Agrippa, Augustus’ friend and fixer

Bronze As of Augustus showing Agrippa, bearded, and Augustus

Marcus Agrippa was Emperor Augustus’ right-hand man. From humble birth, Agrippa rose to become Augustus’ friend and fixer, married his daughter and helped build the Empire. As Agrippa’s biographer, Lindsay Powell, says, the former Octavian would likely neither have triumphed nor held on to power without Agrippa by his side.

To rule effectively, a national leader needs a dependable Number One. This deputy enables their achievements and protects them from harm. The leader looks to this special person to always give honest advice and to stand with them whatever happens. It is a position that demands unswerving loyalty.

Ancient Rome’s first emperor, Caesar Augustus, had such a man. His name was Marcus Agrippa. Some know him today as a character in the TV series I, Claudius or Domina. He is now the subject of Agrippa, a fictional memoir written by Robert Harris.

To inform curious readers about the real man of history, I wrote Marcus Agrippa: The True Story. By any measure, his rise from obscurity to be the second-most important man in the Roman world is a truly extraordinary tale.

Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa’s story is one of a man beating the odds. He was born around 63BC, somewhere in Italy, to plebeian parents of the obscure Vipsania clan. His cognomen or Roman nickname, Agrippa (a contraction of aegre partus, ‘difficult birth’), records that he was delivered feet first. A breech delivery was regarded as an unlucky start to life, yet he bore his cognomen proudly.

The Roman encyclopaedist, Pliny the Elder, writes that his formative years “were made unhappy by lameness” (Natural History 7.8). His background was humble, too. Lacking famous ancestors, he was an outsider, a novus homo or ‘new man’, in the highly critical eyes of his aristocratic peers in Rome.

For reasons unknown, he dropped the name Vipsanius altogether. Preferring to be known plainly as Marcus Agrippa, he engaged the world on his own merits.

In his teens, he met Caius Octavius Thurinus (aka Octavian) and they became close friends. Octavian was the great-nephew of Julius Caesar. When Caesar was assassinated on the Ides of March in 44BC, Octavian inherited both his fortune and his name.

Augustus Bevilacqua, bust of the emperor with the Civic Crown,

Octavian sought vengeance for his adoptive father’s murder. The choices he made set him on a journey to autocratic power. Agrippa was with him every step of the way, proving time and again that he was a loyal friend at all times and a reliable fixer, especially when those times got tough.

Agrippa’s first test was in 44BC. When Octavian decided, against his mother’s advice, to go to Rome, Agrippa accompanied him. He helped him recruit Julius Caesar’s veterans and formed new legions which enabled his friend to establish himself as a force to be reckoned with.

Pliny the Elder writes that Agrippa’s life “passed amidst warfare and ever exposed to the approach of death” (Natural History 7.8). In 43BC, the two friends hunted down and, with help from Marcus Antonius, killed the assassins. In 41BC Agrippa helped Octavian defeat rebel Lucius Antonius at the Battle of Perusia.

He quashed rebellions in Aquitania and Illyricum, ousted a usurper in allied Crimea, drove German invaders out of Gaul, and completed the conquest of the Iberian Peninsula. He declined each of the three triumphs he was awarded.

Agrippa’s biggest victories were won at sea. In 36BC, the self-taught admiral defeated rebel Sextus Pompeius at Mylae and Naulochus and, in 31BC, he beat Marcus Antonius and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium. He was recognised with the award of a special ‘rostral crown’ and a sea-blue pennant.

Roman marble relief depicting the naval battle at Actium

By 27BC, Octavian reached a power sharing agreement with the Senate over how the Roman empire should be governed. Now addressed as princeps, ‘First Man’, and honoured with the title Augustus, ‘Revered One’, the deal gave him command of the Roman army and several territories.

He needed someone he could trust to help him carry out his new responsibilities. “He [Augustus] selected Marcus Agrippa as his partner in power,” writes Tacitus (Annals 3.56).

Indeed, without his right-hand man, Caius Octavius would likely neither have succeeded in his enterprise and become Augustus, nor would he have held on to power as princeps. Both men knew it. Having served as consul three times, by 13BC, Agrippa had been granted all the same legal powers as Caesar Augustus. Now in his late 40s, he lacked only his friend’s auctoritas, influence and prestige, which derived from him having inherited the name and legacy of Julius Caesar.

Construction became an obsession. In 33BC, he became curule aedile, commissioner of public works, a role he never relinquished. He repaired the Cloaca Maxima, Rome’s ancient sewer, and patched leaky, old aqueducts. He built the 20 km (12 mile) long Aqua Virgo, the aqueduct that still feeds water to the Trevi Fountain.

In the Campus Martius, he built Rome’s first, fully integrated, public bathing complex, a public park with an artificial lake, as well as a voting precinct. The adjacent vote counting hall had the widest ceiling span of any building ever constructed in Rome; Pliny the Elder included it on his list of the most beautiful buildings in the city. Agrippa’s adjacent Pantheum (nowadays known as the Pantheon) honoured his friendship with Augustus.

Similar in age, but different in temperament, Agrippa complemented his friend in attitude, drive and talent. He brought capabilities to the partnership that Caesar Augustus himself lacked in military and civil engineering matters. He strove selflessly to execute their shared political vision borne of a mutual love of Roman civilisation. For that purpose, he travelled extensively around the empire for years at a time and often at great personal risk.

In his family life he was asked to make compromises. He married three times. Augustus required him to divorce his first wife and chose his next two spouses. His third wife was Augustus’ own daughter, Julia. In 17BC, Augustus adopted the two sons of that marriage, Caius and Lucius, in a symbolic sale; now Caesars, they were positioned as Augustus’ successors.

Through his lifelong collaboration with Augustus, Agrippa achieved great things which he could not have done alone. Recognising the opportunities and constraints of this special relationship was Agrippa’s secret to success.

One of those insights was that he could never become supreme leader: he would always be the ‘number one’. There were many occasions when he could have seized power, but he was never tempted.

As Augustus’ deputy, he would have complete freedom to do what he decided was necessary for their mutual benefit. The friendship, family, fame and fortune that accrued with his achievements was enough for Agrippa.

When he died in 12BC, aged 50 or 51, Augustus and his nation mourned. After a state funeral, his ashes were placed in the Mausoleum Augustus had constructed for himself and his family in Rome.

Over the decades that followed, fire destroyed several of Agrippa’s buildings. Hadrian rebuilt the Pantheum, adding its famous concrete dome. He chose to display on the outside the name of its original builder. Visitors to the Piazza della Rotunda can still read it: “Marcus Agrippa, son of Lucius, consul three times, made this”.