The next we hear of Agrippa he has left Rome and is sojourning in Lesbos (map 12). The ancient historians are divided on the motive for the apparently sudden departure from Rome, giving rise to all manner of speculations. Drawing on rumour and hearsay, Velleius writes that the trip overseas was a cover for the real reason which was, ‘according to current gossip, [he] had withdrawn, for the time being, on account of his secret animosity for Marcellus.’8 In the Life of the Divine Augustus, Suetonius states that Augustus ‘occasionally found Agrippa lacking in patience … because of a slight suspicion of coolness and of a preference shown for Marcellus, threw up everything and went off to Mytilene’.9 At face value, Agrippa had thrown a tantrum and stormed off; but then, in the Life of Tiberius, he tempers the motive as being ‘so that he [Agrippa] might not seem either to oppose or belittle him [Marcellus] by his presence’.10 Pliny the Elder ascribes a darker motive when he describes ‘the disgraceful banishment, as it were, of Agrippa’ inferring he left unwillingly on Augustus’ orders.11 Tacitus presents Agrippa as tired from his constant exertions and keen to retire to rest, a request which Augustus grants.12 Dio writes that, when Augustus recovered from his illness, he became aware that his young nephew was antagonistic towards his older friend and to remove the opportunity ‘for scoffing or for skirmishing’ to arise between the two in Rome, sent Agrippa to Syria.13 The best explanation for why Agrippa headed to the East is probably preserved by Josephus who, unaware of the alleged friction in the House of Augustus, writes simply that ‘Agrippa was sent to succeed Caesar in the government of the countries beyond the Ionian Sea’.14 Without access to the full facts, those outside Augustus’ circle may indeed have read exile into the timing of Agrippa’s posting overseas, seeing it as a politically motivated forced retirement engineered to get him out of Rome and away from the young man being groomed to succeed the princeps.
There is another intriguing explanation for why Agrippa went East. In modern times, an elegant theory has been posited that he was actually sent on a secret diplomatic mission to seek redress for the defeats of Crassus and Antonius by the Parthians.15 This would not be a campaign using military force, however, but one using subtler methods. The rumours of a break up between the two friends over Marcellus provided a story to cover Agrippa’s covert diplomacy. This would also explain why Agrippa stayed in Mytilene but his legates went to Syria. From there they could travel largely unnoticed to negotiate directly with the Parthian king or his interlocutors: military personnel were, after all, always going to the frontier zone. If Agrippa went his movements could not be concealed. The Romans had a bargaining chip. Two years earlier Augustus had received in Rome the usurper Tiridates who had taken the Parthian throne from the Great King Frahâta IV in a revolution, only to be ousted himself soon after by the king who had secured military assistance from the Scythians.16 He hoped to gain the support of the Roman head of state and brought with him the youngest son of Frahâta who he had snatched as a hostage. The opportunity presented itself to expunge a stain on Rome’s honour. Augustus could not risk going himself to negotiate, but Agrippa could on his behalf. If the discreet talks came to nought, it would cause no great embarrassment and Augustus would not be blamed. If successful, the princeps would achieve without strife and bloodshed what two Roman commanders with great armies had not, and bolster his standing at home. It would appear that Agrippa succeeded. It is matter of historical fact that in the latter half of 23 BCE a deputation from the Great King arrived in Rome with a demand. They wanted the return of both Tiridates and the young prince. Augustus knew there was still leverage in holding the usurper and declined to hand him over, but he counter offered. He would agree to return the king’s son in return for the surviving Roman captives and military standards (plates 7 and 20).17 The Parthian delegation returned to Ctesiphon to present the princeps’ proposal to the Great King. Now a formal channel of communications was established between the two legitimate regimes and the Romans waited for a response.
The reality was likely about pragmatics. Having spent several years away following the ‘First Constitutional Settlement’, during which Agrippa had been the sole face of the new régime in Rome, now that Augustus was in good health again it was time for him to reassert himself onto the political and social scene. Both men did not need to be in the city at the same time. There was plenty of work to do and Agrippa’s abundant talents were needed elsewhere. It was time to switch. Since Augustus had recently been active in the West, that meant assigning his deputy to the East, as indeed Josephus states. In his recognition of Agrippa’s friendship and contribution, Augustus had been very public. As for the allegations of friction between Marcellus and Agrippa, the track record of the older man attests to his maturity in comportment and emotional stability. If anyone, it was likely Marcellus who was in awe of his uncle’s best friend and confidant, not the other way around.
