Marcus Agrippa: Right-hand Man of Caesar Augustus (21 page)

Agrippa sponsored games in his own name lasting fifty-nine days, including the
Ludus Troiae
in which sons of senators performed manoeuvres on horseback – probably the most lavish since Iulius Caesar’s own to celebrate his victories in Gaul and Egypt.
²⁰³
The opportunity to win over such a large captive crowd was too good to pass up and, with the flair of a natural showman,

The patrician class were also pandered to with the passing of a decree that no one from the senatorial class could be tried for piracy, while those already under such a charge were released from custody.
²⁰⁵

Agrippa’s personal popularity and prestige benefitted greatly from his two terms in office. Some, of course, could see through the overtly populist agenda intended to win over the people to the Caesarian faction. The poet Horace relating the words of Servius Oppidius on his deathbed to his sons, writes in 33 BCE:

As aedile, Agrippa had served his friend well beyond expectations; but a new period of uncertainty was about to begin. On 31 December 33 BCE the agreement between men of the Triumvirate expired. It was not renewed.
²⁰⁷
With the people of Rome – regularly bathed, groomed and entertained – now standing with them, the Caesarians could turn their attention to removing their remaining opponent.

While Caesar and Agrippa were working hard to bring order to the Balkans and winning over the hearts and minds of the Roman people at home, Antonius was fighting wars of his own in the East but intent on winning the heart of a single woman. Separated by distance and time, Caesar and Antonius continued their friendship through official correspondence with each other but shared private confidences by letter with their mutual friend, and Agrippa’s father-in-law, Atticus.
¹
They were still brothers-in-law, but their relationship, which had always been one of political convenience, had changed. Imperator Caesar was now ambitious for power for himself and ‘desired to be chief, not merely of the city of Rome, but of the whole world’.
²
While Antonius was a free agent, Caesar’s ambitions were crimped.

Since Brundisium, when the triumvirs had carved up the world between them, Antonius had subsumed himself in his exotic territory. He re-organized the provinces in Asia and Greece, and formed close relations with the many kingdoms and princedoms which were treaty allies of the Romans. Antonius was a natural networker. He was careful to court the favours of the client kings who ruled in the region. These included Bokchos (Bocchus), king of Libya, Tarkondimos (Tarcondemus), king of Upper Cilicia, Archelaos (Archelaüs) of Cappadocia, Philadelphos (Philadelphus) of Paphlagonia, Mithridates of Commagene, and Sadalas of Thrace, Polemon I of Pontus, Malchos (Malchus) of Arabia, Amyntas the king of Lycaonia and Galatia, and Herodes (Herod), king of the Jews.
³
In return for his personal support, which might mean representing them at the Senate in Rome if a charge was brought or sending an army to help fend off an enemy, these client-kings were obligated to provide financial and military assistance when Antonius, as the ranking Roman official, called for it. It was an arrangement which suited national leaders whose situation was often precarious without the backing of a major alliance partner – and it suited Rome which did not have to incur the overhead costs of occupying these territories.
⁴

Herodes (Hordos in Hebrew) exemplified how a client king could rule with Roman support.
⁵
He was the second son of Antipater I the Idumaean, a high-ranking official employed by the leader (
ethnarches
) of Iudaea Hyrcanus II of the Hasmonaean dynasty, who appointed him governor of Galilee when he was in his mid-twenties. After Iulius Caesar’s assassination Antipater was forced to side with C. Cassius Longinus and against M. Antonius, however his pro-Roman politics
led to him becoming increasingly unpopular among the devout, non-Hellenized Jews. Herodes’ father was murdered by poisoning, and, with the backing of the Roman authorities, he hunted down and executed Antipater’s murderer, quickly earning a deserved reputation for cruelty. After the Battle of Philippi Herodes, then 31-years-old, took a chance by showing personal support for the victors and by so doing he gained the support of Antonius. When the
triumvir
marched into Asia, he appointed Herodes tetrarch of Galilee, one of the two administrative districts of Iudaea. In 40 or 39 BCE, with the help of the Parthians, Antigonos II Mattathias (son of King Aristobulus II) took the throne from his uncle Hyrcanus II by force, hoping to establish an independent Jewish state. Seeking the help of his Roman sponsor to restore his position, Herodes sailed west in a hurry to Brundisium and travelled on to Rome.
⁶
With the support of Caesar and Antonius he addressed the Senate, arguing that Antigonos was the real enemy and convinced the Conscript Fathers to recognize him, a loyal friend of the Romans, as legitimate king (
ethnarch
) of the Jews.
⁷
After returning to his country and winning a brutal three year war, Herodes reclaimed his seat and became sole ruler of Iudaea.
⁸
Captured by force, Antigonos was hauled away in chains and sent to Antonius along with cash and treasure confiscated from the supporters of the Parthian’s puppet.
⁹
Herodes had demonstrated that he knew who his friends were.

