Roman Emperor Augustus and His Trusted General

Augustus was Rome's first Emperor. But who made his empire possible? Behind the throne stood Marcus Agrippa, the brilliant general whose victories secured the Roman world yet whose name was consciously erased from the record by his erstwhile great friend. In this very special episode Tristan Hughes is joined by bestselling author Robert Harris to uncover the remarkable life of Agrippa. How did a man from relative obscurity become Augustus’s most trusted ally? What role did he play in the victory at Actium and the birth of the Roman Empire? And why did this extraordinary figure disappear from Rome’s public memory? MORE How Slavery Built the Roman Empire Listen on Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/how-slavery-built-the-roman-empire/id1759820234?i=1000783542515 Listen on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/2OgRYSNy3KOXOh6zWd0BCE?si=2lpCp1x5RlCk1AYaHHTA0w Young Caesar v Mark Antony Listen on Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-ancients/id1520403988?i=1000554594606 Listen on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/1moyibnoOT22HpPbsKS6Zm?si=lGWQoZQTR9S8SeYVomXHgA The Ancients is now on YouTube! Watch here: @TheAncientsPodcast https://www.youtube.com/@TheAncientsPodcast Presented by Tristan Hughes. Editor is Natasha Hughes. Produced by Joseph Knight and McKenna Fernandez. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff. All music courtesy of Epidemic Sounds The Ancients is a History Hit podcast. History Hit is part of Little Dot Studios, a Certified B Corp™ Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Tristan Hughes?

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• 0:32Speaker 01

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• 1:17Tristan Hughes?

  Agrippa is something of an overlooked figure in the story of ancient Rome. The right-hand man of Emperor Augustus, who rarely emerged from the mighty Caesar's shadow. And yet, Augustus owed his title, reputation and empire to the achievements of this purported Roman commoner. So why do we know so little about him? Why did Augustus erase not just one of Rome's most consequential statesmen, but his most loyal and steadfast friend from the city's public records? And how did a man born into relative obscurity rise to become the linchpin of Augustus's imperium before being forced back into the shadows? I'm Tristan Hughes. This is The Ancients.

• 2:02Tristan Hughes?

  And to help me answer these questions, I'm thrilled to be joined by the acclaimed and bestselling author, Robert Harris. Robert's new book, Agrippa, which charts the general's journey from his earliest meetings with Julius Caesar to endless wars to expand the empire, is out now.

• 2:32Tristan Hughes?

  Robert, it is such a pleasure to have you on the podcast.

• 2:35Speaker 02

  Oh, well, thank you for having me on. It's great to be here.

• 2:37Tristan Hughes?

  And to talk all things Agrippa, I think the big message to first off say is he's much more than just Augustus's number two.

• 2:45Speaker 02

  Yes, I was sure that that was the case when I first came across him really and started to look at him. And no one could have done as much as he did, militarily, politically, in terms of building and all the rest of it. And just have been the mere loyal friend. There was a lot more to him than that. And we know what he did, but we don't know what he was like. And for a historical novelist, that's really the perfect situation.

• 3:17Tristan Hughes?

  Was that what drew you to him? The fact that he's not a forgotten figure as of such, but his achievements are overshadowed by the big man Augustus? And you can explore more of his actual story?

• 3:26Speaker 02

  Yes, he was definitely edited out of the record by Augustus, who outlived him by 25 years. They were more or less the same age. And in the 25 years after Agrippa died, he was just gradually written out of the record. And the great will, a testament that Augustus left carved in bronze in his tomb, which runs in the English translation to about three and a half thousand words. The name Agrippa only occurs twice and just briefly at that in passing. So, you know, he was, he's there waiting to be restored to his proper place in a way.

• 4:10Tristan Hughes?

  And you describe him as the bear to Augustus's fox. Now, what do you mean by that?

• 4:16Speaker 02

  Well, Augustus was not a very healthy man. He lived to be 75, but he wasn't, for much of his life, he was, he was very sickly. He wasn't really much of a soldier. And by all accounts, he was a rather kind of stoop-shouldered, bad teeth, not at all like the heroic image that was put out of him. But he was very clever, a most formidable politician, one of the most formidable politicians in history. Agrippa was almost exactly the opposite. He wasn't really much of a politician. He wasn't, I don't think, particularly sly or cunning,

• 4:59Speaker 02

  but he was a tremendous soldier, strong as an ox. And really, they complemented one another. Octavius, Augustus, was the brains and he was the brawn in crude terms. And neither, I think, would have got very far without the other.

• 5:18Tristan Hughes?

  And for a period in Roman history where we are blessed to have quite a lot of source material surviving, how do you, as a historical novelist, how do you go about like looking at the surviving evidence and then creating a compelling narrative from it?

• 5:33Speaker 02

  Well, the narrative is naturally compelling, I hope, regardless of what I've done with it. Here you have a couple of teenagers who were at school together. And rather strangely that they should have been at school because Octavius came from a grand family and Agrippa, plebeian, and indeed, we hardly know anything about his family. But they were at school together and somehow or other, this, these two 17, 18-year-olds end up taking over the world. So this is in itself a compelling narrative. It's the ultimate buddy movie in a way. And so, you know, one just follows it as they survive and then eventually come to dominate.