That year the 19-year-old Marcellus enthusiastically took up his new post as aedile. He broke ground on a new theatre on land located south of the Circus Flaminius on the bank of the Tiber, which had been set aside by Iulius Caesar.18 It was envisaged as an imposing hemicycle of three tiers, two of elegant arches, and engaged columns with seating inside for up to 11,000.19 As was expected of an aedile, for the public’s entertainment Marcellus laid on lavish games, partly paid for by his father-in-law.20 With the aim of making the festivities memorable – every aedile’s goal – the emphasis was on novelty. To shock, among the dancers taking the stage was a man from the ordo equester and a high-status woman, while to awe, the young magistrate had huge protective awnings hung overhead across the Forum Romanum to shield the spectators from the intense sun of the Italian summer.21 All who attended agreed the games were a brilliant success.22
As a public figure Agrippa was the object of lampoons and satire. One such survives from that year. Perhaps sensing the changing fortune of Maecenas, Horace had been increasingly distancing himself from his patron, and had earned the personal favour of Augustus, and, as a result, the poet was likely known to his colleague. Taken at face value, the Sixth Ode (Carmina) of Book 1 the poet passes over the challenge of eulogizing Agrippa’s – and Augustus’ – military achievements in the style of Homer to his contemporary and friend L. Varius Rufus:
Not I, but Varius – he, of Homer’s force
A tuneful swan, shall bear you on his wing,
Your tale of trophies, won by ship or horse,
Soldier led by you to sing.
Not mine such themes, Agrippa; no, nor mine
To chant the wrath that fill’d Pelides’ breast,
Nor dark Ulysses’ wanderings o’er the brine,
Nor Pelops’ house unblest.
Vast were the task, I feeble; inborn shame,
And she, who makes the peaceful lyre submit,
Forbid me to impair great Caesar’s fame
And yours by my weak wit.
But who may fitly sing of Mars array’d
In adamant mail, or Merion, black with dust
Of Troy, or Tydeus’ son by Pallas’ aid
Strong against gods to thrust?
Feasts are my theme, my warriors maidens fair,
Who with pared nails encounter youths in fight;
Be Fancy free or caught in Cupid’s snare,
Her temper still is light.23
The poet is playing etymological games, however, hinting that the verse is intended as a light hearted, tongue-in cheek piece.24 He mocks himself for not being able to command the weighty language necessary to encompass the commander’s great victories, but then he gently pokes fun at his subject too. Horace’s word play relates to the third line (quam rem cumque ferox navibus aut equis) where the Latin words ferox (‘savage’) and equis (‘horse’, a poetic stand-in for the land army), can be directly translated into Greek equivalents as αγρ (ίος) and ίππ (α).25 Educated Romans were fond of etymology, as the work of the prolific contemporary M. Terrentius Varro (116–27 BCE) shows, and they also believed Latin was a dialect of Greek. The joke requires the reader/listener to know that Agrippa’s name can be split into the two Greek words agr- and -ippa. By explicitly choosing the word ‘horse’ rather than ‘foot soldier’ (peditibus – he uses miles, ‘soldier’, immediately after in the next line), he avoids implying the close alternative Greek word πους (‘foot’) which would evoke the unflattering ‘feet first birth’ meaning of the name agrippa.26 Instead Horace infers a classier Hellenic origin for the man’s name. When the poem was read for Agrippa’s entertainment, Horace must have hoped he would enjoy his sophisticated wit. The proconsul’s reaction on first hearing the work is not recorded.
Agrippa’s mind was already focused on his next assignment. He ‘did not reach Syria’, writes Dio, but ‘tarried himself in Lesbos’.27 Situated in the northern Aegean Sea, just 320km (198 miles) off the coast of Asia (modern Turkey), the geographer Strabo described Lesbos as ‘a very remarkable island’ and even the poet Horace lauded its beauty.28 Its principal city was Mytilene (Mytilini) on the southeastern corner of the island. The city Agrippa would call home for most of the next two years was small but sophisticated (plate 25):
Mitylene has two harbours, of which the southern can be closed and holds only fifty triremes, but the northern is large and deep, and is sheltered by a mole. Off both lies a small island, which contains a part of the city that is settled there. And the city is well equipped with everything.29
For its size, the city had produced a remarkable number of intellectual and artistic greats, including Pittakos (Pittacus), one of the Seven Wise Men, the poets Alkaios (Alcaeus) and Sappho, Diophanes the rhetorician, Potamon, Lesbokles (Lesbocles), Krinagoras (Crinagoras), and the historian and statesman Theophanes who befriended Pompeius Magnus and was a contemporary of Strabo.30 It was a regular retreat for high status Romans.31 From here Agrippa could reach any part of the eastern empire by swift trireme.
