Marcus Agrippa: Right-hand Man of Caesar Augustus (51 page)

Agrippa’s friendship with Augustus is the dominating theme of his biography. Chance brought them together. Ignoble it may have been, but Agrippa came from a family wealthy enough to send him to Rome to be educated. When he moved the extant sources do not say. During this period, at an unknown date, he was introduced to C. Octavius Thurinus – the great nephew of Iulius Caesar. Neither boy could have known the significance of that first meeting nor that they would become close, lifelong friends and do extraordinary things together. Agrippa’s boyhood and adolescence occurred during a period of extraordinary and often violent change at Rome. A few powerful men, like Pompeius Magnus and Licinius Crassus, dominated the political scene and threatened what was left of the democratic fabric of the
Res Publica
. By the time Agrippa had reached manhood at age 15 Iulius Caesar had emerged preeminent, having eliminated his opponents both at the ballot box and on the battlefield. The old guard would not lie down, however. There were pockets of resistance in the west led by Pompeius’ sons, Cnaeus and Sextus. Despite the fact his own brother Lucius had backed the other side, as a friend of Octavius it was to Iulius Caesar’s cause in Spain that teenage Agrippa rallied in 45 BCE.

Iulius Caesar’s war against the sons of Pompeius Magnus provided Agrippa with his first career opportunity. Agrippa may have been amongst the first to rally to his cause and marched with him to Hispania, perhaps even taking part in the siege of Munda. However, the story related by Nikolaos of Damascus has friends of Caesar’s great nephew, who was sick at the time, departing Rome first, but arriving at their destination after him. Agrippa may have been among that first group of travellers. By the time he arrived in Tarraco, however, he found that Octavius had not only recovered and landed before him, but that the civil war was already over. In this case, it was an inauspicious beginning for both boys, but Caesar was fond of his great nephew. Effectively just for showing up, he appointed him to the pontificate and made him his
magister equitum
, extraordinary promotions for a 19-year-old who had yet to begin his political career. Agrippa was not so favoured, but he must, nevertheless, have impressed the great commander. On his return to Rome he allowed Octavius to bring his friends aboard his own ship ‘for Caesar was pleased in that Octavius was fond of his comrades and he commended him because he always liked to have present with him men who were observant and who tried to attain to excellence’.
³
Agrippa now had the approval of the most powerful man in Rome.

The next stage of Agrippa’s education was undertaken while the preparations for war in the East were being made. Caesar intended that his great nephew would accompany him on his campaigns against the Getae and Parthians, but he sent him first to Apollonia to study rhetoric with Agrippa and Salvidienus Rufus. Agrippa shared in these lessons. From Apollodorus of Pergamum he learned how to phrase and deliver speeches. His preference was for unfussy phrasing and he disliked affected or bombastic language. He would seem to have been a good student. Pliny confirms that Agrippa once gave ‘a magnificent oration, and one well worthy of the greatest of our citizens’.
⁴
With the forthcoming military campaign in mind, the boys also learned to ride horses and the rudiments of drill from officers stationed in the nearby army camp. It was while in Apollonia that Agrippa dared his friend to have his fortune told by the astrologer Theogenes. Agrippa went first and was reportedly told ‘a great and almost incredible career was predicted for him’.
⁵
Agrippa may or may not have actually believed the babblings of fortune tellers, but it may have given him confidence that he had made a good choice of companion. That confidence would be tested when news arrived by ship from Italy days later that Iulius Caesar had been murdered on the Ides of March 44 BCE.

His friend’s future now hung in the balance. Caesar’s assassins could seek to eliminate all of his living male relations to prevent them from avenging his brutal death. Agrippa and Salvidienus counselled that his safety was paramount and that he should first seek the protection of the legion stationed in nearby Macedonia, and then take them with him to Italy to deal with the conspirators. After thinking through the consequences, Octavius decided not to take their advice. Agrippa could have stood aside and let events take their natural course, but he did not. He stood by his friend and accompanied him with Salvidienus across the Adriatic to Brundisium even as they now faced a very uncertain future. On arriving in Italy they learned that Iulius Caesar’s right-hand man, M. Antonius, was in charge of the situation in Rome and had let the assassins go free. Unsure of what to do, the young men sought the advice of the foremost statesman of the time – M. Tullius Cicero. It was then that they learned that Octavius was the heir to Caesar’s name and legacy; but now the stakes – and personal risks – were higher both to Octavius and all those associated with him. Over the next few years Agrippa would play a prominent – indeed a crucial – role in helping his friend to assert his right to his inheritance, to avenge his adopted father’s murder and to establish his own power base as Caesar’s successor. At no point during this period did Agrippa show any sign of doubt in his loyalty or purpose.