• 6:17Speaker 02

  And of course, their own personal relationship evolves over the years. So, you know, one could take the facts that we know, the Battle of Actium and the various dates, and in between the events, try and imagine what was going on between them and what they were feeling. And that's really a justification for historical fiction. Agrippa is almost perfect for historical novelists now when I look back on it because I can do things that really scholars can't. I can speculate as to what, where he really came from, what he was actually like,

• 6:58Speaker 02

  what his marriages were like, what he felt when Augustus adopted his two chilts, two sons, for instance, how did he feel about that? We simply don't know because as far as I'm aware, Agrippa left behind no letter, no speech, no real quotation from him of any sort. He's blank. And yet, he was the co-ruler of the Roman world and arguably the architect of the great victories, especially Actium.

• 7:27Tristan Hughes?

  We'll tackle this kind of chronologically from the beginning to the end. But naturally, I know there's so, so many achievements of Agrippa, we can't cover them all. But I would like to start with his background, which sounds very interesting. You mentioned going to school with the young, who would become Augustus, the young Octavian. And yet their backgrounds, we believe, they're very different. So what do we know about Agrippa's?

• 7:50Speaker 02

  We know pretty well, nothing. I mean, we know his father was called Lucius because that's on the inscription on the Pantheon, the great building that Agrippa left behind. We know that he was plebeian, or at least that is what the contemporary sources say. We know he had a brother and a sister. We know that his mother died giving birth to him. And the general consensus is that probably his name Agrippa comes from agrippatum, that it was a difficult delivery. And he carried that moniker around with him throughout his life. And that gave me a clue as to what he must have been like.

• 8:32Speaker 02

  But as to why they pitched up together in the same school on the Palatine, being taught by Mycenus, we simply don't know. And we don't know why Agrippa should have been given such special marks of favour by Julius Caesar, that for instance, he accompanied Caesar back after his last great battle in Munda in Spain, a few months before he died, or why he was promoted and why Caesar said he wanted to take Agrippa and Octavius with him on his campaign in the east, which he never was able to fulfil. It's a puzzle and that's one of the things I set out to try to solve.

• 9:12Tristan Hughes?

  But this is, so the start of Agrippa's story proper, it begins also alongside Julius Caesar. So he's a big character right at the beginning.

• 9:21Speaker 02

  Yes, yes, absolutely. Well, Caesar obviously was the great uncle of Octavius. And whilst they were both, the boys were both at school in their early teens, he crossed the Rubicon. And he had very, he had virtually no male relatives. He had no son. His daughter had been married to Pompey, had died. And so, you know, his affections lighted on this young man who, Octavius, who he'd hardly seen. He'd been in Gaul fighting for, I think, 11 years. And Agrippa was by this time a good friend of Octavius. And so the two sort of rose together. And Caesar is the all-dominant figure.

• 10:01Speaker 02

  We do know something about Agrippa that he came, his family, his father was a Stoic and his, they supported the Senate and against Caesar, they supported Pompey. And Agrippa's brother fought with Cato and fought with the Republican army in Africa and was captured. And one of the first things we see is that Octavius actually intercedes with his uncle, allegedly, Caesar, to try and get him freed. And indeed Caesar did free him. And that's the first interaction we get between, between the two of them. And then that both young men were, became legionaries or joined the legions.

• 10:45Speaker 02

  Octavius was too sick typically to go and fight, but Agrippa did and appears to have fought at the Battle of Munda.

• 10:52Tristan Hughes?

  That's the Munda, that's the one, that's one of Caesar's last big ones.

• 10:55Speaker 02

  It is Caesar's last great battle and it's Agrippa's first. And at the end of the battle, when the, when the sons of Pompey had been defeated and Caesar had settled Spain, he began the voyage back to Italy and he took Agrippa on the boat with him, along with Octavius. And so, so the two of them had, you know, a month or more voyage, leisurely voyage with Caesar, having dinner with him and so on. So yeah, he, he looms very large in the early life of Agrippa.

• 11:28Tristan Hughes?

  And that's the big part of Julius Caesar in this story because I mean, from then on, it feels like Agrippa and Octavius, they're, they're quite inseparable from that moment, aren't they? I mean, the next part of their story is that they go over to what is now, I think it's probably, it's Albania. It's Albania, isn't it? Apollonia.

• 11:46Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. So they, and Caesar, when he'd finished, won the battle of Munda and suppressed or conquered Spain, his plan then was to move east with what would have been the biggest invasion force ever assembled, about 200,000. And Agrippa and Octavius were sent out to Albania to sort of have military training, to get acquainted with the legions that were already mustering there for this great expedition against Parthia. And there they were, they'd been there about six months, five or six months, when the

• 12:30Speaker 02

  news came that Caesar had been assassinated. And a few days or a couple of weeks after that came the news that Octavius had been named in his will as his heir. And this is the turning point in the lives of these two young men, about 18 years old. And they decided against the advice of Octavius's parents to go back and try and claim this inheritance.

