(Hi! You guys are my first Reddit post. Whee!)
I've been binging HBO's Rome this week -- one of my favorite shows as a kid, and despite the historical inaccuracies I still think the feel of it is absolutely incredible -- and stumbled onto a curiosity I can't satisfy. This is terribly annoying for me! As a second-generation history nerd with an instinctive response of "research!" to any problem, I'm offended at myself that I can't find something to confirm one way or the other what's known (or not) about Antony's speech.
So, Rome. The first episode of season 2, Passover, shows Ceasar's funeral. Which is to say that there are some nice shots of a pyre and a shouting, lunging mob, and then it cuts to an angry Team Brutus vs. an unrepentant Antony, debating whether or not Brutus should get the fuck out of town. "Hey," I thought, "what the hell, I want to hear the speeches! How dare you cut the pedantic details for drama!"
So, curious as to how much is known about the speech, I tried to look it up. Results: good lord but there's a lot of stuff written on that one specific scene of Shakespeare's play.
Adjusted my search conditions to (mostly) eliminate Shakespearean results, and managed to find this, which led me to this translation of History of the Civil wars by Appian of Alexandria. Unless I'm overlooking something, that references the incident but gives no specifics as to the actual content of the speech.
Admittedly some of the more prominent writers of the time had other things to worry about, but it would surprise me to learn that absolutely no one wrote down Antony's words, or that some form of the content of the speech would spread and get written down. History usually happens in retrospect, but with as big of an impact as Caesar and his death made, I would have expected the details of his funeral to be much-discussed in the following days/months/years.
What's driving me nuts about this is that I can't find anything that says "here's what he said" or "here's a summary of what he said" or even "there are no contemporary sources, we have no idea." Come to think of it, I suppose "everyone was a little more focused on the fire-starting rabble" might have been a reason, too.
TL;DR
Question: What, if anything, is known about the actual words Marc Antony spoke during Gaius Julius Caesar's funeral?
Follow-up: If there aren't contemporary sources, are any at least referred to that might have been lost? Or was there some reason why people wouldn't write it down?
I'm wagering the answer is something like "sure, probably some well-off and literate folks on the Caesarian side sent a few letters along the lines of 'holy shit, get a load of what happened at Caesar's funeral,' but paper decays and parchment gets scraped, so who knows for sure. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯"
I want to know for sure! Help me, AskHistorians, you (and your sources) are my only hope.
Your searching was pretty good. Suetonius was a Roman biographer who wrote about the "12 Caesars" (first twelve emperors) about 150 years after Caesar's death. Appian was a Greek intellectual who was writing slightly later. As you see, Suetonius does not mention the content of Antonius' remarks, but Appian actually gives us a version. You can find the translation here. This is an fine source for us in this case, even though it is a website. Livius.org is generally very good. Appian, however, is not the greatest ancient source. He often seems to embellish his accounts and plays fast and loose with his sources, which he does not always clearly identify. Still, Appian is often the only source we have, and so we are stuck with him! What we are seeing reported here is probably an Appian embellishment, but also probably has the bones of what was actually said.