Robert Harris on Roman General Agrippa

Introducing the overlooked Roman general

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The bear to Augustus' fox

0:30Agrippa is something of an overlooked figure in the story of ancient Rome. The right-hand man of Emperor Augustus, who rarely emerged from the mighty Caesar's shadow. And yet, Augustus owed his title, reputation and empire to the achievements of this purported Roman commoner. So why do we know so little about him? Why did Augustus erase not just one of Rome's most consequential statesmen, but his most loyal and steadfast friend from the city's public records?

1:01And how did a man born into relative obscurity rise to become the linchpin of Augustus' imperium before being forced back into the shadows? I'm Tristan Hughes, this is The Ancients, and to help me answer these questions, I'm thrilled to be joined by the acclaimed and best-selling author Robert Harris. Robert's new book, Agrippa, which charts the general's journey from his earliest meetings with Julius Caesar to endless wars to expand the empire, is out now.

1:44Robert, it is such a pleasure to have you on the podcast. Oh, well, thank you for having me on. It's great to be here. And to talk all things Agrippa, I think the big message to first off say is he's much more than just Augustus' number two. Yes, I was sure that that was the case when I first came across him, really, and started to look at him. And no one could have done as much as he did, militarily, politically, in terms of building and all the rest of it,

2:15and just have been the mere loyal friend. There was a lot more to him than that. And we know what he did, but we don't know what he was like. And for a historical novelist, that's really the perfect situation. Was that what drew you to him, the fact that he's not a forgotten figure as of such, but his achievements are overshadowed by the big man Augustus, and you can explore more of his actual story? Yes, he was definitely edited out of the record by Augustus, who outlived him by 25 years.

2:46They were more or less the same age. And in the 25 years after Agrippa died, he was just gradually written out of the record. And the great will or testament that Augustus left carved in bronze in his tomb, which runs in the English translation to about three and a half thousand words, the name Agrippa only occurs twice, and just briefly at that, in passing. So, you know, he's there waiting to be restored to his proper place, in a way.

3:23And you describe him as the bear to Augustus' fox. Now, what do you mean by that? Well, Augustus was not a very healthy man. He'd lived to be 75, but he wasn't, for much of his life, he was very sickly. He wasn't really much of a soldier. And by all accounts, he was a rather kind of stoop-shouldered, bad teeth, not at all like the heroic image that was put out of him.

3:54But he was very clever, a most formidable politician, one of the most formidable politicians in history.

4:01Agrippa was almost exactly the opposite. He wasn't really much of a politician. He wasn't, I don't think, particularly sly or cunning, but he was a tremendous soldier, strong as an ox. And really, they complemented one another.

4:21Octavius Augustus was the brains, and he was the brawn, in crude terms. And neither, I think, would have got very far without the other. And for a period in Roman history where we are blessed to have quite a lot of source material surviving, how do you, as a historical novelist, how do you go about looking at the surviving evidence and then creating a compelling narrative from it? Well, the narrative is naturally compelling, I hope, regardless of what I've done with it.

4:51Here you have a couple of teenagers who were at school together. Rather strangely that they should have been at school, because Octavius came from a grand family and Agrippa plebeian, and indeed we hardly know anything about his family. But they were at school together, and somehow or other, these two 17-, 18-year-olds end up taking over the world. So this is, in itself, a compelling narrative. It's the ultimate buddy movie, in a way.

5:22And so, you know, one just follows it as they survive and then eventually come to dominate. And, of course, their own personal relationship evolves over the years. So, you know, one could take the facts that we know, the Battle of Actium and the various dates, and in between the events try and imagine what was going on between them and what they were feeling,

5:52and that's really a justification for historical fiction. Now, Agrippa's almost perfect for a historical novelist now when I look back on it, because I can do things that really scholars can't. I can speculate as to where he really came from, what he was actually like, what his marriages were like, what he felt when Augustus adopted his two sons, for instance. How did he feel about that? We simply don't know, because as far as I'm aware, Agrippa left behind no letter, no speech,

6:27no real quotation from him of any sort. He's blank. And yet he was the co-ruler of the Roman world and arguably the architect of the great victories, especially Actium. We'll tackle this kind of chronologically from the beginning to the end, but naturally I know there's so many achievements of Agrippa, we can't cover them all. But I would like to start with his background,

Agrippa's obscure background

6:50which sounds very interesting. You mentioned going to school with the young, who would become Augustus, the young Octavian, and yet their backgrounds, we believe, they're very different. So what do we know about Agrippa's? We know pretty well nothing. I mean, we know his father was called Lucius, because that's on the inscription on the Pantheon, the great building that Agrippa left behind. We know that he was plebeian, or at least that is what the contemporary sources say.

