Marcus Agrippa

Right-Hand Man of Caesar Augustus

Lindsay Powell

• Publisher: Pen & Sword Military
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781473853812
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military Biographies
• Index: History

The authoritative biography of the ancient Roman general and loyal deputy to Emperor Augustus by the acclaimed historian and author of Augustus at War. When Gaius Octavius became the first emperor of Rome, Marcus Agrippa was by his side. As the emperor's loyal deputy, he waged wars, pacified provinces, beautified Rome, and played a crucial role in establishing the Pax Romana—but he always served knowing that he would never rule in his own name. Why he did so, and never grasped power for himself, has perplexed historians for centuries. In this authoritative biography, historian Lindsay Powell offers a penetrating new assessment of Agrippa's life and achievements. Following Caesar's assassination, Agrippa was instrumental in asserting the rights of his friend Gaius Octavius as the dictator's heir, seeing him crowned Emperor Augustus. Agrippa then established a reputation as a bold admiral, defeating Marcus Antonius and Queen Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium, and ending bloody rebellions in the Cimmerian Bosporus, Gaul, Hispania, and Illyricum. Agrippa was also an influential statesman and architect. He established the vital road network that turned Julius Caesar's conquests into viable provinces, overhauled Rome's drains and aqueducts, and built the original Pantheon. Marrying Augustus's daughter, Julia the Elder, Agrippa became co-ruler of the Roman Empire until his death in 12 BC. His bloodline lived on in the imperial family, through Agrippina the Elder, his grandson Caligula, and great-grandson Nero.

Chapter 1

New Man in Rome

64–Ides of March 44 BCE

On the horizon he could see the ships coming. It was an impressive, but intimidating sight. Some 200 ships were making straight for his own fleet at speed, intent upon its destruction. Their ships were bigger too. He spotted the purple sail of the most imposing vessel. Aboard the ship covered with gold, glittering in the sunlight, was Kleopatra VII, Queen of Egypt. Somewhere among the line of ships in front of the Egyptian’s flotilla was the Roman vessel carrying his sworn enemy, M. Antonius.

The leaders on both sides had rolled the dice on this the second day of September 31 BCE. Upon the choppy waters beyond the narrow opening of the Gulf of Ambracia the almost evenly matched fleets of the two sides would soon clash, but only one force would emerge victorious. The outcome of the battle would determine the fate, not only of the main protagonists and the men they commanded, but of Egypt as an independent state and of the entire Roman world. Win it, and his friend – Iulius Caesar’s legitimate heir and inheritor of the great man’s name – had a straight shot at eliminating his opposition and returning to Rome as a hero and saviour. Lose it, and the Roman Empire could split into two, its eastern dominions would ally with potentates in Asia, or worse Parthia, and pull an ever tightening noose around the neck of its western rival by denying the Romans their grain supply and tax revenues. He might even be killed in the struggle.

Over the last decade he had earned his friend’s complete confidence. On account of it he had been entrusted with winning this critical battle. He had won naval engagements before; but in military matters, he knew only too well, that past results were no guarantee of future success. There was no margin for error today. Of this one thing his friend could be sure. His admiral would not rest until he had completed his mission. He swayed gently as the ship rocked on the swell of the sea. Then, over his left shoulder, he felt the breeze rising from the northwest. He had been expecting it. In fact, he had been counting on it.

Caesar’s commander was ready. His name was Marcus Agrippa.

* * *

Feet First

Mystery enshrouds the origins and childhood of M. Agrippa. It seems that while he was alive he was keen to keep it that way. None of the historical records which have come down to us even preserve the name of his place of birth (origo). Central or southern Italy is usually presumed, but not certain. Based solely on his name, one candidate is Argyrippa – also known as Arpi (near modern Foggia) – a town of no particular importance in the first century BCE, located near Monte Gargano in Apulia (Puglia), which faces the Adriatic Sea and today is famous for its sandy beaches.¹ Another is Arpinum (modern Arpino) in Latium, famous as the birthplace of the consuls C. Marius and M. Tullius Cicero.² Yet others have been suggested, but these are no more than guesses. It was certainly not Rome, and that made him an outsider in the eyes of the privileged élite of the big city.³

His date of birth is also disputed. Pliny states that he died ‘in his fifty-first year’.⁴ Scholars still debate if this means he had already lived fifty-one years at the time of his death or if it was in the year he would become 51, in which case he had not yet reached his birthday. Cassius Dio asserts he died in the latter half of March 12 BCE.⁵ Thus, his birth year could have been as early as 64 or even as late as 62 BCE.⁶

His clan was the gens Vipsania, but it was obscure and next to nothing is known about it. No accounts of the founder of the family or his descendants survive. Agrippa himself consciously suppressed his association during his lifetime, dropping the nomen genticulum and preferring to be known simply as ‘M. Agrippa’ or plain ‘Agrippa’.⁷ Seneca the Elder records an informative episode from later in Agrippa’s life. He is recorded as having remarked that ‘he had been born Vipsanius Agrippa, but he had suffered the name of Vipsanius as a sort of proof of his father’s humble birth, and so now he was called M. Agrippa’.⁸ During a trial, the name Vispanius – or absence of it – was the cause of a joke:

When he was defending a party in a lawsuit there was an accuser who said: ‘Marcus … Agrippa, and that which is in the middle …’ (He wanted Vipsanius to be understood). It was he who then said: ‘Hurry, both of you! You will both have a disaster here unless one Marcus or the other responds to these matters!’⁹

Why the father’s humble birth was a source of acute embarrassment for the son is not known.

