Marcus Agrippa: Right-hand Man of Caesar Augustus (52 page)

The eminent modern historian Andrew Wallace-Haddrill writes, that from the way the ancient historians describe it, ‘Actium was not much of a battle’.
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Ronald Syme went further describing it as a ‘shabby affair, the worthy climax to the ignoble propaganda against Cleopatra, to the worn and sacred union of Italy’.
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These assessments underestimate the high stakes that Caesar’s heir and his admiral placed on achieving a successful outcome in the Gulf of Ambracia. Had they lost, Antonius and Kleopatra would have had an unobstructed line of attack against Italy. With almost equal numbers of ships and as many ground troops, it was not at all certain at the start of 2 September 31 BCE who would win. Scholars still debate whether Antonius intended all along to break through Agrippa’s blockade taking the treasure with him and fight another day, or that he intended to fight and win there, but sensing defeat, he leapt aboard the Egyptian queen’s fast flagship and escaped. At that moment Agrippa’s leadership was crucial. He did not chase after them as many lesser generals would have, but stuck to the agreed battle plan and remained to achieve the strategic imperative, which was to reduce and destroy his opponents’ ability to fight and drag out the war. His decision to use smaller, lighter vessels enabled him to take advantage of the confusion on his opponent’s side by driving his ships at speed deep within their lines. Despite the loss of their commander, Antonius’ captains and marines were loyal to him and committed to fighting on. The enemy’s remaining fleet was only routed after a bitterly fought engagement – by the bloody business of ramming ships, shooting airborne missiles and lobbing firebrands, all at close range – with great loss of life and equipment on both sides. With the destruction of the enemy’s fleet and the flight of its commander-in-chief the conditions were set up for the surrender of the land forces – nineteen legions, in fact – stranded in Greece. Left with only their army in Egypt, Antonius and Kleopatra no longer had critical mass to stop Iulius Caesar’s heir in the final phase of the war.

Actium was the turning point in the conflict. Dio states that it represented a chronological ‘Year 0’ and the years of Augustus’ reign were reckoned from it.
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Actium became a
cause célèbre
. Syme argues that the heir of Iulius Caesar desperately needed a victory to outshine all others in history, and thus he presented Actium as a great naval battle, as a clash of East versus West, of good (Romans) against bad (foreigners), and imbued the event with more importance than it truly merited.
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Wallace-Haddrill argues that the true significance of Actium was that it established a new creation myth – the legend of the man who established a new world order, of Augustus as saviour of the city of Rome, of its gods and its civilization from destruction – and encouraged its celebration in coins, cities, monuments and poems.
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As commander on the winning side, Agrippa himself played a crucial role in propagating the mythology of the battle as an inflexion point in world history. Whenever he travelled on missions aboard a ship his sea-blue ensign fluttering in the wind was a constant reminder to all that here was the victorious admiral of Actium. Indeed, it can be argued that years after the battle, the
Res Publica
remained in a constant state of vigilance of the threat of war. In this, as Augustus’ colleague, Agrippa was ever ready to meet it from wherever it might come – within or without.

Augustus’ other favourite saying, ‘that is done quickly enough which is done well enough,’ might also apply to Agrippa.
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Preparation made all the difference, raising the odds in Agrippa’s favour and often winning him a greater prize. In 19 BCE, when approached by the Ubii – who were allies of Rome – to assist them against the aggressions of neighbouring tribes, Agrippa led his men directly and without delay on a punitive raid into Germania, becoming only ‘the second of the Romans to cross the Rhenus River for war’ – the other being Iulius Caesar.
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Agrippa granted the Ubii sanctuary within the Roman Empire, but the resettlement agreement came with obligations. He required them to patrol their section of the river and obliged them to provide troops for the army. Five years later, when he learned that Scribonius had taken control of the Cimmerian Bosporus, he quickly rallied his local resources among the client kings before thrusting himself into the centre of the conflict. He called upon Polemon to move on the usurper, and meantime requested Herodes to join him with his fleet. At that point the mere threat of Agrippa’s arrival, however, was enough to provoke the resistance against Polemon into seeking terms. The result turned out very favourable indeed, securing control over the entire Crimean peninsula for Rome and more troops for her army.

