DERCETUS                 He is dead, Caesar,

Not by a public minister of justice,

Nor by a hired knife; but that self hand

Which writ his honour in the acts it did

Hath, with the courage which the heart did lend it,

Splitted the heart. This is his sword;

I robbed his wound of it. Behold it stained

With his most noble blood.  (5.1.19-26)

Dercetus confirms again: he is dead, Caesar, and then goes into the crucial details. Antony has died not by a public minister of justice, by the executioner’s sword, nor yet by a hired knife, by an assassin (implying that Caesar would be well capable of ordering such an act). Antony has chosen his own time and manner of death: that self hand, his own, the same, which writ his honour in the acts it did, which forged his reputation and renown, which made him great, and honourable (like Brutus…) hath, with the courage which the heart did lend it, splitted the heart. He killed himself, Dercetus says, as a final heroic act, a last courageous deed. Dercetus implies that Antony stabbed himself in the heart; he’s also assuming (or implying, again) that Antony was dead at the point at which Dercetus saw him and took the sword. The slight mismatch between the heroic narration and the messier truth, its gaps and inconsistencies and compromises, is entirely in keeping with the play. Dercetus’s trump card, his authenticating detail, is the sword, his prop: this is his sword; I robbed his wound of it. (Not necessarily; it could have been flung away, but the vivid picture of Dercetus pulling the sword from Antony’s death wound makes for a much better story, and this is a play in which improving on the story is also a regular thing.) Behold it stained, he says, with his most noble blood. This is Antony’s sword, Antony’s blood. He’s dead.