Drunk?

But before the marriage, when they're still fighting, when Caesar is still patching a quarrel and complaining to Antony that he threw out his messengers, Antony's defence is that he was drunk, that he had newly feasted three kings and that he did want of what he was in the morning (or, wasn't quite himself.)

One wonders then: Is he exaggerating here, for effect in his defence to Caesar? Figuring better to confirm his drunken rep than be accused of mistreating a messenger of Caesar's? Or when we first see him, back in Act One Scene One, throwing out the messengers, is he drunk? If drunk, how drunk? Does he fulfill the rep he's been given by Plutarch – and by Caesar himself – as a partying, drunken lout? (who is sometimes fully, Romanly capable, according to Caesar, of fasting and drinking horse piss through the lean times.)

If he is drunk in the first scene, then that's our first impression of him: "Let Rome in Tiber melt and the wide arch of the ranged empire fall..." When he's referring to the "dungy earth" feeding alike both beast and man, is that because he's way down close to it, claiming, as it were, his space?

If he's drunk in the first scene, it's probably the only time in the whole play. But first impressions last.