7:21We know he had a brother and a sister. We know that his mother died giving birth to him. And the general consensus is that probably his name, Agrippa, comes from Agrippartum, that it was a difficult delivery. And he carried that monarch around with him throughout his life. And that gave me a clue as to what he must have been like. But as to why they pitched up together in the same school on the Palatine, being taught by Mycenas, we simply don't know.

7:53And we don't know why Agrippa should have been given such special marks of favour by Julius Caesar. That, for instance, he accompanied Caesar back after his last great battle in Munda in Spain, a few months before he died, or why he was promoted and why Caesar said that he wanted to take Agrippa and Octavius with him on his campaign in the East, which he never was able to fulfil.

8:20It's a puzzle. And that's one of the things I set out to try to solve. But this is, so the start of Agrippa's story proper, it begins also alongside Julius Caesar. So he's a big character right at the beginning. Yes, yes, absolutely.

Forming an alliance with Julius Caesar

8:35Well, Caesar obviously was the great uncle of Octavius. And whilst they were both, the boys were both at school in their early teens, he crossed the Rubicon. And he had virtually no male relatives. He had no son. His daughter had been married to Pompey, had died. And so, you know, his affections lighted on this young man, Octavius, who he'd hardly seen. He'd been in Gaul fighting for, I think, 11 years. And Agrippa was by this time a good friend of Octavius.

9:06And so the two sort of rose together. And Caesar is the all-dominant figure.

9:14We do know something about Agrippa that he came, his family, his father was a Stoic. And they supported the Senate against Caesar. And they supported Pompey. And Agrippa's brother fought with Cato and fought with the Republican army in Africa and was captured. And one of the first things we see is that Octavius actually intercedes with his uncle, allegedly Caesar, to try and get him freed. And indeed, Caesar did free him.

9:46And that's the first interaction we get between the two of them. And then both young men became legionaries or joined the legions. Octavius was too sick, typically, to go and fight. But Agrippa did and appears to have fought at the Battle of Munda. That's the Munda. And that's one of Caesar's last big ones. It is Caesar's last great battle. And it's Agrippa's first. And at the end of the battle, when the sons of Pompey had been defeated and Caesar had settled Spain, he began the voyage back to Italy.

10:23And he took Agrippa on the boat with him, along with Octavius. And so the two of them had a month or more of a leisurely voyage with Caesar, having dinner with him and so on. And so, yeah, he looms very large in the early life of Agrippa. And that's the big part of Julius Caesar in this story. Because, I mean, from then on, it feels like Agrippa and Octavius, they're quite inseparable from that moment, aren't they?

Claiming the inheritance after Caesar's death

10:50I mean, the next part of their story is that they go over to what is now, I think it's probably, it's Albania. It's Albania, isn't it? Apollonia. Yeah, so they, Caesar, when he finished one battle at Munda and suppressed or conquered Spain, his plan then was to move east with what would have been the biggest invasion force ever assembled, about 200,000.

11:18And Agrippa and Octavius were sent out to Albania to sort of have military training to get acquainted with the legions that were already mustering there for this great expedition against Parthia. And there they were. They'd been there about six months, five or six months, when the news came that Caesar had been assassinated. And a few days or a couple of weeks after that came the news

11:51that Octavius had been named in his will as his heir. And this is the turning point in the lives of these two young men, about 18 years old. And they decided against the advice of Octavius' parents to go back and try and claim this inheritance. This is such a big moment for two people who were teenagers still at the time to make that decision, are you going to go into the lion's den, right, back to Rome with all of these battle-hardened generals,

12:21Mark Antony and so on, you know, vying for power. And the fact that Agrippa and Octavius together decide, yeah, we're going to give it a go. Well, that's it. It's just, I mean, it is a great adventure. And they set off and they landed in the south of Italy. They didn't, in the end, dare land at the great port of Brundisium because Octavius thought he would perhaps be murdered or captured. So they landed in a tiny little fishing village a few miles to the south and then began a kind of march across southern Italy

12:54towards the Bay of Naples where Octavius' stepfather and mother were. And as they went, so they gathered recruits. Caesar's old veterans flocked to him. Of course, the murder of Caesar had provoked fury among his soldiers. And here was Octavius who made it clear he was taking Caesar's name. He was the heir and he was going to get vengeance. So he, from the beginning, the thing that he has is the name

13:26and the legal right to call himself Caesar, which was given to him by his great uncle. So off the two of them go. And Agrippa is very much his wingman, his sort of, you know, best friend. And he watches his back, essentially. Well, I was going to say, I mean, imagining Agrippa's viewpoint of this as he's going with Augustus, as he's going with Octavius at the time, because he's very much sharing in the risks of his friend. And do you think he's approaching it very much, how can I help my friend achieve his goals

13:56because my fate is very much now linked to it? And does he realise that, well, that's kind of very much going down the military route and helping him in that sphere more than anything else? Well, it's got to be military. I mean, you know, and he does seem to have been a completely natural soldier in a way that Octavius, or Octavian, as he became after the will was read, was not. And so, I mean, I think it's both friendship and a sense of adventure. I mean, he had no money or any status, Agrippa.