• 12:56Tristan Hughes?

  This is such a big moment for two people who were teenagers still at the time to make that decision. Are you going to go into the, the lion's den, right back to Rome with all of these battle hardened generals, Mark Antony and so on, you know, vying for power? And the fact that Agrippa and Octavius together decide, yeah, we're going to give it a go.

• 13:17Speaker 02

  Well, that's it. It's just, I mean, it is a great adventure and they set off and they landed in the south of Italy. They didn't in the end dare land at the great port of Brundisium because Octavius thought he would perhaps be murdered or captured. So they landed in a tiny little fishing village a few miles to the south and then began a kind of march across southern Italy towards the Bay of Naples where Octavius's stepfather and mother were. And as they went, so they gathered recruits, Caesar's old veterans flocked to him. Of course, the murder of Caesar had provoked fury among, among his soldiers.

• 14:01Speaker 02

  And here was Octavius who made it clear he was taking Caesar's name, he was the heir and he was going to get vengeance. So he, from the beginning, the thing that he has is the name and the, the legal right to call himself Caesar, which was given to him by his great uncle. So off the two of them, two of them go. And Agrippa is very much his wingman, his sort of, you know, best friend and he watches his back essentially.

• 14:29Tristan Hughes?

  Well, I was going to say, I mean, imagining Agrippa's viewpoint of this as he's going with Augustus, as he's going with Octavius at the time, because he's very much sharing in the risks of his friend. And do you think he's approaching it very much, how can I help my friend achieve his goals because my fate is very much now linked to it? And does he realise that, well, that's kind of very much going down the military route and helping him in that sphere more than anything else?

• 14:53Speaker 02

  Well, it's got to be military. I mean, you know, and he does seem to have been a completely natural soldier in a way that Octavius, Octavian, as he became after the, the will was read, was not. And so, I mean, I think it's both friendship and a sense of adventure. I mean, he had no money or any, or any status, Agrippa. Everything that he had, he owed to his friendship with Octavius. And so the two of them set off on the great life's adventure really, and each needs the other.

• 15:27Tristan Hughes?

  Do you think that's something we do always need to remember with Agrippa, that his fate is very much, whether it's because of his, his poorer birth status, probably plays a part in it. His fate from now on is very much entwined with that of Octavius slash Octavian?

• 15:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, completely. I mean, he's the best friend of the most, potentially the most powerful man in the world. If, if Octavius can pull it off. I mean, who wouldn't as a spirited 18 year old want to throw in your lot and, and do whatever you can? And so, you know, and so they returned to Rome by now with an army, a small army. And Octavius tries to get from Mark Antony his inheritance. I mean, he's been left, he's technically the richest man in the world, but the money doesn't seem, certainly Mark Antony is reluctant to give up the money.

• 16:25Speaker 02

  And so this is the first great clash when, and where Octavius makes it absolutely clear to Mark Antony, he is not going to be pushed around. He's acting partly on the advice of Cicero, curiously enough, who he meets when he lands, when he arrives in the Bay of Naples, because Cicero is on holiday down there. The two of them got on. I mean, Cicero by this point is about 60 and he was a sort of grandfatherly figure, I think, to Octavius. Anyway, so, so the adventure goes on. And in the end, of course, it ends up in war with Mark Antony, as it was pretty well always going to have to be.

• 17:06Tristan Hughes?

  And also just before that, there is that brief moment when they, yes, there's war, then they're allies again, and then you get the likes of Brutus and Cassius, all these civil wars and a lot of fighting, a lot of battles, a lot of bloodshed. And it's within that context that Agrippa, he always seems to be at the forefront with Octavius, with Octavian in the fighting.

• 17:25Speaker 02

  Yes, he was, he was always by his side. I think he was, he was sort of bodyguard in many ways. He didn't have senior military command at that stage because he was only, he was very young and there were, there was a man called Salvadienus who was, who was more of a senior figure, who, who took charge of the army for Octavius. But gradually, Agrippa comes to the fore. He fights in the, he fights in the battles, he's entrusted with certain key tasks. For instance, he is the one who prosecutes in absentia Cassius.

• 18:07Speaker 02

  I mean, remember Brutus and Cassius had been amnestied after the assassination and one of the first things that Octavius wanted to do was overturn that so that he could go after them. They were in the east with huge forces at their disposal. And so therefore they had to, he, he made a deal with Mark Antony and with Lepidus, the other military commander, and the triumvirate was born. And so they decided to go after the assassins and Agrippa was there again. Once again, Augustus, Octavius still fell ill, wasn't able to take part in the great battle of Philippi, he was too, too sick, but Agrippa was there.

• 18:52Tristan Hughes?

  But Agrippa was there and he fights. And then he's, from that moment on, he's very much representing Octavian on, on the battlefield. I think we've got just a year or so later, the story of Mark Antony's wife, Fulvia, and, and his brother Lucius in Italy and.

