A Short History of the World in 50 Lies

by Natasha Tidd

Unsurprisingly, Mark Antony did not react to this well and on 19 September he gathered the Senate together again and angrily responded to Cicero, falsely accusing him of being the mastermind behind Caesar’s murder. Cicero was furious and unable to contain his rage. He threw out his original plan of using Philippics for under-the-radar spin and instead embarked on an all-out slanderous campaign. Second Philippic is by far the longest and most explosive of Cicero’s fourteen Philippic instalments, an unrivalled rant: ‘oh how intolerable is his impudence, his debauchery, and his lust!’ Cicero’s vitriolic claims run from Antony reeking of vomit from three-day revelries to thievery, violence, and claims he was a former sex worker. Cicero does not substantiate these stories and they mostly contained little to no fact, yet they proved incendiary to Antony’s character and 2,000 years later he is still thought of as a reckless philanderer.