Throughout his adult life Agrippa faced pernicious discrimination. He first entered the competitive political scene of Rome as a prosecutor in the case of assassin C. Cassius Longinus. It may not have been a particularly difficult case – everybody knew Cassius was the ringleader of the conspiracy to murder – but it was important to win it for both symbolic and personal reasons. Justice had to be seen to be done and 21-year-old Agrippa had to demonstrate he was competent in the court room. There were still many senators who, while not condoning the
dictator
’s murder, nevertheless were sympathetic to those who stood against Iulius Caesar’s tyranny. For them
libertas
mattered. If he wanted a career in public service, as any aspirational Roman did, a ‘new man’ like Agrippa had to face down the disdain of his rivals – the
nobiles
– who were his social superiors only because of their old family lineage and service as consuls. Agrippa won the case against Cassius, and he may have subsequently been elected a tribune of the people in recognition of it in 43 BCE. His advancement through the
cursus publicus
was rapid – achieving positions as
praetor urbanus
(40 BCE), consul (37), plebeian aedile (34), curule aedile (33), consul again (28),
censor
(28) and consul for the third time (27). He was granted
imperium proconsulare
(23) for five years for his assignment in the orient, which was renewed (in 18) along with his tribunician power, and finally given
imperium proconsulare maius
across the entire Roman world (13). Yet the
nobiles
’ contempt for him endured throughout his career. Maybe it was a form of protest at the fact he was the friend of Iulius Caesar’s heir which gave him privileged access, that, in their opinion, he had not earned his position of influence and had sidestepped the rules for joining the Senate. Perhaps in a conscious act of defiance to them, after his victory in the Cantabrian and Asturian War he sent his after action report, not to the Senate as was customary, but directly to Augustus. He did it again after successfully quelling the revolt in the Crimea five years later. After his death these petty-minded men refused to attend games for him in a last snub at the man they had delighted in denigrating and belittling over many decades.

Agrippa embodied many of the qualities Romans – especially the
nobiles
– admired in a man. Velleius Paterculus describes him as ‘a man of distinguished character’ and writes ‘though a “new man” he had by his many achievements brought distinction upon his obscure birth’.
⁶
Seneca describes him in almost spiritual terms as a ‘great-souled man’.
⁷
Dio writes of him ‘in every way clearly [he had] shown himself the noblest of the men of his day’.
⁸
Horace calls him a ‘cunning fox imitating a noble lion’.
⁹
This is how strangers viewed him. Speaking as his friend, Augustus himself stated in his eulogy that Agrippa had been raised to the highest position of the state, not just with his support, but through his own virtues with the agreement of all men – at least all the men that mattered.
¹⁰

‘A good soldier and his partner in victory’ is Tacitus’ sober but pithy assessment of Agrippa, ‘the modest and faithful marshal’ is Ronald Syme’s.
¹¹
He proved to be a very able military commander both on land
and
sea – a feat which marked him out as exceptional among Roman generals. He learned the arts of war the hard way – as all his contemporaries did – by putting himself in harm’s way and replicating the examples of others. On land, he began his career as a leader unglamorously as a recruiter, approaching retired veterans in Campania who had served with Iulius Caesar from
Legiones
VII and VIII and persuading them to join the cause of his friend. It is not clear if he was an active combatant at Philippi in 42 BCE, at which the conspirators were finally crushed, but his first recorded military command was to take four legions and defeat L. Antonius who was intent on stopping the new Caesar. Marching his 24,000 men to Sutrium, Agrippa planned a co-ordinated attack with Salvidienus. He was soon to learn that the best plans can unravel. Despite being drawn into the carefully laid trap, Lucius still managed to escape. On Agrippa’s next mission, however, he proved he had what it took. At the siege of Fulginiae his leadership skills outwitted the vastly more experienced defending generals P. Ventidius Bassus and C. Asinius Pollio. The objective was taken and, for his success, Agrippa was appointed
praetor urbanus
. During the Illyrian War he played a largely supporting role to his colleague, such as at the siege of Metulus. In the subsequent campaigns he led as commander he was sent to squash insurrections in Aquitania (38 BCE), Illyricum (35), Germania (37), Cantabria (19) and Illyricum (13) again, and he was successful in all theatres of operation. Remarkable is that both in the Cimmerian Bosporus (Crimea) in 14 BCE and Illyricum in 13 the threat of his arrival alone was enough to bring his opponent to seek terms. At every opportunity he displayed his personal courage as many men of nobler birth in his day aspired to show, but often failed to. The foremost scholar of Augustus in modern times writes of his demonstration of
virtus
that ‘Agrippa was the real thing and more’.
¹²