• 19:08Speaker 02

  Well, when I first started, when I announced that I was, that I was going to do the book, I had lunch with Mary Beard, who I've known for many years, ever since writing Pompey. And she said, oh dear, you know, you're going to have a lot of trouble with all the civil wars that everybody's confused about, because the civil wars are endless. So first of all, well, you have the civil war that Caesar wins against Pompey in the Senate, then you have the war between Octavius and Mark Antony. And then you have the war between Octavius and Mark Antony now allied against Brutus and Cassius. They defeat them at the Battle of Philippi.

• 19:49Speaker 02

  Octavius returns to Italy only to find that Mark Antony's brother and Mark Antony's wife have decided to rebel against them. So then he has to deal with them, there's another civil war. And, and blow me, no sooner he dealt with them, the Mark Antony returns and there's another, and the civil war cranks up again. So, you know, and, and finally, of course, we end up with the, with the, with the great war that culminates in the Battle of Actium between Octavius and Mark Antony. And sooner or later, there's going to be a showdown between the two of them. So, so, and the thing that, one of the great qualities of Agrippa, well, he was a brave

• 20:32Speaker 02

  soldier and, and inspiring leader, but he was also the most brilliant organiser. And he's really the father of the Roman navy. I mean, he, they faced this, this, this, one of the other things that is in the story and people forget is how important Sextus Pompey was. Sextus Pompey was the surviving son of Pompey the Great and he controlled Sicily and had a fleet. And he really gave. He's lost to history, but he was a most formidable problem for both Octavius and Mark Antony, and it was Agrippa that built the navy and commanded it and won the battles, the naval battles in Sicily, that finally put paid to Sextus.

• 21:16Tristan Hughes?

  And we want to stress that because up to that point, he'd be involved in land battles, Julius Caesar fighting Brutus and Cassius and so on. And it's that genius, isn't it, of transferring those skills into a naval military context and then being able to beat, as you say, this very difficult rival who was causing a lot of pain and difficulties to Octavian and Mark Antony, he's able to defeat him?

• 21:44Speaker 02

  Yes. I mean, what, and not, you know, what he did was, I mean, he looked at the map, as it were, and they needed a naval base closer to Sicily, to actually control the military and then deal with Sextus on Sicily. And so he builds the portus Julius, as it became known, on the Bay of Naples, a harbour and two natural harbours, a smaller outer one and a large inner harbour. And it's an immense construction project, I mean, using hydraulic cement. He was the kind of concrete king of ancient Rome.

• 22:23Tristan Hughes?

  Don't tempt us to put that as the title for this episode.

• 22:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, the concrete king, yes. But he is certainly the master builder. And so he builds this enormous naval facility and he recruits 20,000 sailors. And he creates a fleet, which builds it in this sheltered, hidden harbour, which he kept concealed, in fact. And then they were able to finally put to sea and defeat the pirates.

• 22:51Tristan Hughes?

  And that is also big when you think of the importance of Sicily on the sea routes between Rome and Egypt and where they get most of their grain from. So tactically, strategically, although this isn't as glamorous as, let's say, the big victory at Actium against Mark Antony several years later, for Agrippa at the time, you can imagine that this is a big stepping stone in his career to achieve that success, to defeat this son of Pompey and regain control of Sicily.

• 23:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, absolutely. Because not only, I mean, first of all, it was, it was an insult to the honour of Octavius, who was technically supposed to be the governor of Sicily, that this, that this figure Sextus was squatting there. And they interrupted the trade, as you say, the grain shipments from Egypt, but they also mounted a lot of pirate raids on the southern coast. And Rome was starving. I mean, they were, they were not able to get enough grain into the country to feed people. So it was vital that sooner or later Sextus was taken out. And a large part of the credit for that does go to Agrippa.

• 24:04Tristan Hughes?

  And we'll continue the story of Agrippa right after this.

• 24:07Speaker 01

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• 24:48Speaker 01

  more and make your appointment to donate blood, visit redcrossblood.org/lgbtq. That's redcrossblood.org/lgbtq.

• 24:57Tristan Hughes?

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• 25:12Tristan Hughes?

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• 25:29Tristan Hughes?

  And guess what? We're also now on YouTube. After Dark, a podcast from History Hit. Robert, before we keep going ahead chronologically with Agrippa's story, there's also this really interesting episode early in his career that I'd like to ask about quickly because it seems to reflect his, dare I say, modesty or kind of knowing his place, I guess, with Octavian. Is the fact that, does he have the opportunity for a triumph that doesn't take it?