In late summer, Agrippa received tragic news. The letter the courier brought from Rome explained that at the start of August Marcellus had died suddenly while in Baiae, the resort Agrippa had used as his base during the construction of Portus Iulius.32 Antonius Musa had tried his miracle cure of cold therapies, but this time it did not work.33 The precise cause of his death is not known, but the typhoid epidemic of the previous year appears to have continued through 23 BCE, killing many in its wake. That fact did not prevent sceptical gossipers suspecting the hand of Livia Drusilla in Marcellus’ death, perceiving the careers of her own sons Tiberius and Nero Claudius Drusus as disadvantaged by him while he was alive.34 Rome deeply mourned the loss of its young prince. A distraught Augustus presided over the funeral of his son-in-law, delivering the eulogy in person, placing his ashes in his own mausoleum, commissioning a statue of him in gilt-bronze and a golden crown, and requiring that a curule chair was to be carried in his honour into the theatre hosting the Ludi Romani and placed among its sponsors.35 In memory of the deceased man, the theatre he had begun was named after him.36 The poet Vergil added Marcellus to his epic Aeneid as one of the illustrious men Aeneas met in the underworld and readings of the great work were given to Augustus and the boy’s mother Octavia.37 Instinctively Agrippa would have offered to return back to Rome to support his friend, but in the event he remained in the East.
Paterculus writes that Agrippa had ‘set out for Asia on the pretext of commissions from the emperor’, which aligns with Josephus’ remark on the matter.38 There was much to do in the eastern half of the empire. No one had been in overall command of the region since M. Antonius died in 30 BCE. The East continued to be a patchwork of directly ruled provinces and client kingdoms, such as Polemon king of Pontus who had been recognized as a friend and ally of the Romans in 26 BCE.39 Roman civilian governors, drawn from the Senate, rotated through on three-year duties to proconsular provinces assigned them by lot. Dio notes Agrippa ‘tarried himself in Lesbos’ and adds ‘instead, acting with even more than his usual moderation, he sent his deputies thither’.40 His authority to delegate duties to the legati was embodied in the imperium proconsulare granted him by the Senate before he left Rome. As the most senior man in the region, Agrippa would certainly have been made aware of military and political developments and important people in the East would have made a point to visit him out of respect for him both as Augustus’ representative and the second most important man in the Roman Empire.
One such was Herodes who knew the importance of maintaining personal political relationships and headed to Mytilene over the winter months specifically to meet ‘his particular friend and companion’, and then returned directly home to Iudea.41 In Herodes’ case though, the Roman commander and Jewish king seemed to enjoy a friendship beyond the diplomatic. When Herodes returned to his capital at Hierosolyma (Jerusalem), he called the two most opulent rooms in the new palace he was building respectively Caesareum and Agrippeum, after the eminent Romans.42
Some emissaries arrived from the Greek-speaking community of Gadara (modern Umm Qais in northern Jordan) to accuse Herodes of various violations, but the uninvited visitors had misjudged the governor general’s role and responsibilities.43 Agrippa’s ability to intervene in their case was curtailed by the fact that Herodes was a client king responsible for running the affairs of his own dominion according to its laws, and it was not for a Roman official to interfere without prior consultation unless the matter concerned Roman citizens, or he was invited by the regent to do so.44 Gadara had been placed under Herodes’ care in 30 BCE by Imperator Caesar. Herodes owed his position to Rome. Under treaty, in return the king provided the Romans stability on the frontier, providing his own troops to guard it, advertised his connections with Rome by establishing cities and encouraged policies sympathetic with Rome’s world view.45 Respecting the boundary between obligation and independence was essential to sustaining an effective client-patron relationship. Thus, Josephus writes that Agrippa sent the Gadarenes ‘back bound to the king without giving them the hearing’.46
To those regents who had supported Antonius, after Actium Imperator Caesar had taken a lenient approach – to act punitively would have injected uncertainty, even chaos, to the region.47 Just as Herodes had once been a loyal friend to Antonius, the expectation was that he would transfer that allegiance to Caesar Augustus, and so it proved to be.48 In the Judaean king Agrippa found a man of similar political and intellectual interests and passions. The political landscape of the region Agrippa was responsible for was not static, but an ever shifting network of relationships, some based on mutual respect, others self-interest. Upon the death of the client king or one of his descendants he might bequeath his realm to Rome. In this way, Romans often acquired territory without war. In 25 BCE, Amyntas – who had also supported Antonius at Actium – died and the kingdom of Galatia passed not to his sons, but to Rome; shortly after Galatia together with Lycaonia acquired a Roman governor, and the portions of Pamphylia previously assigned to Amyntas were restored to their own districts.49 Supervising these transfers of power would have been one of Agrippa’s responsibilities.