14:29Everything that he had, he owed to his friendship with Octavius. And so the two of them set off on a great life's adventure, really, and each needs the other. Do you think that's something we do always need to remember of Agrippa, that his fate is very much, whether it's because of his poorer birth status, probably plays a part in it, his fate from now on is very much entwined with that of Octavius slash Octavian? Yeah, completely. I mean, he's the best friend of the most,

15:01potentially the most powerful man in the world, if Octavius can pull it off. I mean, who wouldn't, as a spirited 18-year-old, want to throw in your lot and do whatever you can? And so, you know, and so they return to Rome by now with an army, a small army, and Octavius tries to get from Mark Antony his inheritance. I mean, he's been left, he's technically the richest man in the world,

15:32but the money doesn't seem, certainly Mark Antony is reluctant to give up the money. And so this is the first great clash when and where Octavius makes it absolutely clear to Mark Antony, he is not going to be pushed around. He's acting partly on the advice of Cicero, curiously enough, who he meets when he lands, when he arrives in the Bay of Naples, because Cicero is on holiday in there. And the two of them got on. I mean, Cicero by this point is about 60. And he was a sort of grandfatherly figure, I think, to Octavius.

16:08Anyway, so the adventure goes on. And in the end, of course, it ends up in war with Mark Antony, as it was pretty well always going to have to be. And also just before that, there is that brief moment when they, yes, there's war, then they're allies again, and then you get the likes of Brutus and Cassius, all these civil wars, and a lot of fighting, a lot of battles, a lot of bloodshed. And it's within that context that Agrippa, he always seems to be at the forefront with Octavian in the fighting.

16:38Yes, he was always by his side. I think he was a sort of bodyguard in many ways. He didn't have senior military command at that stage because he was very young. And there was a man called Salvidianus who was more of a senior figure who took charge of the army for Octavius. But gradually, Agrippa comes to the fore.

17:09He fights in the battles. He's entrusted with certain key tasks. For instance, he is the one who prosecutes in absentia Cassius. Remember, Brutus and Cassius had been amnestied after the assassination. And one of the first things that Octavius wanted to do was overturn that so that he could go after them. They were in the east with huge forces at their disposal. And so, therefore, they had to, he made a deal with Mark Antony and with Lepidus,

17:41the other military commander, and the Triumvirate was born. And so, they decided to go after the assassins. And Agrippa was there again. Once again, Augustus, Octavius still fell ill, wasn't able to take part in the Great Battle of Philippi. He was too sick. But Agrippa was there. But Agrippa was there and he fights. And then he's, from that moment on, he's very much representing Octavian on the battlefield.

18:12I think we've got, just a year or so later, the story of Mark Antony's wife, Fulvia, and his brother, Lucius, in Italy. Well, when I first started, when I announced that I was going to do the book, I had lunch with Mary Beard, who I've known for many years, ever since writing Pompeii. And she said, oh dear, you know, you're going to have a lot of trouble with all the civil wars. Everybody's confused about, because the civil wars are endless. So first of all,

18:42when you have the civil war, that Caesar wins against Pompeii in the Senate, then you have the war between Octavius and Mark Antony. And then you have the war between Octavius and Mark Antony, now allied against Brutus and Cassius. They defeat them at the Battle of Philippi. Octavius returns to Italy, only to find that Mark Antony's brother and Mark Antony's wife have decided to rebel against them. So then he has to deal with them. There's another civil war.

19:13And blow me, no sooner has he dealt with them, the Mark Antony returns, and the civil war cranks up again. So, you know, and finally, of course, we end up with the great war that culminates in the Battle of Actia between Octavius and Mark Antony. And sooner or later, there was going to be a showdown between the two of them.

Building the Roman navy

19:39So, and the thing that, one of the great qualities of Agrippa, he was a brave soldier and an inspiring leader, but he was also the most brilliant organiser. And he's really the father of the Roman Navy. I mean, they faced this, one of the other things that is in the story and people forget is how important Sextus Pompey was. Sextus Pompey was the surviving son of Pompey the Great, and he controlled Sicily and had a fleet.