• 26:11Speaker 02

  Yes. He, I mean, we talk about what he did on the sea, but he was also very, very formidable on land and dealt with uprising in Gaul. And for this, for his achievements there, he was voted a triumph by the Senate, very young age, I can't remember exactly, but in his twenties. And he returned to Rome. At this point, Octavius's stock was very, very low. He had tried on his own to settle things with Sextus and it had been a disaster. And the reason that Agrippa came back to Rome seems to have been because Octavius needed

• 26:54Speaker 02

  his help. And of course, because Octavius was in, you know, he was unpopular. It was, either it was very strongly suggested to Agrippa or Agrippa was shrewd enough to realise this was no time to have a triumph when the boss was in difficulties. And so he forewent the triumph and entered Rome. The moment he did that, he couldn't triumph. And he never had a triumph. He was the greatest general and tactician of his generation, and yet at no point did he ever have a triumph. And historians say, you know, isn't this, what a wonderful, loyal, modest friend he was to Augustus. And indeed, he was in many

• 27:36Speaker 02

  ways. But of course, if he was going to survive, it was necessary for him never to get ahead of the boss. And he must have known that really everything was down to him, that Caesar had the name, but he had the talent. And this is one of the things that drew me to writing the novel, because I'm fascinated by politics and power and the dynamic of that relationship. The front man, who's the kind of quasi emperor, and this, this military talent who has to constantly play down his own importance.

• 28:20Tristan Hughes?

  How much glory can you take from your own victories, almost? It's a fascinating question to think about in that time period for someone like Agrippa.

• 28:27Speaker 02

  Yeah. And he, so he never had the triumph. And he, despite, especially, he should have had a triumph after Actium. But not only did he not have the triumph for Actium or the naval victories in Sicily, Octavius did. And Octavius's great testament at the end of his life says, "I swept the sea clear of pirates." There's no mention of Agrippa. Similarly, Actium, there's no mention of the fact that the fleet was built and commanded by Agrippa.

• 29:03Tristan Hughes?

  Well, we must focus then briefly on Actium before we go on, because this is the crowning glory. We're giving back him his credit, his due for his role in this victory because how central is Agrippa to beating the forces of Mark Antony and Cleopatra at this big naval battle of Actium?

• 29:21Speaker 02

  Well, completely. I mean, he went out to the eastern Mediterranean in advance of Octavius, who followed with the army. By this time, Octavius, of course, is called Caesar. He goes out ahead of him by a year, nearly a year, and harries Mark Antony and Cleopatra's forces and gets them bottled up, really. And then Octavius joins with the army and they rendezvous on the island of Corfu, or Corfu, and they...

• 29:57Speaker 02

  Octavius marches south to the bay, to the small village town settlement of Actium. And in the harbor there is the entire fleet of Mark Antony and Cleopatra, the combined fleet. She is there too. She has brought all the treasure of Egypt with her. And, you know, it's clear that this is going to be the decisive moment. Whoever wins here is really going to take over the world. And there was no, Mark Antony didn't want to give battle on land. And so in the end, it became obviously, it would be a naval battle. And Agrippa had been in command of the navy for the whole of the campaign.

• 30:40Speaker 02

  And he commanded the forces and masterminded the tactics, which eventually won the battle. We should say here that he revolutionized naval tactics. He put new devices onto ships, a kind of grappling hook that was fired by a catapult. It was attached to a chain and this would thud into the enemy's hull. And then they would literally haul themselves alongside and storm the ship. He developed uncollapsible towers on the boats from which these catapults could be fired. All sorts of things like that. And his tactics at Actium were to draw out Mark Antony's ships

• 31:25Speaker 02

  and took advantage of the wind to then turn around and go at them full tilt. And the battle was, they were, both sides were very evenly matched. And the battle, it looked like it might go Mark Antony's way because the Egyptian fleet, which had taken no part in the action but stayed in the bay, suddenly appeared. And, but instead of fighting, it sailed clean through the lines, which by this time were broken because they'd been fighting all day. Cleopatra stopped to pick up Mark Antony and off they headed with all the treasure of Egypt. And you can imagine the effect this had on Mark Antony's sailors.

• 32:07Speaker 02

  And that was the end at Actium. It was an overwhelming victory for Agrippa. And that is probably one of the most decisive battles in the history of the world. At that point, it was only a matter of time before the Roman army under Octavius could finish off Mark Antony and Cleopatra.

• 32:30Tristan Hughes?

  And Agrippa's the man behind that. How fun must it have been to create that story from the viewpoint of Agrippa? And I'm thinking in particularly with the creation, the ingenuity, the thinking of these kind of new contraptions, you know, whilst he's building this fleet, how to tackle these other ships and to kind of do it almost in a weird kind of way, Agrippa's the mad scientist, right, of his engineers, thinking how they're going to challenge this big fleet.

• 32:56Speaker 02

  Yes, well, this is the immense, this is the great thing about Agrippa. He's multi-talented. I mean, he's a brave soldier. He's a formidable tactician. He's a great builder. He's a terrific administrator. And he's politically shrewd enough to never get ahead of his boss.

• 33:14Speaker 02

  I mean, it is astonishing. I mean, and after the victory at Actium, I think Octavius felt he had to win the next battle on his own. And so he sent Agrippa back with the most awful job you could have. Mark Antony's army, which was huge, had surrendered. It was about 100,000 men or something like that. And he said to Agrippa, you take them back to Italy and settle them on the land. Well, this is like the worst nightmare of all you can imagine. So what did Agrippa do? He got back with about 30,000 demobbed legionaries. And he set them to work building the aqueduct around the Bay of Naples,

• 33:56Speaker 02

  the 60-mile aqueduct, the longest in the world, which is at the heart of my first Roman book, Pompeii. It took him 18 months using 30,000 men to build a 60-mile aqueduct, which fed Pompeii and Nola and all these other various towns and ended up in Maecenum, the naval port. Imagine the organisation that this requires, the qualities of leadership. It's staggering.