On account of its strategic importance as one of Rome’s breadbaskets, the governance of province Egypt was uniquely different. It was governed by a prefect (praefectus Aegypti), handpicked by Augustus from the equestrian order on the basis of his knowledge of administration and the law, and for his military prowess. In 24 BCE praefectus Aelius Gallus had initiated a war against neighbouring Arabia Felix, of which Sabos was king.50 Though Gallus at first encountered no opposition, he did not find the going easy. The combination of desert, the sun, and the strange quality of the water took its toll on his men, so much so that the larger part of the army perished on the march.51 Dio describes a medical condition which ‘attacked the head and caused it to become parched, killing forthwith most of those who were attacked, but in the case of those who survived this stage it descended to the legs, skipping all the intervening parts of the body, and caused dire injury to them’.52 The cure was simple enough – a blend of olive oil and wine, taken orally and applied as an ointment – but few had access to the remedy. Finally attacked by the Arabians, Gallus had no choice but to sound the retreat.53 Dio adds that:
These were the first of the Romans, and, I believe, the only ones, to traverse so much of this part of Arabia for the purpose of making war; for they advanced as far as the place called Athlula [modern Baraquish in Yemen], a famous locality.54
Gallus was replaced that same year by C. (or P.) Petronius. In 22 BCE, he was dragged into a war – not of his making – with his neighbours to the south, the Kushite (or Nubian) kingdom of Meroë in Ethiopia.55 The Kushites had raided deep into southern Egypt, reaching as far as the Island of Elephantine in the Nile and the city of Syene, taking captives and provocatively pulling down statues of Caesar Augustus.56 Leading them was Amanirenas Kandake (Candace) who Strabo describes as ‘a masculine sort of woman, and blind in one eye’, which perhaps owes more to a general Roman stereotype of barbarian queens than represents an accurate portrait of her.57 Petronius launched a devastating counterattack.58 His army of 10,000 infantry and 8,000 cavalry pillaged the north of Ethiopia, razing their capital Napata (modern Karima in Northern Sudan) and other cities.59 As with Gallus before him, heat and desert prevented his troops from advancing further south and, after leaving a garrison on the border at Primis (present day Qasr Ibrim), he returned home. The Kushites then surrounded and attacked the garrison. Petronius returned again to deal with them, rescued his own men and compelled the Kandake to make terms with him, which included maintaining a permanent troop presence in the border region of the Dodekashoinos.60 Despite the shortcomings of Gallus’ and Petronius’ missions, Augustus gave a positive spin to their adventures and still claimed credit for them.61
Agrippa was not one to sit idly. That was not his management style. From Mytilene he likely travelled to communities in nearby Anatolia and further inland to the cities of Asia, and to Syria, the location of his official seat. Inscriptions have been found across the region which mention his name, though it is not certain they all date from this time or later.62 Many of these cities had sided with Antonius – some freely, others under duress – only a decade earlier. Agrippa’s presence in the region would have given their city fathers the opportunity to demonstrate their loyalty to Augustus and by visiting them Agrippa showed that both sides were reconciled and spreading the message of the Pax Augusta, the Augustan Peace.63
In Rome, Agrippa’s closest friend was forced to intervene as the domestic situation deteriorated. In the spring of 22 BCE heavy rain had swollen the Tiber, which burst its banks and inundated parts of the city, and, writes the chronicler Dio ominously, ‘many objects were struck by thunderbolts, especially the statues in the Pantheon, so that the spear even fell from the hand of Augustus.’64 It was followed in the summer by famine and plague, which afflicted all Italy.65 Ascribing the crisis to the fact that Augustus was no longer consul and angered by the seeming inability of the authorities to deal with the growing crisis, a mob surrounded the Curia and demanded, while threatening to set fire to the building, that the Senate act by declaring Augustus dictator, granting him emergency powers, and giving him responsibility for the corn supply (cura annona).66 The Senate asked him to agree to both positions, but he knew instinctively that accepting the dictatorship was a dangerous option, carrying with it so many bad associations.67 However, Augustus agreed to take charge of the annona, and immediately appointed two ex-praetors, elected annually thereafter, as commissioners to supervise the distribution of the grain dole.68 (The Senate also offered Augustus the office of censor for life, deferring to his judgement in this important role, but this he also refused, instead proposing Aemilius Lepidus and Munatius Plancus to take the open posts.)69 At this time, he introduced regulations to restrict excess in public banquets and festivals, appointing their management to the praetors but imposing limits on the sums they could spend on gladiatorial games; as well as entrusting the curule aediles with the responsibility of the putting out fires and assigned them 600 slaves as firemen.70
