 Rome (2005–7) 113, 127–30, 231 Shakespeare and 83–4 Shame and 120, 121, 124 Taylor/Burton 178–82 ‘Women’s genres’ 123 Romanitas 9–12, 25, 53, 68, 93, 158, 160–2, Rome 7–15, 19–23, 25, 34–8, 40, 44–7, 51–3, 56–7, 61–74, 88, 91–4, 100–3, 109–10, 114, 118–20, 130–2, 134–7, 139–41, 144, 148–9, 158, 160–2, 191, 220, 230, 252–3, 258–9, 267–9 Antony’s abandonment of 38, 46, 47, 74, 91–2, 94, 100, 134–5, 148–9 Augustan discourse 61–2 Cleopatra and 12–4, 110, 262, 139–41, 161–2, 252, 258 Colonialist discourse 7, 19–20, 47, 74, 92–3, 103, 130–2, 144 Effeminacy and 22–3, 46, 56–7 Femininity and 11, 20, 23, 56–7, 61–5, 102 in Historical epic 8–14, 68–73

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302

I ndex

Imperialism and 10–2, 69, 160–2, 252 Law 102, 114 Masculinity and 15, 19–23, 40, 44–6, 47, 68–73, 102, 118–9, 135–7, 191, 220, 252–3, 259, 268 Mythic space 8, 40, 51 as Other 66–73, 160–1, 162, 258, 269 Philhellenism and 20, 93, 131–2 Political propaganda (see Roman political invective) Public/private binary 20–1, 23, 51, 139 Sexuality and 22–3, 34–7, 45–6, 53, 56–7, 66–73, 88, 109–10, 230 Spectacle and 11, 230 Symbolism in popular culture 9–14, 52, 53, 267–8 TV series (see Rome (2005–7)) UK identity construction 9–10, 91 US identity construction (see also Romanitas) 9–10, 25, 160 Rome (2005–7) 2–3, 28, 40–2, 58, 64–5, 72–3, 103, 104, 112–7, 123, 127–30, 135–6, 138, 145–8, 152–5, 158, 160, 163–4, 168, 175, 186, 192–3, 197–8, 199–204, 207–8, 215–6, 218–23, 225–8, 228–31, 237–45, 246–7, 250–1, 253, 255–6, 258, 267, 270–1, 272, 273 Agrippa (see Agrippa, Marcus) Alexandria 135–6 ‘All Roads Lead To Rome’ 40–1, 270 Antony (see Antony (popular culture)) Antony/Atia relationship 113, 115–6, 128–9, 148, 152–4, 242, 253

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Antony/Caesar relationship 145–8, 168, 193, 202–3, 219, 272 Antony/Cleopatra relationship 116–7, 123, 128–30, 135–6, 148, 186, 230, 243–4, 253, 272 Antony/Octavia relationship 186, 242–3 Antony/Octavian relationship 201, 203, 219–20, 242–3 Atia 58, 73, 114, 115–6, 128–9, 138, 147, 152–3, 201, 203, 253 Body-as-spectacle 226–7, 251, 258, 273 Brutus (see Brutus, M. Junius (character)) Caesar (see Caesar, C. Julius (popular culture)) Caesar/Cleopatra relationship 186 Caesar/Servilia relationship 113, 127, 273 Caesarion (see also Caesarion) 163–4 Cicero 41–2, 146–7, 148, 222, 223 Ciceronian invective in 40–2, 155 Cleopatra (see Cleopatra (popular culture)) Dyadic structures 115, 201–2, 221 History-as-spectacle 114, 199–200 Masculinity 135–6, 147–8, 219–22, 239–45, 250, 253 Octavia (see Octavia) Octavian (see Caesar, Augustus (popular culture)) Orientalist discourse in 136, 243 Plutarchian references in 40–2 Politics and 145–8, 152–4, 192–3, 199–204, 216, 222–23 Posca 41, 145, 225, 240 Pullo (see Pullo, Titus (character)) Reception 154–5, 158