• 34:23Tristan Hughes?

  And does that aqueduct, did that go around Mount Vesuvius?

• 34:25Speaker 02

  It went around Vesuvius, yes, and was ruptured before the great, when Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD. It was already had been ruptured by the ground beginning to shift as the terrain altered. But I came across Agrippa's name then, when I was writing that book more than 20 years ago. And I thought this guy would be worth writing about.

• 34:48Tristan Hughes?

  I'll come back to him. I'll come back to him. And do we see time and time again with the story of Agrippa as the architect, that he's very much interested in kind of hydraulic engineering, in the bringing of fresh water to settlements and so on?

• 35:01Speaker 02

  Yes, he was, I mean, I have the character reflect at one point that water was his element, really. Fighting on the sea and bringing water into cities. He renovated the aqueducts in Rome. He and repaired the great sewers at the Cloacum Maxima that ran through the centre of Rome. And he built a new aqueduct entirely, the Aqua Virgo. And by the time he had finished, the citizens of Rome were receiving more water per head than the citizens of New York receive today. And

• 35:46Tristan Hughes?

  That's quite a fact.

• 35:46Speaker 02

  Yes, it is quite a fact. And he then, and he built the great aqueduct around the Bay of Naples. He built one at Cologne. And he started work on the great Neme aqueduct with the famous bridge, which still stands. So you were looking here at one of the, one of the great master builders of the world. And it was this substance of hydraulic cement, which was, you know, they were able to use the volcanic sand around the Bay of Naples. They didn't know what it was particularly, but they, they found out that by pounding it very hard and mixing it with lime and water, you had a substance that would set rock hard underwater.

• 36:31Speaker 02

  And this enabled them to build these aqueducts at enormous speed with shuttering. And he used the same sort of techniques when he built the Pantheon. The Pantheon has still, I think, the largest unsupported dome in the world. And how did he manage it? He used pumice stone from around the Bay of Naples, light frothy, it was as light as cardboard really, or paper, but strong. And that bound, that bound the material together to create the roof.

• 37:06Tristan Hughes?

  And you can still see, you know, you can visit the Pantheon today and you can look at the facade and you can see his name right there. I don't, I'm guessing Augustus is there as well, but Augustus's name is not there at all, so just Agrippa's name.

• 37:18Speaker 02

  Let me just remind myself, I've got the book here. It's the thing, it's really made me want to write the book almost more than anything else. There are nine million visitors a year to the Pantheon. It's the most visited site in Italy. And for any listener or viewer who will remember, it says, M. Agrippa, L. F. Cos, Tertium Fecit. Marcus Agrippa, son of Lucius, in his third consulship, did it. I mean, that sort of, that terse language in a way is a clue to the man.

• 37:54Tristan Hughes?

  For someone who had to, you know, who appreciated that he had to play second fiddle to, you know, who is Augustus at that time, the emperor. The fact that he still has that monument standing in Rome with his name. I mean, that is in itself quite a good legacy, I think.

• 38:09Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, no, definitely. I mean, but again, none of the, in Augustus's testament, there's no credit given to Agrippa for any of the buildings, any of the battles or anything else.

• 38:21Tristan Hughes?

  And what does Augustus say? He found Rome a city of brick, left it a city of marble. Should it more be Agrippa founded the brick and left it marble? Or maybe a bit of both for that, yeah?

• 38:30Speaker 02

  Well, he certainly was encouraged by Augustus to do it. And, but he put a lot of his own money into it. And everything was called duly, Aqua Giulio, you know, Aqua Augustus. Everything, he was careful to make sure it was all, the boss got all the credit. That, that's the story of his life.

• 38:50Tristan Hughes?

  And I guess, should we also highlight there, I mean, that kind of economic side of Agrippa, as Augustus's star has risen, as he's become, you know, the first emperor, I guess we should say, so has Agrippa's. And financially, his star has risen too.

• 39:05Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, no, let's not be in any doubt that he became vastly wealthy. And he, he was a member of the imperial family. I mean, he was obliged to divorce his first wife, who was the daughter of Atticus, the great friend of Cicero, and marry a niece of Augustus. And then later he married Augustus's only child, his daughter, Julia. And the price he had to pay for that were the two sons that he had were both taken off him by Augustus, who became their legal father.

• 39:48Speaker 02

  And I don't think that Agrippa always took all this kindly. There was certainly, at one point, he left Rome completely and went to live on Lesbos.

• 40:01Speaker 02

  But was summoned back because Augustus needed him. So this gives the personal, I mean, talking about him in this way makes him just seem a recitation of monuments and battles and so on. But really, in a novel, you've got to try and find the human man. And I just tried to imagine how he must have felt, a proud man who nevertheless had to subsume himself, and indeed, had lost control of his own children.

• 40:26Tristan Hughes?

