Marcus Agrippa: Right-hand Man of Caesar Augustus (35 page)

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writes that the trip overseas was a cover for the real reason which was, ‘according to current gossip, [he] had withdrawn, for the time being, on account of his secret animosity for Marcellus.’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:

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
):

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.