Although the surviving ancient accounts of the land and sea battles Agrippa fought in are vaguely described, they contain enough information for us to judge that he had sound technical skills as a commander in strategic and tactical planning, battlefield communications, delivery of force and other aspects. Given a mission, he could mobilize the chain of command to execute it. He was ‘well disciplined in obedience, but to one man alone [Augustus], yet eager to command others’, writes Velleius Paterculus.
¹³
One of his strengths was the ability to critically assess a situation before committing resources. On arriving in northern Spain in 19 BCE to deal with the uprising of Astures and Cantabri he quickly identified that he had to address low morale and overdue veteran retirements even before he could embark on redirecting the military campaign which had failed to bring the rebels to heel. Some commanders would have resorted to harsh disciplinary measures and corporal punishment: not Agrippa. Through a combination of selectively issuing reprimands – he dealt with the insubordination of one legion by stripping it of its coveted battle honour
Augusta
– and delivering motivational speeches, he won the men over and restored discipline. Only then could he begin the campaign. He determined that the insurgents had to be flushed out from the hills and down into the lowlands where they could be beaten in open battle. In that he succeeded because he had addressed the human factors issues first.

In operational planning Agrippa excelled. It was a quality that Augustus recognized early. Before embarking on the struggle against Sex. Pompeius he was placed in charge of raising a fleet in 37 BCE. The communities of Italy were pressed to provide vessels, but Agrippa realized that ships alone would not win the war. He needed trained men to sail them and marines who could fight aboard them. To this end he built the harbour complex near Cumae at
Portus Iulius
in record time by connecting two inland lakes by a canal to a natural bay. Ships, the hulls of which had been built elsewhere in Italy, were outfitted with their decks and final equipment at
Portus
. Soldiers used to fighting on land gained their sea legs while some 20,000 freedmen were trained from scratch to be oarsmen. It was a massive undertaking, but Agrippa approached the project with his characteristic tireless enthusiasm and undistracted attention.
¹⁴

Agrippa was not a rash general, but he was prepared to take calculated personal risks to win, in the process demonstrating his personal courage. One of Augustus’ favourite sayings was the Greek maxim ‘better a safe commander than a bold one’.
¹⁵
On many occasions Agrippa managed to combine both safety and boldness in his actions. In the War against Sex. Pompeius he actively sought to pick a fight with his opponent’s deputy Papias at Mylae. As this was Agrippa’s first naval engagement his instinct was to approach the mission with caution. He took just half his fleet and kept the rest in reserve at Hiera. He directed his own flagship to bear down directly on his opponent’s and ‘struck his ship under the bow, shattering it and breaking a hole in the keel’.
¹⁶
Much as he wanted to follow up on his victory at Mylae and cast anchor in open sea to form a blockade, however, he took his pilots’ advice. They advised him against exposing the ships to danger from the unpredictable sea and also of wearing out his crews. Instead he made for a safe harbour, which did not diminish his victory, but conserved his fleet in readiness for the next action. His large, heavy ships were almost outmanoeuvred by Sex. Pompeius’ smaller and lighter vessels, and he nearly lost on the first occasion, but daring and persistence won that battle and would again at Naulochus. Agrippa learned the lessons from both engagements. Five years later he invested in smaller, faster ships and adopted the tactics of the renegade Sextus to harry the coast of Epirus and Peloponnese, capturing Kerkyra, Leukas and Methone, and to intercept ships supplying his opponent. In the actual Battle of Actium he personally plunged into the thick of battle where he stayed until the enemy ‘gave up the fight at the tenth hour’.
¹⁷