Continuing Agrippa’s policy, Augustus showed himself to be both public spirited and politically responsible.71 But not all were supportive of his social and political agenda. Particularly disturbing to Augustus was the exposure of a plot to assassinate him. Behind it was Fannius Caepio, but implicated was L. Licinius Murena, the brother-in-law of Maecenas.72 The men fled Rome to avoid prosecution, but were tried in absentia and sentenced to death.73 Neither Murena’s brother Procleius nor Maecenas were able to save him from a guilty verdict. As a result of the trial Augustus passed a law that a man who was not present at his trial could only be found guilty by unanimous agreement of the jury, and the voting must be transparent and not held in secret.74 The involvement of a family relation in a conspiracy to murder was an acute embarrassment to Maecenas, and from that time his influence with Augustus waned.75
Second Mission in the West
Believing the situation in Rome to have stabilized, Augustus departed for Sicily to settle affairs requiring his personal attention there.76 He had misjudged the situation back home, however. The new flash point was the consular elections. Even though the plebs had no direct involvement in the process of electing these chief officials, fighting broke out among them.77 The people fervently believed one of the two positions was intended for Augustus but he declined it and M. Lollius found himself sworn in as the sole consul at the start of 21 BCE. Two rivals emerged to contest the vacant curule chair – Q. Aemilius Lepidus and L. Silvanus – whose canvassing quickly deteriorated into tumult and the Senate appealed to Augustus to return and intervene, but he would not come back to Rome. The two candidates then travelled to Sicily and presented themselves to Augustus who rebuked and dismissed them.78 He demanded that the two men should absent themselves from the city while the election was held. They returned to Rome, but the quarrelling was as bad as before. Eventually Lepidus was chosen, but it was a sorry reminder to Augustus at how reliant on him the political system had become.79 He plainly could not run the empire if he was compelled to devote all his time to urban affairs, nor could he risk anarchy if he left it. ‘Accordingly’ writes Dio, ‘he sought for someone to set over it, and judged Agrippa to be most suitable for the purpose.’80 Once again it was his closest friend who he trusted above all others to deal with his difficult problems and, without further delay, he wrote to Agrippa calling him to a personal meeting in Sicily.81 For the task Augustus had in mind, he felt it important to imbue his friend ‘with a dignity above the ordinary, in order that he might govern the people more easily’.82 His proposal contained a particularly special enticement. As related by Dio,
he summoned him, compelled him to divorce his wife, although she was the emperor’s own niece, and to marry Iulia; and he sent him to Rome at once to attend both to the wedding and to the administration of the city. This step is said to have been taken partly on the advice of Maecenas, who in counselling him upon these very matters said, ‘you have made him so great that he must either become your son-in-law or be slain.’83
If Maecenas did indeed make the remark, he acknowledged the towering stature Agrippa had attained. By marrying his only child to his best friend, Augustus was now clearly communicating his intention of making Agrippa co-ruler of the Roman world. There was no other way to interpret it. Agrippa’s – or indeed the young widow Iulia’s – feelings about divorcing Marcella (his present wife and mother of his two children) are not recorded, not that the issue would have bothered Augustus much, even if they entered into his calculations.84 This was a politically-motivated marriage. It might have later blossomed into a relationship based on love, but this was not its genesis. It did not best serve Augustus’ interests in presenting his family as the role model for Roman society if his daughter remained a widow any longer. Admittedly, there was a considerable difference in age between the partners – Iulia was almost 18-years-old, while Agrippa was now 42 – but marriages between middle-aged men and teenage girls were common in the Roman world. As Augustus had no children by the Claudian Livia Drusilla, he must have had high hopes that the couple would establish a new Julian bloodline, which could produce a male heir to succeed him.