20:10And he really gave, he's lost to history, but he was a most formidable problem for both Octavius and Mark Antony. And it was Agrippa that built the Navy and commanded it and won the battles, the naval battles in Sicily that finally put pay to Sextus. And we want to stress that because up to that point, he'd be involved in land battles, Julius Caesar fighting Brutus and Cassius and so on. And it's that genius, isn't it, of transferring those skills

20:41into a naval military context and then being able to beat, as you say, this very difficult rival who was causing a lot of pain and difficulties to Octavian and Mark Antony, he's able to defeat him. Yes. I mean, what, and not, you know, what he did was, I mean, he looked at the map, as it were, and they needed a naval base closer to Sicily, to actually control the Mediterranean and deal with Sextus on Sicily. And so he builds the Portus Julius,

21:15as it became known, on the Bay of Naples, a harbour, two natural harbours, a smaller outer one and a large inner harbour. And it's an immense construction project. I mean, using hydraulic cement, he was the kind of concrete king of ancient Rome. Don't tempt us to put that as the title for this episode. Yeah, the concrete king. Yes, but he's certainly the master builder. And so he builds this enormous naval facility and he recruits 20,000 sailors.

21:50And he creates a fleet, which builds it in this sheltered hidden harbour, which he kept concealed, in fact. And then they were able to finally put to sea and defeat the pirates. And that is also big when you think of the importance of Sicily on the sea routes between Rome and Egypt and where they get most of their grain from. So tactically, strategically, although this isn't as glamorous as, let's say,

22:20the big victory at Actium against Marc Antony several years later, for Agrippa at the time, you can imagine that this is a big stepping stone in his career to achieve that success, to defeat this son of Pompey and regain control of Sicily. Yeah, no, absolutely. Because not only, I mean, first of all, it was an insult to the honour of Octavius, who was technically supposed to be the governor of Sicily, that this figure, Sextus, was squatting there.

22:51And they interrupted the trade, as you say, the grain shipments from Egypt. But they also mounted a lot of pirate raids on the southern coast. And Rome was starving. I mean, they were not able to get enough grain into the country to feed people. So it was vital that sooner or later, Sextus was taken out. And a large part of the credit for that does go to Agrippa. And we'll continue the story of Agrippa right after this. Robert, before we keep going ahead

Foregoing a triumph to support Augustus

23:36chronologically with Agrippa's story, there's also this really interesting episode early in his career that I'd like to ask about quickly, because it seems to reflect his, dare I say, modesty, or kind of knowing his place, I guess, with Octavian. Is the fact that, does he have the opportunity for a triumph that doesn't take it? Yes. He, I mean, we talk about what he did on the sea, but he was also very, very formidable on land

24:06and dealt with uprising in Gaul. And for this, for his achievements there, he was voted a triumph by the Senate. Very young age, I can't remember exactly, but in his 20s. And he returned to Rome. At this point, Octavius' stock was very, very low. He had tried on his own to settle things with Sextus and it had been a disaster. And the reason that Agrippa came back

24:37to Rome seems to have been because Octavius needed his help. And of course, because Octavius was in, you know, he was unpopular,

24:49either it was very strongly suggested to Agrippa or Agrippa was shrewd enough to realize this was no time to have a triumph when the boss was in difficulties. And so he forewent the triumph and entered Rome at the moment he did that he couldn't triumph. And he never had a triumph. He was the greatest general and tactician of his generation and yet at no point did he ever have a triumph. And historians say, you know, isn't this, what a wonderful, loyal, modest friend he was

25:20to Augustus. And indeed he was in many ways. But of course, if he was going to survive, it was necessary for him never to get ahead of the boss. And he must have known that really everything was down to him, that Caesar had the name but he had the talent. And this is one of the things that drew me to writing the novel because I'm fascinated by politics and power and the dynamic

25:50of that relationship. the front man who's the kind of quasi-emperor and this military talent who has to constantly play down his own importance. How much glory can you take from your own victories almost? Yes, a fascinating question to think about in that time period for someone like Agrippa. Yeah. and he so he never had the triumph and he

26:21despite especially he should have had a triumph after Actium but not only did he not have the triumph for Actium or the naval victories in Sicily, Octavius did.

26:34And Octavius' great testament at the end of his life says, I swept the sea clear of pirates. There's no mention of Agrippa. Similarly, Actium, there's no mention of the fact that the fleet was built and commanded by Agrippa.

Masterminding the victory at Actium

26:52Well, we must focus then briefly on Actium before we go on because this is the crown in glory. We're giving back his credit, his due for his role in this victory because how central is Agrippa to beating the forces of Mark Antony and Cleopatra at this big naval battle of Actium? Well, completely. I mean, he went out to the eastern Mediterranean in advance of Octavius who followed with the army. By this time, Octavius, of course, is called Caesar.

