Marcus Agrippa : right-hand man of Caesar Augustus

628 Pages·2015·22.29 MB·English

by  Agrippa

Other titles by Lindsay Powell ALL THINGS UNDER THE SUN
How Modern Ideas Are Really Ancient EAGER FOR GLORY
The Untold Story of Drusus the Elder, Conqueror of Germania GERMANICUS
The Magnificent Life and Mysterious Death of Rome’s Most Popular General
COMBAT
Roman Soldier versus Germanic Warrior,
1st Century AD

First published in Great Britain in 2015 by
PEN & SWORD MILITARY
An imprint of
Pen & Sword Books Ltd
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Barnsley
South Yorkshire
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Copyright © Lindsay Powell, 2015
ISBN 978-1-84884-617-3
eISBN 9781473853911
The right of Lindsay Powell to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in
accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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Contents
Foreword by Steven Saylor
Preface
Acknowledgements
List of Illustrations
List of Maps
Chronology
List of Consuls
Roman Names
Stemmae (family trees)
1. New Man in Rome
2. Champion of the New Caesar
3. Fighter on Land and Sea
4. Mastermind of Victory at Actium
5. Architect of the New Rome
6. Statesman of the Roman World
7. Associate of Augustus
8. Noblest Man of His Day
9. Assessment
Appendix 1: Res Publica: The Commonwealth System of Government of the Late
Roman Republic
Appendix 2: Agrippa’s Travels
Glossary
Place Names
Ancient Sources
Notes
Bibliography
Foreword
by Steven Saylor
I first met Marcus Agrippa in the guise of a Scottish actor named Andrew Keir.
The time was half a century ago. The place was a drive-in theatre outside the
small town of Goldthwaite, Texas. The film was Cleopatra.
The historical figures in the movie made an indelible (indeed, life-changing)
impression on me – or at least some of them did. I would never forget Rex
Harrison as Caesar, Richard Burton as Antony, and of course Elizabeth Taylor in
the title role – or for that matter, Roddy McDowall’s waspish turn as Augustus.
Even as a boy, I thought he was woefully miscast.
But Agrippa? Agrippa made almost no impression on me at all. Afterward I
would vaguely recall a bristling (and historically questionable) beard, a gruff,
military bearing, and lots of carping about Cleopatra (which in the context of the
film made him one of the bad guys). A few years later, Andrew Keir would
make a much stronger impression playing Dr. Quatermass, and my image of
Agrippa would become hazier and more confused than ever.
You know what they say: you never get a second chance to make a first
impression. And so, in my mind, Agrippa became relegated to the chorus of
history, at best a bit player – a drab workhorse in the business of empire-
building, lacking the greatness of Augustus, the glamour of Cleopatra, the gory
exit of Caesar, or Antony’s tragic aura.
That view of Agrippa – a minor player, dimly glimpsed in the background –
has been the standard view, not only in popular culture but in the work of
historians. Things might have gone differently if Agrippa’s memoirs had
survived, and we had his version of events. Very little written material passes
through the ruthless sieve of time; a first-person account that happens to endure
can go a long way to securing one’s place in history. But Agrippa’s memoirs are
lost.
Agrippa’s place in history might also be different had he lived in an earlier
age. In the centuries before Agrippa, our histories of Rome are crammed with
the exploits of swaggering generals, daring heroes, radical politicians, and even
rebel slaves. Amid these figures, a man like Agrippa would surely have stood
out. But Agrippa lived in, and helped to shape, the transitional period between
the freewheeling Republic and the emperor-centric Principate. In the centuries
after Agrippa – thanks in no small part to his legacy – the histories dilate upon
the imperial succession, until all we can see are the emperors. Despite his pivotal
role – perhaps because of it – Agrippa gets lost in the shuffle.
Lindsay Powell would seek to redress this situation. The result is the book
you hold in your hands.
There has been no biography of Agrippa in English for almost eighty years.
The time has come for a full-scale reassessment, and Powell has risen to the task,
scrupulously researching the scattered sources and clearly explicating the
complicated details of Agrippa’s long and eventful career. As a result, we now
have a much clearer view of the right-hand man of Augustus.
But where is the human interest in this story? As Powell points out,
Augustus and Agrippa lived one of the great ‘buddy stories’ of history. (One of
the most glaring false impressions left by the movie Cleopatra: the brusque,
bearded Andrew Keir seemed almost a father figure to the callow Roddy
McDowell. In fact, Agrippa and Augustus were almost exactly the same age.)
Perhaps a bit selfishly, I like it when historians flesh out the past, bringing
passion and zest to the dry dust of long-ago lives. It makes my job – writing
historical fiction – that much easier.
More than once in his introduction, Powell refers to working ‘like a
detective’ to piece together the story of Agrippa’s life. Indeed, the working
habits of the historian and the detective are not that far apart. The clues are
widely scattered, and sometimes missing altogether, but the lure of the mystery
draws us on – because there is indeed a mystery at the heart of this story, as there