  And do we see him at all like being a patron to particular artists or particular figures like Augustus's? You know, you think of Virgil and the Aeneid and Mycenus and the like. Can you explore the figure of Agrippa as well? Like, what he would do in his spare time? Was he a bit of a scholar? Did he have people around him who he was very interested in learning more about, or learning more from?

• 40:49Speaker 02

  I think he was much more blunt, practical. I mean, he did the great map of the world, was one of his achievements. He was interested in physical things, certainly in architecture and in engineering. But he doesn't seem to have had any interest at all in the arts. And I did have fun writing a scene at which Mycenus produces his two pet poets, and Agrippa listens to them. And one recites a poem that's nothing but agriculture, and the other one recites something that's filthier than anything he's ever heard in the army camp. And these, of course, are Virgil and Horace.

• 41:30Tristan Hughes?

  Did you have fun, yeah, did you have fun kind of creating the relationship between Agrippa, not between Agrippa and Augustus, but between Agrippa and those other key figures in Augustus's inner circle?

• 41:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, very much. It was, it's fascinating, you know, you have facts, and then you just try to think of the human beings and what it must have been like. And his relationship with Livia, Agrippa's relationship with Livia, the most formidable woman of the ancient world, and I would think. His relationship with his wife, Julia, who was notoriously unfaithful. I mean, bear in mind, he was much older than her. He'd known her when she was a baby. She bore him five children, but was unfaithful. And because towards the end,

• 42:24Speaker 02

  he developed some problem with his leg. We're not sure whether it was gout, arthritis, or ulcer, or something. But anyway, it seems to have killed him in the end. But, and the relationship with Mycenus, the power behind the scenes, you know, the wily kind of schemer, patron of the arts, whose beautiful wife was seduced by Augustus, who of course was notorious for his affairs with other men's wives. They couldn't really object. And yet, at the same time, he was such a terrible hypocrite, introduced all these morality laws when he became chief priest. You cannot help but salute the achievement of Augustus. But the

• 43:08Speaker 02

  man himself does not seem to have been particularly attractive.

• 43:11Tristan Hughes?

  Really?

• 43:12Speaker 02

  I don't think, no. He was cruel, vengeful. There were a few too many stories of him gouging out people's eyes and having people put to death, sons in front of their father, and this sort of thing, for there not to be some kernel of truth in all this. There were no such stories about Agrippa, who I think is an altogether cleaner, straighter kind of character.

• 43:33Tristan Hughes?

  We'll explore their later life together, right after this.

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• 45:14Tristan Hughes?

  So, Robert, we're now way past the Basilevactium at this point. Agrippa has shown how he is capable in so many different theatres of life. And do you think as Augustus gets older, and he doesn't have a clear male heir, do you think he is, he starts to invest more and more power in Agrippa? He does, even if there may be tensions, there might be tensions starting to emerge, he still sees Agrippa as someone he can rely on when he can't act?

• 45:42Speaker 02

  After the Basilevactium, there's no doubt that Agrippa is the number two. And he is the most powerful man in the empire after Augustus. And Augustus names him as his heir, at least until a member of the family can come of age. So there's no doubt that Agrippa is effectively the co-ruler of the world. He has the same powers as a tribune that Augustus has. He is, to all intents and purposes, co-ruler and the chief organizer

• 46:26Speaker 02

  of the army. And the great thing, I mean, Augustus pulls off this wonderful contric, that the facade of the Republic is kept in place. There are still elections, debates in the Senate and so on, provinces are handed out. But the key provinces all belong to Augustus, the ones that have the big armies in them, Gaul, Spain, and so on. And that fascinated me, because that seems to me, in many ways, the way the modern world is going. We have the facade of democracy, but actually, behind the scenes, it's the oligarchs or the billionaires or the trillionaires who are really controlling everything. So,

• 47:07Speaker 02

  yes. And the question, it's very interesting, both for Julius Caesar and for his great nephew, Augustus. There's some reason they don't seem to be able to have sons, certainly not sons, legitimate heirs. And indeed, both of them just had one daughter, both called Julia, obviously. And a lot of the book, the novel, by the end, is about succession planning. I mean, I felt like I was revisiting the TV series. It's who is going to get control of the empire? Who is going to, if we're not going to go back to a system of

• 47:48Speaker 02

  consuls and elections, because we saw where that ended up, we're going to have a strong man running the empire at all times. How is it going to operate? And if Augustus proved nothing else, he proved the importance of the name, you know, the brand, as we would call it. Men were prepared to follow and die Caesar, the man who had the name. They wouldn't be prepared to follow, you know, just some aristocrat. And that becomes very tricky. And in the end, in the distant future, Augustus's succession planning does result

• 48:28Speaker 02

  in a member of the family becoming the emperor. And he is, in fact, the grandson of Agrippa. And that is caligula. So the succession planning didn't work out terribly well.

• 48:41Tristan Hughes?

  But I mean, was it also fun if, once again, putting yourself in Agrippa's shoes, to imagine, yes, we get this idea that Agrippa, you know, he very much always portrayed himself as being Augustus's aide, as not wanting the emperorship himself. Can you imagine personally that maybe at times he was tempted very much to put himself forwards as the successor?

