A visitor to Rome will inevitably stop to admire the Christian Church of St Mary and the Martyrs in the Piazza della Rotonda. Better known as the Pantheon, this world famous temple was the great domed home of earlier pagan gods. Set upon towering columns of marble imported from Egypt, the ancient inscription on the entablature is cast in elegant bronze capitals. It begins with the name of its original builder, ‘M. AGRIPPA’. This fantastic building – one of several erected by Agrippa in this part of the city – was actually rebuilt by the Emperor Hadrian over a century and half later, after it had been destroyed by fire. Agrippa’s Pantheon probably looked very different, but it is telling that the famous builder of the great wall in remote Britannia chose not to put his own name on the temple but retained his antecedent’s. It was a mark of respect for the man who made it possible for Caesar Augustus to claim ‘I found a city of brick and leave it one of marble’ (Cassius Dio, Roman History 56.30.3). It was one of many things Augustus relied on Agrippa to carry out for him during a lifetime of high adventure and exceptional achievement.
It is not stretching a point to say that without his devoted aide and indispensable deputy Augustus would never have been able to secure his position as leader of the Roman Empire by winning a devastating civil war, or to rule it as successfully as he did in peacetime. If there was ever someone who personified the term ‘right-hand man’ he was M. Agrippa. From an early age, Agrippa’s fate was inextricably linked to the great nephew of the Perpetual Dictator Iulius Caesar. How the two men became best friends and together combined their talents to transform their world in turmoil is one of the great buddy stories of history.
Agrippa was a remarkable and multifaceted man who complemented his friend in age, outlook, personality and skills. He was a talented general on land and a fine admiral at sea, a pragmatic diplomat, a hard working public official, a generous philanthropist and the loyalest of friends. He was Augustus’ ‘go-to guy’, the man the boss turned to whenever he needed a difficult job done, whether it was beating tough guerillas in northern Spain or fixing creaking sewers in Rome. There were many times when he could have challenged Augustus and usurped power for himself, yet he did not. It seems he was never tempted. Intriguing to historians is to ponder the answer to the question of what drove him to sublimate his own desire for power – and still put his life at risk – when he had the means to take it and to be content with serving another? Or was it, in fact, that simple?
That life of selfless service put Agrippa in the forefront of world events. He was well connected and personally knew many of the great men of the age – Iulius Caesar, Cicero, M. Antonius and King Herod. He was also probably the most travelled man of his age. By the end of his life there were few places in the Roman Empire which Agrippa had not personally visited. Augustus implicitly trusted his friend’s judgment and delegated him decision-making powers that finally matched his own. The result was that the world, which emerged from the bloody conflict following Caesar’s assassination into one of peace under the protector-ship of Augustus, was in large measure shaped by his right-hand man.
Agrippa wrote an autobiography. Sadly not a word of it survives. Fortunately details of his life are recorded in a number of surviving accounts by ancient world historians – among them Appian, Cassius Dio, Josephus, Nikolaos of Damaskos, Pliny the Elder, Plutarch, Seneca the Elder, Strabo, Suetonius and Velleius Paterculus. Inscriptions from public buildings attest to his extensive travels. Additionally there are statue busts and coins which give us a very good impression of how he actually looked in life. Like a detective, by critically assembling this diverse source material, it is possible to convincingly reconstruct the life story of Agrippa and to create a nuanced portrait of the man and with it to make a critical assessment of his achievements.
Agrippa has been the subject of close study and scholarly biographies, the earliest of which was 1717. In more recent times German readers have been served by a popular work by Helmut Signon in 1978 and French readers have been fortunate to have access to Michel Roddaz’s excellent academic reference published in 1984. Italian readers have the collected papers of the XVII Giornate Filologiche Genovesi of 1989 edited by the University of Genoa. All three are now out of print. The last biography of Agrippa in English, however, was published in London in 1937 by Frederick Adam Wright. Its author popularized the landmark volume by Meyer Reinhold – his doctoral thesis in fact – published in New York in 1933 (Dr Reinhold died in July 2002). Today, either biography is extremely difficult to find outside a major university library. A new telling of the life of this noteworthy man is long overdue in any language and I am fortunate to have had the opportunity – no, the privilege – to be the one to do so.
Agrippa’s life bridged the last days of the Roman Republic and its first as a form of constitutional monarchy that modern historians often refer to as the Early Empire or Principate. Making this story all the more compelling is the fact that Agrippa played a key role in that transition. This book charts the life of Agrippa chronologically from birth to death, divided into chapters which describe the key events and themes which shaped it.