27:22He goes out ahead of him by nearly a year and Harry's Mark Antony and Cleopatra's forces and gets them bottled up, really. And then Octavius joins with the army and they rendezvous on the island of Corfu or Corfu and they,

27:45Octavius marches south to the bay, to the small village town settlement of Actium and in the inner harbour there is the entire fleet of Mark Antony and Cleopatra, the combined fleet. She is there too. She has brought all the treasure of Egypt with her and it's clear that this is going to be the decisive moment. Whoever wins here is really going to take over the world and there was no,

28:16Mark Antony didn't want to give battle on land and so in the end it became obviously it would be a naval battle and Agrippa had been in command of the navy for the whole of the campaign and he commanded the forces and masterminded the tactics which eventually won the battle. We should say here that he revolutionised naval tactics. He put new devices onto ships a kind of grappling hook that was fired by a catapult that was attached to a chain and this would

28:46thud into the enemy's hull and then they would literally haul themselves alongside and storm the ship. He developed a lot and collapsible towers on the boat from which these catapults could be fired all sorts of things like that and his tactics at Actium were to draw out Mark Antony's ships and took advantage of the wind to then turn around and go at them

29:18full tilt and the battle was both sides were very evenly matched and the battle it looked like it might go Mark Antony's way because the Egyptian fleet which had taken no part in the action but stayed in the bay suddenly appeared but instead of fighting it sailed clean through the lines which by this time were broken because they'd been fighting all day Cleopatra stopped to pick up Mark Antony and off they headed with all the treasure of Egypt

29:49and you can imagine the effect this had on Mark Antony's sailors and that was the end at Actium it was an overwhelming victory for Agrippa and that is probably one of the most decisive battles in the history of the world at that point it was only a matter of time before the Roman army under Octavius could finish off Mark Antony and Cleopatra and Agrippa's the man behind that

30:19how fun must it have been to create that story from the viewpoint of Agrippa and I'm thinking in particularly with the creation the ingenuity the thinking of these kind of new contraptions you know whilst he's building this fleet how to tackle these other ships and to kind of do it almost in a weird kind of way that Agrippa is the mad scientist right of his engineers thinking how they're going to challenge this big fleet yes well this is the immense this is the great thing about Agrippa he's multi-talented I mean he's a brave soldier

30:51he's a formidable tactician he's a great builder he's a terrific administrator and he's politically shrewd enough to never get ahead of his boss I mean it is astonishing I mean and after the victory at Actium I think Octavius felt he had to win the next battle on his own and so he sent Agrippa back with the most awful job you could have Mark Antony's army which was huge had surrendered it was about 100,000 men or something like that

31:21and he said to Agrippa you take them back to Italy and settle them on the

Hydraulic engineering and the master builder

31:28land well this is like the worst nightmare of all you can imagine so what did Agrippa do he got back with about 30,000 demobbed legionaries and he set them to work building the aqueduct around the Bay of Naples the 60 mile aqueduct the longest in the world which is at the heart of my first Roman book Pompeii it took him 18 months using 30,000 men to build a 60 mile aqueduct which fed Pompeii and Nola and all these

31:58other various towns and ended up in Mycena the naval port imagine the organisation that this requires the qualities of leadership it's staggering and does that aqueduct did that go around Mount Vesuvius it went around Vesuvius yes and was ruptured before the great when Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD it was already had been ruptured by the ground beginning to shift as the terrain altered

32:28but I came across Agrippa's name then when I was writing that book more than 20 years ago and I thought this guy would be worth writing about I'll come back to him and do we see time and time again with the story of Agrippa as the architect that he's very much interested in hydraulic engineering in the bringing of fresh water to settlements and so on yes he was I mean I have the character reflect at one point that water was his element really fighting on the sea

32:59and bringing water into cities he renovated the aqueducts in Rome he and repaired the great sewer at the Cloaca Maxima that ran through the centre of Rome and he built a new aqueduct entirely the aqua Virgo and by the time he had finished the citizens of Rome were receiving more water per head than the citizens of New

33:29York receive today and that's quite a fact yes it is quite a fact and he built the great aqueduct around the Bay of Naples he built one at Cologne and he started work on the great Neme aqueduct with the famous bridge which still stands so you were looking here one of the great master builders of the world and it was this substance of hydraulic cement which was they

34:00were able to use the volcanic sand around the Bay of Naples they didn't know what it was particularly but they found out that by pounding it very hard and mixing it with lime and water you had a substance that would set rock hard underwater and this enabled them to build these aqueducts at enormous speed with shuttering and he used the same sort of techniques when he built the Pantheon the Pantheon

34:30has still I think the largest unsupported dome in the world and how did he manage it he used pumice stone from around the Bay of Naples light frothy it was as light as cardboard really or paper but strong and that bound the material together to create the roof and you can still see you can visit the Pantheon today and you can look at the facade and you can see his name right