The name Agrippa had its own etymology. A cognomen was a nickname which often found its origins in the person’s physical appearance or some distinguishing feature. In Agrippa’s case there may have been a life-changing event which gave rise to his name. The polymath Pliny the Elder – writing in the mid-first century CE – records that the name Agrippa indicates ‘a difficult birth’, construed from a corruption of the Latin words aegre partus, explaining that ‘it is contrary to nature for children to come into the world with the feet first, for which reason such children are called agrippae’.¹⁰ ‘In this manner, M. Agrippa is said to have been born’, he continues, adding it was ‘the only instance, almost, of good fortune, out of the number of all those who have come into the world under these circumstances’.¹¹ For Pliny, Agrippa was lucky to have survived the first hurdle of life at all, where others had fallen. The family’s nickname evidently did not trouble the man who bore it proudly – and perhaps even defiantly – for the rest of his life.

On the ninth day after his birth, the traditional lustratio, or purification ceremony, took place. During this cleansing rite his father, whose name was Lucius, formally accepted him as his son and gave him his full Roman name.¹² About his mother, whose name is lost, nothing is known. He had one elder brother, who was named after his father, Lucius, and a sister, Vipsania Polla.¹³ Young Marcus likely played with his brother until either he or Lucius was old enough for school. Pliny alludes to misera iuventa – which translates as ‘the misfortunes of his youth’, or as ‘an unhappy youth’ – but does not elaborate.¹⁴ Any number of meanings can be read into the phrase – a family tragedy, parental abuse, bullying, poverty or poor health. Apparently as a young man he was generally physically fit and in good health, but he had to overcome ‘the unfortunate weakness of his legs’.¹⁵ His legs would come to trouble him in later life.

His immediate family’s history is as obscure. The family was not of the nobility (nobiles) and he was considered by them as ‘ignoble’ or ‘humble’ – words often used by Roman historians to describe him.¹⁶ These old established families with long histories considered him a novus homo, ‘new man’, a label laden with pejorative meaning.¹⁷ His family is assumed to have been plebeian, but a recently advanced theory proposes Agrippa was actually a second-generation Roman citizen whose equestrian-class grandfather or father had acquired citizenship after the Social War – also known as the Allied War – which afflicted Italy in 90 BCE and was won in favour of the allies.¹⁸ If his family was indeed equestrian rather than plebeian in status, Roman law required the head of the family to have property worth at least 400,000 sestertii in assets.¹⁹ Equites were engaged in commercial and money-lending activities – enterprises forbidden by law to patricians – and Agrippa’s father could have been an affluent individual during his career.²⁰ He would need to be to pay for his youngest son’s education and lodging in Rome.²¹

Agrippa’s early life can, however, be partly reconstructed. From the age of 6 or 7, Agrippa likely attended classes of a litterator to learn to read and write, and to master basic arithmetic using the abacus.²² At 14, a grammaticus would have led him in the study of writers like Andronicus, Ennius and Homer, whose poetic and dramatic works contained insights from astronomy, geography, history, law, mathematics, military science, mythology and philosophy.²³ Fluency in both Latin and Greek were encouraged at an early age, and Agrippa would have been required to demonstrate ability in class to discuss themes from texts in both languages.

In childhood Agrippa would have heard the tale of the rape and suicide of Lucretia, which led M. Iunius Brutus to overthrow the Romans’ last king and establish a new form of self-government by commonwealth (Res Publica); and stories of the valiant heroes who defended it, among them C. Mucius Scaevola, P. Horatius Cocles, Agrippa Menenius Lanatus, L. Quinctius Cincinnatus and M. Claudius Marcellus.²⁴ But the Res Publica Agrippa grew up in was a shadow of the ideal nation state these men had fought for. By his day, the Roman commonwealth, that had been shared between the Senate and free citizens voting in their assemblies (see Appendix 1) for 500 years, was increasingly being manipulated by a few powerful men with immense wealth.²⁵ Through bribery, nepotism and intimidation they overcame the system’s checks and balances to pass legislation and decrees favouring their own agendas or to target opponents. Many senators colluded to rig what was supposed to be a secret ballot based on chance, assigning overseas postings to the richest overseas provinces of the empire, which enabled them to fleece the local populations in their care and build enormous personal fortunes. Others augmented their assets through booty gained from wars of conquest provoked to further their own glory, not for the security of the Roman nation. Whereas in the past praetors and consuls led legions of fellow citizens to fight wars in the name of the state, these oligarchs could raise armies paid for from their own resources. The loyalty of these military units was not to the commonwealth, but to their commanders-in-chief who paid their salaries and promised them rich spoils of war and land if they lived to be honourably discharged.²⁶ Poli...