GRICE E CHEREMONE

 Grice knows this is not Marc'Antonio, nor the Antonio of Florrie Forde's music-hall ditty, Oh Oh Antonio, you left me on my owneeio' -- but what was the birth name of Marcus Antonius the lover of Cleopatra -- what was his birth gens? Thanks His birth name was simply Marcus Antonius, and the gens was the Antonia. In the driest Roman parsing, Marcus is the praenomen, Antonius the nomen, and therefore the gens is the Antonia gens. Britannica gives him in Latin as Marcus Antonius, and the standard Roman naming explanation confirms that the nomen is the element that marks the gens. [britannica.com], [britannica.com], [en.wikipedia.org], [vroma.org] So if Grice wants the answer without Shakespearean varnish: not Marc’Antonio, not Antonio simpliciter, but Marcus Antonius of the gens Antonia. [britannica.com], [en.wikipedia.org] A small refinement, because Roman names always tempt one to over-complete them. We do not normally give Antony some fuller “birth name” beyond Marcus Antonius in the way one sometimes does for emperors with adoptive and dynastic accumulations. He is just what his public Roman name says he is: Marcus of the Antonii. [britannica.com], [vroma.org] And if one wants the family flavour: he belonged to an old and prominent Roman family, the Antonii, whose most famous bearer became, by a fair irony, the lover of Cleopatra and the losing half of Rome’s last great republican melodrama.