35:00there I'm guessing Augustus is there as well but Augustus' name is not there at all so just Agrippa's name let me just remind myself I've got the book here it's the thing it's really made me want to write the book almost more than anything else there are 9 million visitors a year to the Pantheon it's the most visited site in Italy and for any listener or viewer will remember it says M. Agrippa L.F. Cos. Tertium. Fecit Marcus Agrippa

35:31son of Lucius in his third consulship did it I mean that terse language in a way is a clue to the man for someone who had to you know who appreciated that he had to play second fiddle to you know who was Augustus at that time the emperor the fact that he still has that monument standing in Rome with his name I mean that is in itself quite a good legacy I think oh yeah no definitely I mean but again none of the in Augustus'

36:02testament there's no credit given to Agrippa for any of the buildings any of the battles or anything else what does Augustus say he found Rome a city of brick left it in a city of marble should it more be Agrippa found it in a brick and left it marble or maybe a bit of both for that well he certainly was encouraged by Augustus to do it but he put a lot of his own money into it and everything was called Julia Aquagulio you know Aquagustus everything he was careful

36:33to make sure it was all the boss got all the credit that's the story of his life and I guess should we also highlight that I mean that kind of economic side of Agrippa as Augustus' star has risen as he's become the first emperor I guess we should say so has Agrippa's and financially his star has risen too oh yeah oh yeah let's not be in any doubt that he became vastly wealthy and he was a member of the imperial family

37:04I mean he was obliged to divorce his first wife who was the daughter of Atticus the great friend of Cicero and marry a niece of Augustus and then later he married Augustus' only child his daughter Julia and the price he had to pay for that were the two sons that he had were both taken off him by Augustus who became their legal father and I

37:36don't think that Agrippa always took all this kindly there was certainly at one point he left Rome completely and went to live on Lesbos but it was summoned back because Augustus needed him so this gives the personal I mean talking about him in this way makes him just seem a recitation of monuments and battles and so on but really in a novel you've got to try and find the human man and I just tried to imagine how he must have

38:07felt a proud man who nevertheless had to subsume himself and indeed had lost control of his own children and do we see him as all like being a patron to particular artists or particular figures like Augustus is you know you think of Virgil and the Aeneid and Mycenas and the like can you explore the figure of Agrippa as well like what he would do in his spare time was he a bit of a scholar did he have people around him who he was very interested in learning more about or learning more from I think he was much more blunt practical I mean

38:39he did the great map of the world was one of his achievements he was interested in physical things certainly in architecture and in engineering but he doesn't seem to have had any interest at all in the arts and I did have fun writing a scene at which Mycenas produces his two pet poets and Agrippa listens to them and one recites a poem there's nothing but agriculture

39:09and the other one recites something so it's filthier than anything he's ever heard in the army camp and these of course are Virgil and Horace did you have fun kind of creating the relationship between Agrippa not between Agrippa and Augustus but between Agrippa and those other key figures in Augustus his inner circle yeah very much it was it's fascinating you know you have facts and then you just try to think of the human beings and what

39:40it must have been like and the his relationship with Livia Agrippa's relationship with Livia the most formidable woman of the ancient world and I would think his relationship with his wife Julia who was notoriously unfaithful I mean bear in mind he was much older than her he'd known her when she was a baby she she bore him five children but but was unfaithful

40:10and because towards the end he developed some problem with his leg we're not sure what it was gout arthritis or ulcer or something but at any rate it seems to have killed him in the end but and the relationship with my senus the the the power behind the scenes you know the the wily kind of schemer patron of the arts whose beautiful wife was seduced by augustus who of course was notorious for his affairs with other men's wives they couldn't really

40:41object and yet at the same time he was such a terrible hypocrite introduced all these morality laws when he became chief priest I I you cannot help but salute the achievement of augustus but the man himself does not seem to have been particularly attractive I don't think no he was cruel vengeful there were a few too many stories of him gouging out people's eyes and having people put to death sons in front of their father and this sort of thing for it

41:11for there not to be some kernel of truth in all this there were no such stories about a gripper who I think is an altogether cleaner straighter kind of character well we'll explore their later life together right after this so Robert we're

Succession planning and dynastic marriages

41:37now way past the Basile of Actium at this point Agrippa has shown how he is capable in so many different theatres of life and do you think as Augustus gets older and he doesn't have a clear male heir do you think he is he starts to invest more and more power in Agrippa he does even if there are there may be tensions there might be tensions starting to emerge he still sees Agrippa as someone he can rely on when he can't act after the battle of Actium there's no doubt that Agrippa is the number two

42:07and he is the most powerful man in the empire after Augustus and Augustus names him as his heir there at least until a member of the family can come of age so there's no doubt that Agrippa is effectively the co-ruler of the world he has the same powers as a tribune that Augustus

