There are several people who deserve my thanks for helping me with this project. I start with family and friends. My partner, mother, brother and my friend Sonia St James (self-styled ‘muse to creative minds’) have all offered much appreciated encouragement throughout the project. To my commissioning editor, Philip Sidnell, who responded enthusiastically to my proposal for this, my third book for Pen & Sword, I shall again always be grateful. To Noel Sadler, who laid out these pages, Dominic Allen who created the jacket, and Matt Jones who supervised the whole production process, I offer my sincere thanks.
I feel very honoured that Steven Saylor agreed to provide the foreword to Marcus Agrippa. Steven has a remarkable talent for making the ancient world come alive for modern readers. He has studied the Roman world in particular for many years. As the author of the fictional Roma Sub Rosa series set in the last days of Republican Rome he is well-qualified to compose the opening remarks. It was into this age of political and military giants that Agrippa was born. I have enjoyed several discussions with him over dinner in Austin, Texas and have always come away from them with new insights into the ancient past, the study of which we both so much enjoy.
This book tells the story of Marcus Agrippa in both words and pictures. I offer my thanks to the helpful staff of The Perry-Castañeda Library of The University of Texas at Austin, who allowed me access to their amazing collection of books, many now out of print. For helping me to illustrate the story, I offer my thanks to Shanna Berk Schmidt of Harlan J. Berk, Ltd, Chicago, and Richard Beale of Roma Numismatics Limited, London, for kindly providing images of coins. From the re-enactment world, I must thank Chris Haines, MBE, Mike Knowles, and members of The Ermine Street Guard, a registered charity in England, of which I am proud to say I am a veteran member, for use of their photographs. For images of Roman portrait busts, I express my gratitude to Marie-Lan Nguyen in France, and for the Praeneste warship to Jasper Oorthuys, editor-in-chief of the excellent Ancient Warfare magazine, published by Karwansaray B.V. in The Netherlands, and for which I am news editor.
War stories cannot be told without the aid of maps. Erin Greb of Erin Greb Cartography did a marvellous job of producing the maps of Agrippa’s travels to my exact specifications. My thanks also to Ian Hughes for drawing the plans of the Campus Martius and Portus Iulius, and to Alex Swanston at Pen & Sword for the one of the Battle of Actium
I have quoted extracts from several ancient authors’ works whose voices lend authenticity to the narrative. For the translations, I used: Appian of Alexandria’s Ῥωμαϊκά, translated by Horace White in Appian’s Roman History (London: MacMillan and Co., 1899); Augustus’ Res Gestae, translated by Thomas Bushnell, BSG, and reproduced with permission (1998); Julius Caesar’s Commentarii de Bello Gallico, translated by Edward Brooks in The First Six Books of the Gallic War (Chicago: The Cenn Publishing Company, 1896); Cornelius Nepos’ Vitae, ‘Life of T. Pomponius Atticus’, in Lives of Eminent Commanders, translated by the Rev. John Selby Watson, MA (London: George Bell and Sons, 1886) pp. 305–450; Cassius Dio’s Ῥωμαϊκὴ Iστορία (Romaiki Istoria), translated by Herbert Balwin Foster in Dio’s Roman History, Volume 4 (New York: Pafraets Book Company, 1905), and E. Cary, based on the version by H.B. Foster, in Dio’s Roman History (London: William Heinemann, 1917); Cicero’s Epistulae, translated by Evelyn S. Shuckburgh in The Letters of Cicero: The Whole Extant Correspondence in Chronological Order (London: George Bell and Sons, 1905); Cicero’s Oratio pro L. Murena, translated by C.D. Yonge in The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 2 (London: Bell, 1891); Cicero’s Tusculanae Disputationes, translated by C.D. Yonge in Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1877); Frontinus’ de Aqueductu Urbis Romae translated by Charles E. Bennett in the Loeb edition, 1925; Hippokates’ Περί Aγμών (Peri Agmon), translated by Francis Adams in The Genuine Works of Hippocrates, Volume 2 (London: Sydenham Society, 1849); Horace’s Carmina, translated by John Conington in The Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace Translated Into English Verse (London: Bell and Daldy, Third Edition, 1865); Josephus’ Contra Apionem, translated by William Whiston in The Genuine Works of Flavius Josephus (New York: William Borradaile, 1824); Ovid’s Fasti and Epistulae Ex Ponto, translated by Henry T. Riley in The Fasti, Tristia, Pontic Epistles, Ibis and Haleiuticon of Ovid (London: Bell and Daldy, 1872); Nikolaus of Damaskos’ Bίος Καῖσαρος (Bios Kaisaros by Clayton M. Hall in Nicolaus of Damascus: Life of Augustus, Translated with a Commentary (Johns Hopkins University, 1922); Pliny the Elder’s Naturalis Historia, translated by John Bostock and H.T. Riley in The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 3 (London: Henry Bohn, 1855), and Jonathan Couch, in The Wernerian Club’s Pliny’s Natural History (London: George Barclay, 1848); Pliny the Younger’s Epistulae Selectae, translated by John Delaware Lewis in The Letters of the Younger Pliny (London: Keegan Paul, 1890); Plutarch’s Oὶ Bίοι Παράλληλοι (Oi Vioi Paralleloi), translated by John Langhorne and William Langhorne in Plutarch’s Lives (London: William Tegg, 1868); Strabo’s Γεωγραφικά (Geographika), translated by Horace Leonard Jones in The Geography of Strabo (London: William Heinemann, 1930); Suetonius’ De Vitae Caesarum, translated by Alexander Thomson in The Lives of the Twelve Caesars (London: George Bell and Sons, 1893); Tacitus’ Ab Excessu Divi Augusti (Annales), translated by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Bodribb in The Annals of Tacitus (London: MacMillan and Co., 1906); Tacitus’ De Origine et Situ Germanorum, translated by R.B. Townshend in The Agricola and Germania of Tacitus (London: Methuen and Co., 1894); and Velleius Paterculus’ Historiae Romanae, translated by John Selby in Sallust, Florus and Velleius Paterculus (London: George Bell, 1889); and Zosimus Istoria Nea, translated anonymously in New History (London: Green and Chaplin, 1814).
Lastly, my thanks go to Bob Durrett, an enthusiastic and engaging teacher of Latin, who kindly provided the evocative translation of Seneca the Elder’s Controversiae.