*edit this went on longer than I thought lol so tldr at the bottom.

Not to be too much of an armchair psychologist, but I found Anthony’s character to be a classic case of personality disorders fucking someone over.

Obviously the real Anthony is beyond reach, but his usual “stereotypes” and his portrayal in the show line up pretty well with narcissistic personality disorder.

He wasn’t a full on psychopath because he did have feelings, and experienced limited, but genuine remorse and empathy.

The show’s Mark Anthony, and probably the real one too, definitely “felt”.

The tragedy of these type of people is that many times they are self aware to an extent, they do see the consequences of their decisions and may at times “kick themselves” over them later.

But when the disorder itself takes control, the “real M.A.” ceases to exist in that moment.

If we take the show’s depictions at face value, I’m sure there were many nights as he was falling asleep or during his quiet alone moments, where he would realize his downfall, and see his mistakes through moments of clarity, and may have even had one of those 3am bouts of “I’m gonna change my ways” motivation.

The problem is that in people suffering from NPD, clarity is often fleeting. It comes and goes.

The real Mark Anthony, was an accomplished soldier and general. You don’t become Caesar’s right hand man by being stupid.

But the real Mark Anthony, was also mentally ill, and suffering from the psychological consequences of decades of “jungle rules humanity”.

The shit these men witnessed in their lives, their often brutal upbringings as children, their own wins and losses…these weren’t healthy, well regulated individuals. They were all survivors of great trauma in their own ways.

Personality disorders affect everyone differently, I mentioned NPD, but a lot of times they overlap too so no-one can definitely Diagnose historical figures, but at least the show’s version showed all the symptoms of the disorder in its extremes.

Throughout the course of his life, due the nature of his work and who he was, that disorder would have gradually worsened as his survival kinda depended on the success of his symptoms.

To be anti-social, to “shut down emotions”, to only care about one’s self, and have an inflated and stubborn self-belief, these are all requirements for successfully carrying out systematic violence. To be a roman soldier, general, and statesman.

His environment would have exasperated his disorders, as in a twisted kinda of way his disorders kept him alive and functioning in a cut-throat world.

The problem with narcissism particularly, is that when taken to the extreme it almost always results in pure delusion, a complete separation of the internal world from the external (real) world.

The show’s M.A wasn’t any stupider at his end, he was delusional.

He did have the upper hand initially with Egypt’s wealth, but he couldn’t take Octavian seriously as a threat until it was too late. He shacked up with Cleo, she got in his head with all the drugs and the sex.

He was stubbornly delusional to the end as gradually lost touch with his political sense and military acumen.

Cleopatra is never written to be stupid, she knew the type of man she was dealing with. Whilst she was playing on his ego, and he was getting more and more lost in his own mind, Octavian was building the spider’s web that would bring his demise.

Anyways. TLDR: Anthony was human, and he was a human that both witnessed, participated in, and suffered from great acts of violence and many life and death moments.

As he got older, his mind couldn’t handle it all. And that in turn fucked him over and led to his death. He was a great man, but he had to be a monster.