Plutarch, a Greek writer working in the early Roman Empire, wrote Parallel Lives: paired biographies of a Greek and a Roman, judged for character as much as for deeds. This life is Mark Antony, set beside Demetrius. The story runs from Rome after Julius Caesar’s murder in 44 BC through Greece, the eastern Mediterranean, and Egypt.

Antony, Caesar’s lieutenant, stands over the body, reads the will, and turns a funeral into a civil war. At Philippi, in northern Greece, he and Octavian — Caesar’s heir — break the assassins. Then comes the East and Cleopatra, queen of Egypt. There is Fulvia, his first wife in the fight; Octavia, Octavian’s sister, given in marriage to bind the two men; a triumph over Armenia; gifts of land at Alexandria. At Actium, off western Greece, his fleet follows her ship. In Alexandria he hears she is dead and falls on his sword. She dies after, by asp or poison. Two people who could hold a world, and not a morning.