If the Roman Empire were likened to a large multinational corporation, Augustus was its chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) and Agrippa was its chief operating officer (COO) or president.
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As the best senior executive he shared a vision for his organization with the CEO, but was focused on operational results, on getting things done. Debate continues amongst scholars about whether Augustus had a grand strategy for the Roman Empire. Evident from Agrippa’s career is that the emphasis in domestic and foreign policy immediately after the Actian War of 31 BCE was on consolidation and stabilization, not expansion. It was an appropriate response to years of devastating civil war. Roman society needed time to heal. With the oligarchs gone, Augustus and Agrippa ‘retuned’ the
Res Publica
, removing many of the causes of its instability. As censors the two men purged the Senate, of course to remove opposition, but also to reduce its size and the complexity of its decision making. Agrippa was an active partner in helping Augustus to garner the legal powers and the Constitutional Settlements which he needed to achieve his national social and security policy agenda. Short-term goals based on satisfying individual vested interests were replaced with longer range goals based on sustainability. In keeping with these Agrippa did not promote policies aimed at expanding Roman territory. During his lifetime Agrippa mostly fought
defensive
wars, defeating internal threats such as Sex. Pompeius or Antonius and Kleopatra, or quelling rebellions such as in Aquitania or Cantabria. He worked diplomatically with allies such as the client kings Herodes and Polemon to bolster the buffers between the world directly controlled by Rome and the potential threats to it from beyond its borders – peaceful co-existence, not aggression. Perhaps because domestic stabilization had been achieved in the final years of his life there was a shift to an expansionary foreign policy. Nero Claudius Drusus was sent on a mission in 15 BCE to annex Raetia, and – with his brother Tiberius – to Vindelicia and Noricum, and, having completed it successfully, was ordered to take Germania Magna. There is no record that Agrippa objected to the change, and, as Rome’s most accomplished commander of the age, it is quite likely he was a key advisor on strategic aspects of these campaigns.

In his actions Agrippa displayed a belief that Roman civilization had a deeper purpose. He was a man of principle, what modern commentators would call a conviction politician. Dio writes that he ‘had used the friendship of Augustus with a view to the greatest advantage both of the emperor himself and of the
Res Publica
’.
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His urban improvement programme was not limited to the city within the
pomerium
of Rome. The great project of forging a universal empire, a commonwealth of disparate nations, required its self-governing constituent communities to operate under Roman law in order to receive the benefits of peace and prosperity. He actively promoted those benefits. Whether it was building roads in Gaul, or paying for large public buildings in Baetica, Lusitania or Narbonensis, or bolstering the new
coloniae
of veterans in Achaea and Syria, supporting bankrupt cities in Asia or assisting Antiocheia after an earthquake, Agrippa understood the value of direct assistance in fostering goodwill to Rome, using his own wealth to do so. In return many recognized him on monuments, as they did in Athens, as a ‘benefactor’ (
ευεργέτης
) or on Lesbos as ‘saviour god’ (
Θεός Σωτήρ
). He seems to have been fair and even handed in his dealings. As his treatment of the Jews shows, Agrippa unequivocally displayed the virtue of
aequitas
, the belief that acting fairly within government and with the people was intrinsically and morally right. He dealt with the clear violations of privileges accorded the Jews with respect to the Temple Tax quickly and with firmness. He followed up on his ruling by writing to each of the provincial administrations to enforce the rule.