Sex. Pompeius was not so fortunate. He had fled and sought asylum with Antonius in 35 BCE. On landing in Miletos in Anatolia he was arrested. Perhaps acting on direct orders from Antonius or Munatius Plancus, his deputy M. Titius had him killed.
¹⁰
His execution was an illegal act as all Roman citizens were entitled to a trial, and whether or not Antonius was behind it – the ancient historians are split on whether he was – the matter would come to haunt him later.
¹¹

To his core, Antonius was a soldier – and a proud one. It was said he believed that there would be no better death for him than that by battle.
¹²
As governor general in the East he sought to settle an old score. He conceived a military campaign against Rome’s nemesis Parthia. It was motivated by a desire to restore national honour after Crassus’ humiliating defeat at Carrhae in 53 BCE by Orodes II, and the Parthian incursions led by the quisling Q. Labienus on behalf of King Pacorus I in 40 BCE. After two years Antonius had assembled an army of his own troops supplemented by men and materiel from client kings and allies. At the start of his campaign he had 60,000 Roman infantry, together with 10,000 Celtiberian cavalry, and 30,000 assorted soldiers counting alike horsemen and light-armed troops from allies.
¹³
Yet he complained that he was still short of the troops he had been promised by Caesar in return for the ships he had provided for the Sicilan War against Sex. Pompeius. Antonius would have to bolster his numbers by calling on Rome’s sole ally in the region. North of the Parthian province of Mesopotamia lay the great state of Armenia ruled by Artavasdes II, son of Tigranes the Great. Artavasdes II had been an ally of the Romans, but when they were defeated at Carrhae, he was forced to switch sides. Seeing an opportunity to free himself of Parthian obligations, he now switched sides again, this time allying himself with Antonius. On the advice of Artavasdes II of Armenia, Antonius planned to invade Parthia from the north – not from the west
– by invading the Parthian client kingdom to the east of Armenia called Media Atropatene. Bordering on the Caspian Sea, it was ruled by Artavasdes I – no relation to the Armenian – and the loyal ally of the Parthian king, Phraates IV. Antonius’ decision was fateful. His advance with thirteen legions reached Phraaspa, the strongly fortified capital of Media Atropatene.
¹⁴
According to Plutarch, the siege engines, which required 300 wagons to transport them, as well as a giant battering ram he would need to capture walled cities, he decided to leave behind – according to Velleius Paterculus, he lost two legions and their siege equipment to the Parthians.
¹⁵
There his campaign halted. Unable to take Phraaspa, Antonius now found himself exposed on the plain outside the city. The Parthians soon came to the aid of Artavsades holed up in his city.
¹⁶
They attacked Antonius’ supply train and, when rations were cut, his own soldiers mutinied. His fair-weather ally, Artavasdes I of Armenia, deserted him. Undaunted, in October that year Antonius demanded that the Parthians return the eagle standards and the Roman prisoners they had taken. The Parthians refused and replied that they would only permit him to leave the region unmolested. Without leverage, Antonius could do no more than accept the terms and ordered his army to head back to Syria. Before departing, he received a tip-off that he should expect an ambush and to avoid it he decided to take a route over the mountains. He was pursued by the Parthians and through twenty-five brutally harsh days Antonius struggled to lead his men to safety – Livy says he covered 450km (300 miles) in just twenty-one days.
¹⁷
After withering attacks he finally reached Antiocheia on the Orontes in Syria. The failed campaign had come at terrible cost: 20,000 of the infantry and 4,000 of the cavalry had perished, not all at the hands of the enemy, but more than half by disease.
¹⁸
They had, indeed, marched twenty-seven days from Phraaspa, and had defeated the Parthians in eighteen battles, but their victories were not complete or lasting because the missions they had pursued were ineffectual and short-term in outlook.

