CAESAR                                  Antony,

Leave thy lascivious wassails. When thou once

Was beaten from Modéna, where thou slew’st

Hirtius and Pansa, consuls, at thy heel

Did famine follow, whom thou fought’st against—

Though daintily brought up—with patience more

Than savages could suffer. Thou didst drink

The stale of horses, and the gilded puddle

Which beasts would cough at. Thy palate then did deign

The roughest berry on the rudest hedge.

Yea, like the stag when snow the pasture sheets,

The barks of trees thou browsed. On the Alps

It is reported thou didst eat strange flesh,

Which some did die to look on; and all this—

It wounds thine honour that I speak it now—

Was borne so like a soldier that thy cheek

So much as lanked not.         (1.4.55-71)

Caesar’s speech here reveals a key motivation for his condemnation of Antony: he’s personally lost a hero, an idol has fallen. Where has Antony the stoic soldier, the doughty warrior, the man’s man gone? What’s happened to him? Antony, leave thy lascivious wassails! Stop burning the midnight oil, stop playing the fool, stop giving in to every last one of your desires. Stop being the plaything of a woman like Cleopatra, at her beck and call, swayed entirely by your lust for her (let alone your love, unthinkable for Caesar?) is what’s implicit in all of this. Caesar thinks that Antony is behaving unconscionably badly, yes, but he also feels let down. And so he gives a (somewhat grotesque) catalogue of instances of Antony the tough guy, who rose above bodily discomfort and his appetites. That time when you were on the run, after killing Hirtius and Pansa at Modena—you were starving; famine was at your heelsand became your chiefest adversary, even though you were daintily brought up, accustomed to good living and the finer things in life, not least at table. But then, with patience, you endured, fighting against hunger of a severity more than savages could suffer. You drank horse piss, not to put too fine a point on it. You appeared happy to drink from the gilded puddle, the kind of slime-covered water at which even an animal would recoil, turn up its nose and cough. Thy palate—then and now so used to dainties—would deign the roughest berry on the rudest hedge, and suggestion is not of a ripe and juicy blackberry, but the sour, bitter, astringent hips, haws and sloes of the countryside hedgerow. And even, like a stag in winter, driven to it in desperation by snow-covered pasture, you chewed tree bark. On the Alps, it is reported that thou didst eat strange flesh, which some did die to look on. That’s the real kicker, you ate meat which was so disturbing in origin, so transgressive, that others died rather than do the same, or with shock when they witnessed it. It wounds thine honour that I speak it now, that I’m calling all this to mind in our current circumstances—because in the old days, you simply bore all of that like a soldier, shook it off and got on with things, without so much as looking a bit peaky around the face, lank in the cheeks. You used to be amazing, unbelievably tough; nothing fazed you. I can’t bear to see what you’ve become.