In Rome his election as aedile in 34 and 33 BCE gave him the authority to direct a programme of much needed restorations to existing public infrastructure and to raise new buildings. The
Campus Martius
had provided Pompeius Magnus with land on which to build his great theatre complex. Iulius Caesar had had designs on the public space too, intending to change the course of the Tiber River to prevent it flooding, and to rebuild the structure in which the people voted. Agrippa did not merely want to follow in their footsteps. He wanted to
outdo
them. Whatever he turned his mind to he wanted it bigger and he wanted it faster than what had come before. He was fascinated, perhaps obsessed with building on a grand – even a megalomaniacal – scale. One of the first to be overhauled was the
Saepta
. Symbolically it made a public statement of Augustus’ commitment to free and fair elections. For Agrippa, it provided a place to show and share some of the ancient world’s costliest artworks. Some of his projects pushed the technology of the time to its limits. Installing the wide roof of the
Diribitorium
posed such technical challenges it could not be finished until well after Agrippa’s death, but its sheer scale earned it a position in Pliny the Elder’s list of ‘magnificent constructions’ of his day.
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The fantastically decorated Basilica of Neptunus and the gymnasium beside it presaged the complexity of his integrated public bathing complex to come, which required the construction of a new aqueduct, the
Aqua Virgo
, to supply it with an uninterrupted supply of fresh water. Close by, the great monument, which Agrippa wanted to call the
Augusteum
but which is now better known as the Pantheon, seems to have been a personal tribute by one friend to another. Here the novelty of architectural design and masterpieces of decoration combined in spectacular style. It too attracted admiration from the critical eye of polymath Pliny the Elder. If, as is likely, this building originally bore the now famous inscription that it was made by Agrippa, it was as though he was making the dramatic statement, ‘because I can!’ But it did not end there. By the time of his death, there was a bridge, a park, an artificial lake and a funerary monument named after him – and those were just the edifices in Rome. In a physical sense, it could be said that Agrippa put the public in
Res Publica
. In large measure, because of Agrippa’s passion for building, Caesar Augustus could later claim ‘I found a city of brick and leave it one of marble’.
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Around the empire too, he had paid for repairs to a chariot racetrack, embellishments to various theatres, temples, extensions of a city residential quarter and other public amenities in the east and west – all durable benefits of
Romanitas
created in the finest stone to be enjoyed by people even in the far corners of the empire.

All the more astonishing is that Agrippa paid for all these immense constructions and artwork collections at his own expense. He accumulated vast wealth quite early during his career – from war spoils captured during the Sex. Pompeius and Actian Wars, from the profits of cash crops produced on his landholdings in Italy, Egypt, Sicily and the Thracian Chersonese, as well as gifts from Augustus and his inheritance from Atticus, his father-in-law; but it mattered to him how he spent it. He clearly had a vision of how a civilized society should be and he was in a position to realize it.

Firstly, he believed in promoting public wellbeing. He sensed the link between personal cleanliness and public health, and that it made people feel better about themselves. It was a brilliant insight to pay for free access to 170 bathing places and to install new fountains throughout the city. Other politicians had simply handed out cash to the plebs, but daily visits to the baths and the availability of fresh water any time of day or night from always on, easy to reach fountains were constant reminders of the benefits that Caesar’s heir brought to all.

For the policy to work meant dealing with less glamorous projects – repairing the aging
Aqua Marcia
, building new aqueducts and cleaning out the sewers. Agrippa dedicated his term as aedile to addressing Rome’s plumbing, a task others in the office had avoided. Agrippa also knew it was not sufficient just to build infrastructure. Victorious commanders returning from war often erected beautiful temples or other monumental structures in fulfilment of their vows to the god who had favoured them, but they then failed to provide for their upkeep. In the first century BCE Rome was filled with decaying buildings.
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Robust facilities management programmes were essential to ensuring they lasted over the long term. Agrippa became ‘life curator’, as Frontinus calls him, and he established a permanent direct labour organization exclusively responsible for the maintenance and repair of the aqueducts, fountains and baths in Rome.
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A year after Agrippa’s death, Augustus recognized its importance when, having inherited the company of slaves from Agrippa, he made it state property (
cura aquarum
) and used it as model for the
curatores
of other essential public works. Indeed, during his lifetime Augustus constantly called upon Agrippa as a helper (
adiutor
) – he truly was his right-hand man.
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Agrippa was so effective in this role that within weeks of his death, rather than face working alone, Augustus had picked the man to replace him – Ti. Claudius Nero, the future Emperor Tiberius – while the young Caesars, Caius and Lucius, grew into manhood.