Antony spent his teenage years wandering through Rome

On January 14, 83 BC, Antony was born in Rome as a member of the plebeian Antonia gens. Marcus Antonius Creticus was his father and the bearer of his name; he was the prodigious orator Marcus Antonius's son, who had been assassinated in the winter of 87–86 BC during the purges of Gaius Marius. Julia, Julius Caesar's third cousin, was his mother. At the time of Lucius Cornelius Sulla's invasion of Rome in 82 BC, Antony was a little child.

The historian Plutarch claims that Antony spent his adolescent years drinking, gambling, and becoming embroiled in scandalous relationships while he and his brothers and companions were lost in the streets of Rome. Cicero, Antony's contemporaries and adversaries, claimed that the latter had an affair with Gaius Scribonius Curio. This type of slander was widely used at the time to denigrate and discredit political rivals in the Roman Republic. While it is known that he was a friend of Publius Clodius Pulcher and his street gang, there is little trustworthy information about his political involvement as a young man. Given that he was later identified as a priest of this order, he may have also been associated with the Lupercal cult. By the time he was twenty, Antony had racked up a sizable debt. In an effort to get away from his creditors, Antony traveled to Greece in 58 BC, where he attended Athens to study philosophy and eloquence.