42:38has he is at all intents and purposes co-ruler and the chief organiser of the army and the great thing I mean Augustus pulls off this wonderful con trick that the facade of the republic is kept in place there are still elections debates in the senate and so on provinces are handed out but the key provinces all belong to Augustus the ones that have the big armies in them Gaul

43:09Spain so on and that fascinated me because that seems to me in many ways the way the modern world is going we have the facade of democracy but actually behind the scenes it's the oligarchs or the billionaires or the trillionaires who are really controlling everything so yes and the question it's very interesting both for Julius Caesar and for his great nephew Augustus there's some reason they

43:40don't seem to be able to have sons certainly not sons legitimate heirs and indeed both of them just had one daughter both called Julia obviously and a lot of the book the novel by the end is about succession planning I mean I felt like I was revisiting the TV series it's who is going to get control of the empire who is going to if we're not going to go back to a system

44:10of consuls and elections because we saw where that ended up we're going to have a strong man running the empire at all times how is it going to operate and if Augustus proved nothing else he proved the importance of the name you know the brand as we would call it men were prepared to follow and die Caesar the man who had the name they wouldn't be prepared to follow you know just just some aristocrat and that becomes very tricky

44:41and in the end in the distant future Augustus' succession planning does result in a member of the family becoming the emperor and he is in fact the grandson of Agrippa and that is Caligula so the succession planning didn't work out terribly well but I mean was it also fun if once again putting yourself in Agrippa's shoes to imagine yes we get this idea that Agrippa you know he very much

45:12always portrayed himself as being Augustus' aide as not wanting the emperorship himself can you imagine personally that maybe at times he was tempted very much to put himself forward as the successor definitely I don't think there's any doubt about that and he bitterly resented some of the people that were being promoted ahead of him I mean he didn't have any time for Tiberius I don't think and he of course I mean I think

45:42he wanted the job but he wasn't going to assassinate Augustus to get it because I think first of all out of friendship but secondly because he knew that that would just initiate yet another round of civil war and fighting the only way he could ever get it would be if he was named the successor in the will which he was everybody would have thought that you have to bear in mind and this is a very strong thing in the novel Augustus is always ill

46:13I mean constantly he's on the edge of death so the question of who is named in his will as his heir is all important and he did name the heir he did say Agrippa would take over in the event of my death or he would advise that but he kept the will secret and I think this must have driven Agrippa mad but he was there and if everyone thought that he would long outlive Augustus because he seemed much stronger and fitter but actually he died at the age of about

46:4350 and so he never got it but if something had happened to Augustus yes we would have had the emperor Agrippa because you can imagine some senators or some powerful figures almost kind of leaning towards Agrippa whenever they saw Augustus being ill thinking I want to side with this person because he's most likely to be a clear successor yes yeah I mean there was a lot of power inherent in his position and he was also he wasn't much of a speaker I don't think or a writer or anything like that but he

47:14was a powerful brooding presence I mean I don't know whether you've seen pictures of the statues of Agrippa but he looks like a bruiser yeah he's a heavy you know you wouldn't want to get into a fight with Agrippa I think just judging by the look of him he'd say things as they were he'd say things as they were and he'd lay about him I think he was always in the thick of the fighting as indeed was Julius Caesar Augustus less so a couple

Tensions over the succession and Marcellus

47:45of things to explore before we completely wrap up Robert one more is on these tensions that do seem to develop at times when Augustus is ill and later on regarding the succession I believe as well surrounding this figure of Marcellus yes so what is this story well Marcellus was now let me get this straight he was the nephew of of Augustus who had the succession was sort of between Marcellus

48:15his nephew and Tiberius the son of his wife Livia but he had no blood connection with Tiberius Tiberius was his stepson whereas he did share a blood bond with Marcellus and Marcellus seems to have been charming and more amenable popular figure and he settled really on Marcellus being his successor and it gave him accelerated promotion into the senate at the age of 18 and the

48:46man in charge of the fabric of the city in which role he clashed with Agrippa who regarded that as his department and I think there's in the novels certainly and I think also in the sources there is a strong implication that Agrippa eventually said I've had enough of this and left Rome and disappeared for the best part of a year and during the time he was away Marcellus suddenly died a young

49:17man about 20 I think something like that nobody quite knew why there's always been suspicions that Livia poisoned him in order to clear the way for Tiberius it was probably just the plagues that swept across Rome constantly at any rate this was the reason that Agrippa had to be summoned back by Augustus because suddenly his succession planning has collapsed and he saw with deep gloom that Tiberius

49:48was heading into the position and it's at this point that he and Agrippa hatched the scheme that Agrippa should divorce Augustus' niece and marry his daughter therefore any sons that are produced are the grandsons the blood relatives of Augustus and that is what Agrippa does and for the second time in his life when there's a marriage showman he feels that he's like the stud for the Julio-Claudian dynasty he's been