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I ndex Servilia 64, 73, 113, 127, 201, 273 Sex-as-spectacle 72–3, 112–7, 230, 271, 273 Soap opera format 199–200, 267 ‘Truth claims’ 28, 127–8, 200, 255–6 Violence in 112, 145–6, 215–28, 242, 246, 253 Vorenus (see Vorenus, Lucius) Vorenus/Pullo dyad 160, 200–2, 221 Rufio 59, 105, 134, 142, 160, 188, 194–9, 273 Character 59, 105, 134, 142, 160, 188, 194–9 Historical figure 273 Second Triumvirate, the 41, 49, 58, 80, 100, 144, 152, 225, Sexual union as marker of masculinity 165, 171, 186 Shakespeare 2–4, 21–22, 28–9, 53, 63–5, 75–99, 102–3, 130–1, 143, 149, 153, 178–9, 256, 259, 269–70, 272 Antony 2, 4, 21, 77–94, 95–8, 102–3, 130–1, 143, 149, 259, 269 Antony and Cleopatra (see Antony and Cleopatra (play)) Cleopatra 53, 63–4, 75, 77–8, 82, 85–6, 88–94, 96–7, 256 Cultural legitimacy and 3, 28–9, 75–9, 95, 178–9 Early modern self 82–5, 91 Elizabeth I and 85, 99 Galenic philosophy and 82–5 Julius Caesar (see Julius Caesar (play)) Masculinity and 82–94, 96, 97–8, 269

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On screen 4, 75–6, 77–9, 94–8, 269, 272 Orientalism 77–8, 91, 92–4, 102–3, 149 Other, the 85, 91–4 Plutarch and 3, 22, 28–9, 78–81, 86, 89, 92 Race and 92–3 Rome and 65, 90–4 Shaw, George Bernard 166–8, 178–9, 247–8 Sisto, Jeremy 171, 173, 175, 176 Society of Inimitable Livers, the 107–8 Society of Those Who Are Inseparable by Death, the 108, 123 Spartacus (1960) 8, 14, 68–9, 182 Star-text 71, 94, 96, 97, 139, 174–80, 182, 258, 269, 272 Suetonius 24, 35 Suicide 87, 120, 129, 155, 173, 198–9, 241 Tarsus 59, 103–7, 111–2, 125, 134, 142, 144, 196, 270 Taylor, Elizabeth 179–82, 254 Cultural conflation with Cleopatra 180–2 Love affair with Richard Burton 179–2, 254 Timon (character) 113, 115, 239 Timoneum, the 107–9, 121–2 In history 107–8 In popular culture 108–9, 121–2 Troy (2004) 71–2 ‘Truth claims’ (see Historicity) Two-act structure 77, 101, 104–5, 107, 163–5, 203, 207, 214, 230 Valle, Anna 150–1 Variants (folkloric) 257

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304

I ndex

Violence 112, 145–6, 182–3, 215–28, 242, 246, 251, 252–3 Virility 7, 98, 117, 135, 165–6, 174, 229–45 Antony and 117, 135, 233–45 Caesar and 165–6, 174, 234–5 Childlessness and 232–3 Fatherhood and 165–6, 174, 229–45 Lechery and 117, 229–45 Masculinity and 7, 117, 166, 229–30 Sexual desire and 135, 231–2, 236 Virtus 21, 118–9 Vorenus, Lucius (character) 113, 115, 127, 129–30, 135–6, 160, 200–3, 220–3, 230, 239–42, 250, 253

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Fatherhood 221–3, 239–42, 253 Fitness-to-lead 201–2 Public/private conflict 221, 230 Roman mores and 200–1, 202–3, 221, 250 Vorenus/Pullo dyad (see Rome (2005–7)) Warrior-hero (see Hero) Weeping (see Emotionality) Wilcoxon, Henry 138, 175, 246, 272–3 William, Warren 140–1, 175, 233, 271, 272–3 Woods, Simon 152 Zane, Billy 175, 227

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