Chapter 1, ‘New Man in Rome’, covers the years 64 to March 44 BCE during which Agrippa grew up, became close friends with Octavius and went to war in the service of Iulius Caesar.
Chapter 2, ‘Champion of the New Caesar’, follows Agrippa during the immediate aftermath of Iulius Caesar’s assassination on the Ides of March 44 BCE, and supports Caesar’s heir in asserting his claim to power in a legal cartel with M. Antonius and Aemilius Lepidus.
Chapter 3, ‘Fighter on Land and Sea’, charts Agrippa’s political and military career from 39 to 33 BCE as provincial governor, consul of Rome, admiral in the war against the renegade Sextus Pompeius, joint commander in the brutal Illyrian War and commissioner responsible for public works.
Chapter 4, ‘Mastermind of Victory at Actium’, sees how Agrippa once again proves himself skilled in the arts of war, culminating in victory over archrivals Antonius and Kleopatra at Actium in 31 BCE.
Chapter 5, ‘Architect of the New Rome’, describes how, between 30 and 24 BCE, he and his friend – adopting the new title Augustus – become the nexus of political and military power and Agrippa begins to transform Rome’s cityscape.
Chapter 6, ‘Statesman of the Roman World’, charts the years 23 to 19 BCE during which he travels the length and breadth of the empire, strengthening relationships with Rome’s allies, quelling rebellions and beautifying cities.
Chapter 7, ‘Associate of Augustus’, examines the period of Agrippa’s life at its zenith, marking the Century Games of 17 BCE, touring the eastern provinces and meeting his end.
Chapter 8, ‘Noblest Man of His Day’, looks at how Augustus dealt with the loss of his friend, and the ways in which their descendants exploited his reputation for their own ends.
Chapter 9, ‘Assessment’, evaluates Agrippa’s personality, achievements and legacy and attempts to answer the question, ‘what manner of man was he?’
When I completed this book I was the same age as Agrippa when he died. I am fortunate indeed to have outlived him, but I marvel at his extraordinary achievements compared to my own lifetime’s humble offerings. Writing history means making editorial decisions both as a historian and as a writer. As a historian I have to be faithful to the facts as they are known and to make explicit any speculations. Readers sometimes express the view ‘I would have liked to have known more about his private life/emotional state/opinions’ and so on as if I had intentionally withheld the information. One of the challenges of writing about people of the ancient past is the paucity of personal detail. If only Agrippa’s daybook or autobiography had survived! People of antiquity are so often no more than names associated with an event for whom we do not even possess a reliable contemporary description. Discussing their characters or motivations would, thus, be no more than speculation, a task better left to historical fiction writers. Indeed, despite all the statue busts we have, there is not a single mention of the colour of Agrippa’s hair or his eyes, nor even his height, for us to project those features on to the cold white marble and imagine it as warm, human flesh.
As a writer I have to decide how much backstory to include to set the context in which the actors of the story lived and made consequential decisions that affected their lives. The world of M. Agrippa was very different to our own and thus, for example, to understand a position that he held and its significance in his meteoric career makes an explanation of some or all aspects of that role necessary. Where it makes sense to do so I place the explanation in the narrative rather than the endnotes, because, for example, in the case of a priesthood, it reveals that a technocrat like Agrippa willingly accepted religious postings, despite their arcane practices and rituals and his public rejection of astrology and charlatanism. He was a man of his times and, as his life story shows, he delighted and thrived in them, and was quite capable of living with contradictions and paradoxes.
There is much to know about his world in all its nuanced complexity, but such limited space in a single volume biography to discuss it. I encourage the reader to study the endnotes and explore the points raised. They are extensive for a reason. Firstly, they fully disclose how this sausage was made! A historian worth his salt owes it to his reader to disclose that. Secondly, given the paucity and quality of source material, the reader should be aware that what modern – and especially ancient – historians sometimes present as indisputable fact, on closer inspection, can be found to be assertion based on inference or guesswork – and indeed, that it is disputed by others in the same field of scholarship.
An Ancient Chinese proverb states ‘the beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names’. Romans generally had two names, a personal name (praenomen) and a family or clan name (nomen genticulum), but from the later days of the Republic, it was becoming common to have three by adding a nickname (cognomen). While the subject of this biography had all three constituent parts to his name, he seems to have insisted on being known simply as M. Agrippa. Victorious commanders in battle might also be granted an honourific title (agnomen). Modern historians usually call Romans by their cognomina or agnomina, the last of the three or more names, hence Cicero for M. Tullius Cicero, or Augustus for Imperator Caesar Augustus. I do not use the convention Octavian for the man who became Caesar’s heir. He assumed and used the name of his great uncle and never used Octavianus. Throughout the text I use Iulius (I have used Iulius for Julius throughout) Caesar for the dictator and plain Caesar for the man who would later become Augustus. In some cases the Latin name has mutated into an Anglicism, such as Livy for Livius or Pliny for Plinius. For the names of ancient historians, I use the modern form. For the protagonists in the story I retain the Latin form – hence M. Antonius rather than Marc (or Mark) Antony – and the Greek form – thus Kleopatra for Cleopatra – since this is faithful to the original spelling found on coins and inscriptions and respects the names by which they themselves were known in their own time. For the same reason I use Caius not Gaius and Cnaeus not Gnaeus.
