A friend of Caesar. Antony claims allegiance to Brutus and the conspirators after Caesar's death to save his own life. Later, however, when he delivers a funeral oration over Caesar's body, he spectacularly convinces the audience to withdraw their support for Brutus and instead condemn him as a traitor. With tears on his cheeks and Caesar's will in hand, Antony uses masterful rhetoric to incite the crowd to revolt against the conspirators. Antony's desire to exclude Lepidus from the power that Antony and Octavius ​​intend to share hints at his ambitious nature. Antony proves himself strong in all the ways Brutus proves weak. His impulsive and improvisatory nature serves him perfectly, first to persuade the conspirators that he is on their side, thus earning their clemency, and then to persuade the plebs of the conspirators' injustice, thus earning the political support of the masses. Not too scrupulous to give in to deception and duplicity, as Brutus claims to be, Antony proves himself to be a consummate politician, using gestures and skillful rhetoric to his advantage. He responds to subtle cues from both his enemies and allies to know exactly how he must behave at any particular moment to gain maximum advantage. In both Caesar's eulogy and the play as a whole, Antony is skilled at tailoring his words and actions to the desires of his audience. Unlike Brutus, who prides himself on acting solely from virtue and being blind to his personal interests, Antony never separates his private affairs from his public actions. In the play Julius Caesar there is a group of men who want to overthrow Caesar because they oppose his leadership and believe it would be to Rome's advantage to kill him. Included in... middle of the sheet... skilled in locating the most advantageous attack point in all his encounters. In the Capitol, instead of confronting all the conspirators, he focuses on Brutus's naive sense of honor and nobility. In the Forum, instead of constructing a reasoned argument against the murderers, he appeals to the emotion with which he saw the crowd respond to Brutus' speech. At Philippi, when Brutus leaves Cassius' army exposed, Antony attacks immediately. At the play's conclusion, when Brutus and Cassius are dead and the republicans completely defeated, he publicly praises Brutus for beginning to heal Rome's political wounds. Ironically, Brutus hoped to remove arbitrary rule from Rome by assassination, but by assassinating Caesar, he set the conditions for an even more ruthless tyranny to take power in the persons of Antony and Octavius..