Iulia was Augustus’ daughter by his marriage to Scribonia. Little is known about her childhood and early teenage years, and what we know of her has been tinged by the notoriety of her adulthood.85 By her late teens she had grown up to be a popular figure in Roman society. People were drawn to her humanity and kindly temperament, but others were perplexed by her apparent contradictions.86 It seemed that beneath her warm personality lurked a spirit driven by darker passions. The precious few statue busts which have been identified as her show a pleasantly oval shaped face, wide open eyes, a Mona Lisa-esque expression on thin wide lips and hair done in the fashionably restrained style for the time, tightly gathered at the nape of the neck.87 Augustus indulged his daughter rather than taking a stern approach, but he found her dress sense at odds with his expectations as a father and he was critical of some of the company she kept. One day she appeared before him in what he felt was below the dignity of a woman of his family and he scolded her for it. The following day she reappeared, this time in a sober dress, wearing a demure expression, and hugged her father respectfully. He was delighted by the dramatic change and he complemented her on it; but it was an act intended to make a point. As reported by Macrobius she replied that ‘today I dressed for my father’s eyes, yesterday for my husband’s’.88 She was a woman who was aware of her sexuality and she was comfortable with it.
Roman Law required a widow to wait for a period of ten months to properly mourn her loss before remarrying, but since M. Claudius Marcellus’ death fully two years had passed. The marriage to Agrippa was timely, if not overdue. Surprisingly, it appears Augustus did not attend the wedding in person, preferring instead to depart for the East, taking Livia, her two sons, and Quinctilius Varus with him.89 Nothing survives in the ancient sources to tell us about the wedding, which took place in Rome. What Agrippa felt about his new wife is not recorded. She was young, attractive, educated, feisty and the daughter of his best friend, which must have appealed to him on several levels. There is nothing to suggest Agrippa approached his marriage with any other intention that to make it successful.
It may have been during that year Agrippa perhaps commissioned the building of new residences for himself and his bride. One is postulated as located in Rome, the other a summer home on the Bay of Naples. It must be said that the identity of the properties is founded largely on informed guesswork based on location and interior decoration. If the so-called Villa under the Farnesina in Rome, which has long been ascribed to him, was indeed his, its site was chosen strategically, overlooking the Pons Agrippae in the Trans Tiberim with commanding views of the Campus Martius and its monumental edifices.90 The painted walls, which have since been uncovered, reveal the changing tastes in interior design during the Augustan Age.91 One room is decorated with murals in what art historians call the Second Style, known for its picture-window effect evoking the world outside. While the smooth plaster was still wet, the painter used his brush to apply paint made of organic and inorganic pigments bound with egg white; they impregnated themselves into the surface and to this day retain their original colour and brightness.92 The ancient artist’s brushes created fantastic shallow trompe l’oeuil illusions of architectural backdrops of columns, theatrical masks and drapes or Italianate landscapes and populated them with plants, people, birds and animals accurately painted from real life and which still delight modern visitors with their vivacity. The idea was to bring a tamed version of the outside world into the controlled realm of the home.
In contrast the wall paintings of ‘Cubiculum B’ are in the so-called Third Style, noted for its rejection of the recreation of natural vistas in favour of the restrained elegance of plainer lines representing tall slender Ionic columns set upon plinths, between panels of a bold single colour – here in scarlet red – in the centre of which were whimsical faux stucco details or impressionistic masterpieces.93 Nearby is delightful ‘Cubiculum E’ with off-white as its dominant ground colour, accented with dividing lines in red-brown and green hues. Among the finely draughted painted figures are the goddess Diana/Selene and, in the upper register, statuary atop patinated candelabra and carved balustrades. The overall effect was sophisticated, strong on detail, yet understated and executed to the highest standards – perhaps reflecting Agrippa’s own personality.