The following year Octavia brought from Italy several cohorts of cavalry to Greece to assist her husband, but at Athens she was told to proceed no further and remain there.
¹⁹
Octavia understood completely what was afoot, and despite the personal hurt it caused her, nevertheless wrote to Antonius asking which of the many things she had with her should she bring to him. Anticipating her husband’s needs she was bringing clothing for his soldiers, pack animals, money and gifts for the officers and his friends, and in addition, 2,000 hand-picked, fully equipped men of the Praetorian Cohorts.
²⁰
Antonius’ political and romantic interests, however, now lay in Alexandria. A key financial backer of his wars was Queen Kleopatra of Egypt. He had met her for the first time in 47 BCE when Iulius Caesar backed her claim and, after the Alexandrine War, put the then 22-year-old woman on the throne. Caesar was famously seduced by her sensual charms and sharp intellect and she bore him a son she named Caesarion. In 41 BCE Antonius had summoned the queen to be with him at Tarsus. ‘And when she arrived,’ writes Plutarch, ‘he made her a present of no slight or insignificant addition to her dominions, namely, Phoenicia, Coele Syria, Cyprus, and a large part of Cilicia; and still further, the balsam-producing part of Iudaea, and all that
part of Arabia Nabataea which slopes toward the outer sea’.
²¹
He joined her in Egypt later that year. The two eloped and a romance blossomed between the couple – and soon there were children. Despite being married to Caesar’s own sister Octavia, Antonius proceeded to marry Kleopatra in 36 BCE. His reason for doing so was to legitimize his children by the queen, the twins Alexander Helios and Kleopatra Selene; but it seemed to some observers that he was creating a new, rival empire to Rome’s, encompassing Egypt, Asia, Greece and the Near East.

Unfazed by his military setback, Antonius raised a new army. Failing to find willing Italian-born citizen recruits, he changed the enrollment rules, offering citizenship to any male willing to serve in his ranks and succeeded in creating five new legions. Antonius was elected consul with L. Scribonius Libo for 34 BCE, resigning it on the same day. He headed north and re-invaded Armenia as revenge for what he saw as Artavasdes’ treachery.
²²
Under the pretence of marching to war against Parthia, he arrived at the Armenian capital Artaxata and deposed the king.
²³
The Armenians resisted and elected the king’s son Artaxes. Antonius refused to accept the choice of new regent, arrested him and installed Artaxias, his half-brother, under the control of Canidius Cassius’ and a large contingent of Roman troops.
²⁴
Elated by his success, Antonius headed back to Alexandria where he celebrated a triumphal parade. It was the first to be held outside Rome and was seen by many at home as both against the laws of Romans and of Jove. Artavasdes and his family were among the trophies exhibited in the lavish spectacle in which Antonius dressed as Dionysos, wearing an ivy wreath upon his head, a gaudy saffron robe of gold and clasping a
thyrsus
(the sacred wand of the god) while Kleopatra accompanied him in the guise of Isis.
²⁵

Controversially, a few days after the parade, Antonius reassigned several of the Roman protectorates in the East to members of his new family in what became known as the Donations of Alexandria.
²⁶
It is reported that ‘he used to say that the greatness of the Roman empire was made manifest, not by what the Romans received, but by what they bestowed; and that noble families were extended by the successive begettings of many kings’.
²⁷
He added, ‘in this way, at any rate, his own progenitor was begotten by Herakles, who did not confine his succession to a single womb, nor stand in awe of laws like Solon’s for the regulation of conception, but gave free course to nature, and left behind him the beginnings and foundations of many families’.
²⁸
The distributions of land were accompanied by an excessive spectacle of lavish sets and flamboyant costumes.
²⁹
The 13-year-old Caesarion, now bearing the majestic Egyptian name Ptolemaeus XIV Philopator Philomētor Caesar, was recognized as co-regent of Egypt and Iulius Caesar’s legitimate son and heir.
³⁰
Cyprus, Coele-Syria and Libya were given to the pharoahs, while Armenia, Media (following its annexation) and Parthia reaching as far as India were created as new realms for Kleopatra’s eldest son, the 6-year-old Alexander Helios. His twin sister, Kleopatra Selene, received Crete and Cyrenaica. To the youngest son, the 2-year-old Ptolemaeus Philadelphus, was granted Cilicia, Phoenecia and Syria. Antonius was within his legal remit to make such settlements as these were not fully-fledged Roman provinces.
³¹
Indeed, he sent official documents for the transfers to the Senate in Rome to
ratify his decision. The response there was consternation. ‘He was hated, too,’ writes Plutarch, ‘for the distribution which he made to his children in Alexandria; it was seen to be theatrical and arrogant, and to evince hatred of Rome.’
³²
His recognition of Caesarion as ‘King of Kings’ and as Iulius Caesar’s true heir by blood, however, was seemingly calculated to antagonize one man in particular: his former co-
triumvir
and the man claiming to be ‘Son of the Divine Iulius’.