50:18brought in to sire the offspring and I think to a large degree that was true he was you know a virile strong figure and could and was you know an ideal person to father the imperial line and then Augustus takes them away to rear his own children afterwards and then he took them away I don't know if he actually took them out of the household but he certainly expected to have a say in their education and you

50:48know they should have become the emperors in succession to him but both died young again the finger of suspicion pointing unfairly I think at Livia and then Tiberius did succeed and that's another story entirely but it's quite something like what I love there is you mentioning that it seems that Agrippa says at one stage to Augustus I've had enough I'm out so once again that gives you the sense that this is probably someone who

51:18for decades when Augustus and when it was Octavian Octavius before that would have told his friend what he thought and write out there this is what I think you should do these are my thoughts on the matter he's someone who gives his unfiltered thoughts to who becomes the first emperor of Rome you can imagine that relationship yes absolutely all my life I've written about politics I was a political journalist and one thing I did notice is that the top man the prime minister

51:49or whoever the aides or advisors they like are the ones that give them the unvarnished truth there obviously there's lots of sycophants saying the things they want to hear but the person they turn to is the one who says that was a disaster I mean you know you're heading for trouble here and I think Agrippa fulfilled that role I think he was very loyal in public I don't think we ever detect any note of or hint of criticism although I'm sure it would have been suppressed if there had been any he reserved

52:20it for private times but there are a couple of references in the sources to him leaving getting fed up he'd had enough and going and also that he was felt to be getting slightly above himself you know so he wasn't just a yes man they needed one another it was one of the great partnerships in world history and then it ultimately ends with Agrippa's death do we know anything about

Retreat to the Bay of Naples and legacy

52:48how he dies

Retreat to the Bay of Naples and legacy

52:49well we do we know that he died either somewhere around his 51st birthday either just made 51 or he died at the age of 50 he had retreated to the Bay of Naples he was increasingly estranged from his wife exhausted old ailing he retreated to his villa on the Bay of Naples we know exactly where it was it was on the southern slopes of Mount Vesuvius very close to the coast and close

53:19to his aqueduct I guess you know and yes he would he would have enjoyed the fruits of his own labours and the villa was discovered in the 20th century and excavated and then covered up again you can't actually go and see it but they did take things out from it and there he died Augustus was in Greece hurried back as soon as he knew heard what had happened and Agrippa was cremated

53:51and his ashes were put in the great mausoleum of Augustus so even in death he was just given his little niche in the boss's tomb he had wanted to have his own burial spot on the field of Mars but he didn't get that either so I was actually going to say so Augustus honours his old friend in death but at the same time honours him but only to an extent where Augustus is still the main focus yeah puts him in his place yes

54:22I think the scene at the end of the book where I have him showing Agrippa where he's going to be interred is my favourite in the whole book actually because the exquisite pain for Agrippa of knowing he's just going to be stuck here but he can't say you've got to be joking he has to say well thank you that will be marvellous and that's the last time that they're together Robert this has been fascinating to go

54:52through his story and really well to get through because there is so many episodes we could talk about but I think we've covered lots of the big ones having written out the book of Agrippa you've put him back in the spotlight how do you think we should remember Agrippa today well I think he should be remembered with great respect as a soldier as administrator as an engineer as an architect as a builder and as a

55:23man who I think genuinely wanted to bring the maximum amount of good to the people I mean he built the aqueducts into Rome he used to provide hundreds literally hundreds of drinking fountains and he built bathhouses which could be used both by men and women and one day a week they were free for everybody I mean of course this had a political purpose to try and make the regime popular but that and the great aqueduct

55:53around Vesuvius which fed a quarter of a million people I say in the book that he feels that these are his greatest victories in many ways and I feel that they were I think that he would have felt that I think he probably was one of those soldiers who actually wearied of war and seeing so many people killed and enjoyed the process of building and I think in many ways it's for that he should be remembered.

56:23I know it's out of your comfort zone going through ancient Egypt but it feels strangely similar in a weird kind of way to Ramesses the Great who does all this fighting in his early years and then the great building projects of later on and Abu Simbel and the like but I won't go down too much of that.

56:38Robert this has been absolutely fantastic and last but certainly not least your new novel all about Agrippa it is called. It's called Agrippa with a stroke of imaginative genius. Yes and it's his memoirs really yes it is purports to be his memoirs written on the Bay of Naples looking back over his life right back to his birth and it ends with his death. Robert it just goes for me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show.

57:09Thank you for having me on I've enjoyed it. Thanks so much for joining us on the Ancients today I hope you enjoyed the episode and if you are loving the Ancients then why not become a History Hit subscriber? As a subscriber you will have access to hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a new release every week plus early access and ad-free podcasts. You can sign up at historyhit.com slash subscribe. See you in the next episode.