To the south of Rome, 241km (150 miles) away in fashionable Campania, another villa is associated with Agrippa at Boscotrecase. Smothered by the ash of Vesuvius during the eruption of 79 CE, the villa has since been excavated and studied.94 Its connection with Agrippa is tentative and based only on the close similarity of the style and execution of paintings at this site with the Villa under the Farnesina in Rome.95 Its ground plan follows the traditional two-part design of homes popular in the Bay of Naples. The first wing comprised of a suite of public rooms – thirteen in all – around a central atrium, which was typically open to the sky. An adjoining wing of private rooms – so far ten have been explored – was arranged around a four-sided peristyle with a formal garden at its centre. The columns of the colonnade were brick covered with plaster while the walls of the peristyle were adorned with paintings of columns in the Second Style, creating the illusion of a double portico. The most important rooms were located here and included the family’s bedrooms whose walls were painted in the latest Third Style.96
One of these, called ‘Cubiculum 15’ by archaeologists, but also referred to as the ‘black room’, opens off the eastern end of the wing.97 From a deep red frieze running along the base of the wall, a series of slender white columns rise above a faux dado rail against a solid charcoal-black background, originally with a deep glossy finish. Atop these columns, the ancient master painter has added candelabra, pavilions, swans and tripods, all connected by a narrow cornice that runs around the entire room, in places appearing to be folded back slightly to add subtle three dimensionality. The dark walls contrast with the white floor, in the centre of which is a mosaic with a black geometric pattern. In the next room, ‘Cubiculum 16’, the predominant colour is red above a black base.98 Delicate flowers and tendrils bisect the uppermost panels, while borders frame the large plain panels beneath. Each of the four walls in this room has a large centre panel painted in white on which are depicted in impressionistic style bucolic idyls of scenes from mythology – in one, the cyclops Polyphemus stands against a rock in the shadow of a tall tree as he tends his flock, while in another Perseus is shown flying to rescue Andromeda from an approaching sea monster. The translucency of the paint and the quick but masterful stroke of the painter’s brush create astonishing images not achieved again until the eighteenth century. Across the corridor is ‘Cubiculum 20’, whose largely white panels, populated by small birds and tinier flowers, rise above a red base. Yet, tantalizingly the style of its decoration echoes Pliny’s comment about Agrippa’s restrained artistic taste.99 These rooms only hint at the opulence of the property and its luxurious furnishings in its heyday. The architect of the house made the very best of the location. The west wing opened onto a long south-facing terrace, which must once have had magnificent and uninterrupted views over the Bay below, and let in sea-breezes to refresh the house and its occupants – though if Agrippa ever enjoyed its delights is not recorded.
Now in charge of the city of Rome, Agrippa quickly applied his mind to dealing with the matters of law and order that Augustus had either failed or refused to deal with.100 His first priority was reclaiming the streets from the rioters. In this he was successful. When another bitter dispute broke out, this time over the election of a junior prefect (praefectus urbi feriarum Latinarum causa) who represented the consuls during the Latin Festival held in the Alban Hills in January, he was unable to resolve the matter by normal means. Exasperated he took the extreme measure of simply suspending the office for the entire year. In a similar vein, ever suspicious of the corrosive influence of eastern ‘mystic’ cults on public morale, Agrippa banned the practice of Egyptian rites from being performed within a mile of the city, just as he had done with astrologers and charlatans back in 34 BCE.101
By the late spring of 20 BCE Iulia was heavy with child. Between 14 August and 13 or 23 September she finally gave birth to a baby boy. On the seventh day after the boy’s birth, a lustration ceremony was held and Agrippa formally recognized him as his son. He named him C. (Vipsanius) Agrippa – he probably chose the praenomen Caius in honour of his best friend. Young Caius was Augustus’ first grandson and it must have been with great joy that he received the news delivered by official courier to his residence Syria. At Augustus’ or Agrippa’s own instigation, the Senate decreed that a sacrifice and prayers were to be held annually in honour of the boy on his birthday and to be paid for with public funds.102
Also that year a new monument was unveiled in the Forum Romanum between the Rostra and the Temple of Saturn.103 Called the ‘golden milestone’ (miliarium aureum) it was a column of gilded bronze (or marble clad in gilt bronze) which listed all the major cities and their distances from Rome.104 Romans regarded it as the starting point from which all the main roads fanned out. While Augustus had been appointed superintendent of the road system (cura viarum) of Rome and its environs in 20 BCE he was not actually in the city and it may have been Agrippa who inaugurated the marker. It was likely by this time he had been com-missioned by Augustus to prepare a map of the known world (orbis terrarum).105 Agrippa was one of the most travelled men of his age and that uniquely qualified him to make critical observations on reports of the diverse terrains, peoples, cities of the Roman world and distances between them. As a military man he would, like other commanders, have had access to maps and itineraries, which he used on campaign and annotated, creating new ones of his own as new information became available.106 A project to compile and present a unified map had been commissioned when Iulius Caesar and M. Antonius were consuls in 44 BCE; four Greeks had been assigned to carry out the work and twenty years later it was not yet complete.107 Strabo, who saw the finished representation in 7 BCE, observed:
It is the sea more than anything else that defines the contours of the land and gives it its shape, by forming gulfs, deep seas, straits, and likewise isthmuses, peninsulas, and promontories; but both the rivers and the mountains assist the seas herein. It is through such natural features that we gain a clear conception of continents, nations, favourable positions of cities, and all the other diversified details with which our geographical map is filled. And among these details are the multitudes of islands scattered both in the open seas and along the whole seaboard. And since different places exhibit different good and bad attributes, as also the advantages and inconveniences that result therefrom, some due to nature and others resulting from human design, the geographer should mention those that are due to nature.108
With the benefit of another half century of explorations by Roman armies and merchants Pliny the Elder, who cites Agrippa – probably the commentarii which accompanied the map – as a source of geographical information for his own work on thirty occasions, expressed his exasperation at errors in it, as here where he remarks about underestimates of distances in the Iberian peninsula:
M. Agrippa has also stated the whole length of this province to be 475 miles, and its breadth 257; but this was at a time when its boundaries extended to Carthago, a circumstance which has often caused great errors in calculations; which are generally the result either of changes effected in the limits of provinces, or of the fact that in the reckoning of distances the length of the miles has been arbitrarily increased or diminished. In some parts too the sea has been long making encroachments upon the land, and in others again the shores have advanced; while the course of rivers in this place has become more serpentine, in that more direct. And then, besides, some writers begin their measurements at one place, and some at another, and so proceed in different directions; and hence the result is, that no two accounts agree.
Who is there that can entertain the belief that Agrippa, a man of such extraordinary diligence, and one who bestowed so much care on his subject, when he proposed to place before the eyes of the world a survey of that world, could be guilty of such a mistake as this, and that too when seconded by the late emperor the divine Augustus? For it was that emperor who completed the Portico which had been begun by his sister, and in which the survey was to be kept, in conformity with the plan and descriptions of M. Agrippa.109
Modern attempts at a reconstruction of Agrippa’s orbis terrarum propose that the map was either circular in design (fig. 18) – with Rome at the centre – or longitudinal (like the map of Eratosthenes) or that it was not a map at all but a gazetteer of places and distances (fig. 6).110
In 19 BCE reports arrived from the Gallic provinces of trouble there. The Galli were restless, perhaps even in open revolt – Dio says they were quarrelling amongst themselves, without specifying who – and the situation was made worse by raids by Germanic war bands from the Rhineland.111 The legatus in the region evidently could not contain the unrest himself with the forces at his disposal and, perhaps fearing it might spread, must have written to Rome for help. Agrippa felt obliged to go there in person to deal with it. He had his own imperium and was acting in his usual hands-on style to deal with a crisis.112
Details about Agrippa’s movements in the region are frustratingly sparse. Speed was of the essence. On the outbound journey he may have taken the Alpine road, Via Cottia per Alpem (map 13). Before it was made into a road, Hannibal Barca had marched his army and his elephants along this route, a journey that took fifteen days.113 Iulius Caesar, considering this the shortest route, took just six days to reach the Rhône from the Italian foothills.114 It crossed through the Roman protectorate of the Alpes Cottiae.115 The territory was a client-kingdom named after M. Iulius Cottius, a Ligurian noble, and son of King Donnus.116 Indeed, Agrippa does appear to have been known by the royal family.117 Cottius had found a way to peacefully and profitably co-exist with his Roman neighours by constructing a highway over the Alpine pass at Mount Genèvre (Matrona Mons).118 Traffic from Augusta Taurinorum (Turin) could take the road heading northwest to Cottius’ capital at Segusio (Susa) and go on to Brigantium (Briançon). The road terminated at Glanum (St-Rémy-de-Provence), whence traffic could head south to Arelate (Arles) on the Via Domitia which took them to the Iberian peninsula; or north through Arausio (Orange) and directly to Lugdunum.119 After a long journey Agrippa reached the leading city of the region to assess the situation. Was Aquitania up in arms again? Dio cryptically states only that he ‘put a stop to those troubles’.120 We are left to guess whether he achieved it by military force or diplomacy. It might have been a sufficient deterrent for the Gallic insurgents to suspend hostilities just knowing Augustus’ own deputy, who had crushed dissent there before, was on his way.121 The fact is all the more remarkable because Agrippa had not participated in battle since his campaigns against the forces of M. Antonius and Kleopatra in 31 BCE.