By tradition, Roman men and women in extended families often had the same name. Agrippa’s daughters and granddaughters took the feminine form of the family’s nomen genticulum with the result that there are several women with the name Vipsania Agrippina. To distinguish between them modern historians refer to Vipsania Agrippina (first wife of Tiberius), Agrippina Maior or ‘the Elder’ (wife of Germanicus) and Agrippina Minor or ‘the Younger’ (mother of Nero). The reader will be forgiven for thinking that studying the Domus Augusta, the House of Augustus, can quickly become very confusing: it is, even for people intimately familiar with the Roman period. With that in mind, I have tried to use the singular name Agrippa throughout to refer to the man who is the subject of this biography. The family tree will help the reader understand the branches of the House of Agrippa.
Where a place has a Latin name I prefer to use it since the modern name creates a false impression of the scale and feel of the ancient place – hence Oppidum Ubiorum (founded by Agrippa) rather than Cologne, which at this time more likely looked like a town of the American Wild West. In other cases, where the modern place name is unfamiliar to most readers I use the ancient name, such as Antiocheia on the Orontes (in Roman Syria) rather than Antakya (now in Turkey). Some ancient places in the East have both Latin and Greek names, such as Corcyra and Kerkyra, in which case I tend to use the original Greek form. The exceptions are Actium, Athens, Egypt and Rome, because to use Athenae (or Athenai), Aegyptus and Roma would be unnecessarily pedantic; and places for which the ancient name is not known I use the modern name unless there is a well-known Anglicism. I have listed ancient and modern place names on page 230 for convenience.
The names and places used by the indigenous peoples of Rome’s empire and the lands on its borders who sided with or fought against the Romans are only known to us through Greek and Latin writings. Similarly a few tribal chieftains and kings are known but only by Romanized or Hellenized names. The Parthian king of kings Frahâtak is generally known to readers in English by the ‘westernized’ (actually the Greek) form Phraates.
The Latin version is used for Roman officer ranks, arms, equipment and battle formations throughout the text since there is often no modern equivalent. Definitions of the terms are listed in the Glossary. Similarly with legal and political terms: the Roman republic Agrippa was born into was a complex structure of elected magistrates, assemblies of citizen voters and the Senate. For readers unfamiliar with the principal institutions and roles of its officials, I recommend starting with a reading of Appendix 1 before diving into the main narrative.
Writing about the ancient world involves making several editorial decisions and presentational compromises. Chronology is one of them. The Romans had their own calendar using the names of each year’s consuls (see page xxviii), and ancient historians routinely refer to dates in this way. For modern readers, it is cumbersome and very confusing. Our own style of identifying years by serial numbers makes life so much easier! However, in respect of dates, I have adopted the increasingly accepted conventions BCE (Before the Common Era) instead of BC (Before Christ), and CE (Common Era) for AD (anno Domini). I am aware some readers dislike this newer format, but it is common in research literature – popular historian Mary Beard is on record in A Don’s Life (26 September 2011) as stating the convention has been around for years and that about half of the academic papers published on Ancient History display dates in this format – and even the BBC now uses it. Thus, Agrippa was born in 64 BCE (or 64 BC) and Augustus died in 14 CE (AD 14).
The job of a biographer is to present as accurate and unbiased an account as possible – warts and all – of his chosen subject’s life but also to make the story compelling reading. Establishing, checking and interpreting facts makes for an intellectually stimulating journey as lines of inquiry take one this way or that. Like a detective, asking questions, examining evidence, having an open mind and a willingness to follow the leads wherever they go are the essential prerequisites to successfully solving a case. In the final analysis, however, as one strives to make the man come alive on the page the writing itself is a lonely endeavour, with the inner voice being both constant companion and sternest critic. I hope the result is a truthful and compelling account of the life of one of Ancient Rome’s most successful generals and consequential sons.
To the shades of Marcus Agrippa, son of Lucius, consul three times, I present this book. Arma virumque cano.
Lindsay Powell
St Patrick’s Day, March 2013
Austin, Texas