• 49:02Speaker 02

  Yes, well, definitely. I don't think there's any doubt about that. And he bitterly resented some of the people that were being promoted ahead of him. I mean, he didn't have any time for Tiberius, I don't think. And he, of course, I mean, I think he wanted the job, but he wasn't going to assassinate Augustus to get it. Not only because, I think, first of all, out of friendship, but secondly, because he knew that that would just initiate yet another round of civil war and fighting. The only way he could ever get it would be if he was a nameless successor in the will, which he was. Everybody would have thought that, you have to bear in mind, and this is a very strong

• 49:47Speaker 02

  thing in the novel, Augustus is always ill. I mean, constantly on the edge of death. So the question of who is named in his will as his heir is all important. And he did name the heir, he did say Agrippa would take over in the event of my death, or he would advise that. But he kept the will secret. And I think this must have driven Agrippa mad. But he was there, and if everyone thought that he would long outlive Augustus, because he seemed much stronger and fitter. But actually, he died at the age of about 50. And so he never got it. But if something had happened to Augustus, yes, we would have had the emperor Agrippa.

• 50:30Tristan Hughes?

  Because you can imagine some senators or some powerful figures almost kind of leaning towards Agrippa whenever they saw Augustus being ill, thinking, I want to side with this person because he's most likely to be the clear successor.

• 50:41Speaker 02

  Yes, yeah, I mean, there was a lot of power inherent in his position. And he was also, he wasn't much of a speaker, I don't think, or a writer or anything like that, but he was a powerful, brooding presence. I mean, I don't know whether you've seen pictures of the statues of Agrippa, but he looks like a bruiser.

• 50:59Tristan Hughes?

  Quite bloody-faced, yeah.

• 51:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's a heavy, he's a, you know, you wouldn't want to get into a fight with Agrippa, I think, just judging by the look of him.

• 51:09Tristan Hughes?

  He'd say things as they were, as you know.

• 51:11Speaker 02

  He'd say things as they were, and he'd lay about him, I think. He was always in the thick of the fighting, as indeed was Julius Caesar. Augustus, less so.

• 51:22Tristan Hughes?

  A couple of things to explore before we completely wrap up, Robert. One more is on these tensions that do seem to develop at times when Augustus is ill and later on. Regarding the succession, I believe, as well, surrounding this figure of Marcellus.

• 51:36Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 51:37Tristan Hughes?

  So what is this story?

• 51:38Speaker 02

  Well, Marcellus was, now let me get this straight, he was the nephew of Augustus, who had, who, the succession was sort of between Marcellus, his nephew, and Tiberius, the son of his wife Livia. But he had no blood connection with Tiberius. Tiberius was his stepson. Whereas he did share a blood bond with Marcellus. And Marcellus seems to have been charming and more amenable, popular figure. And he settled really on Marcellus being his successor.

• 52:17Speaker 02

  And it gave him accelerated promotion into the senate at the age of 18 and the man in charge of the fabric of the city, in which role he clashed with Agrippa, who had regarded that as his department. And I think there's, in the novel certainly, and I think also in the sources, there is a strong implication that Agrippa eventually said, I've had enough of this, and left Rome and disappeared for the best part of a year. And during the time he was away, Marcellus suddenly died. A young man, probably, you know, about 20, I think, something like that. Nobody quite knew why.

• 53:01Speaker 02

  There's always been suspicions that Livia poisoned him in order to clear the way for Tiberius. It was probably just, you know, the plagues that swept across Rome, constantly. At any rate, this was the reason that Agrippa had to be summoned back by Augustus, because suddenly his succession planning has collapsed. And he saw with deep gloom that Tiberius was heading into the position. And it's at this point that he and Agrippa hatched the scheme that Agrippa should divorce Augustus's niece and marry his daughter. Therefore, any sons that are produced are the grandsons, the blood relatives of Augustus. And that is what Agrippa does.

• 53:46Speaker 02

  And for the second time in his life, when there's a marriage show, and he feels that he's like the stud for the Julio Claudian dynasty, he's been brought in to sire the offspring. And I think to a large degree, that was true. He was, you know, a virile, strong figure and could, and was, you know, an ideal person to father the imperial line.

• 54:14Tristan Hughes?

  And then Augustus takes them away to Tiberius' children afterwards.

• 54:17Speaker 02

  And then he took them away. I don't know if he actually took them out of the household, but he certainly expected to have a say in their education. And, you know, they should have become the emperors in succession to him, but both died young, again, the finger of suspicion pointing unfairly, I think, at Livia. And then Tiberius did succeed.

• 54:41Tristan Hughes?

  And that's another story entirely. But it's quite something like, what I love there is the mentioning that it seems that Agrippa says at one station to Augustus, I've had enough, I'm out. So once again, that gives you the sense that this is probably someone who, for decades, when Augustus and when it was Octavian, Octavius before that, would have told his friend what he thought.

• 55:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:06Tristan Hughes?

  And right out there, this is what I think you should do, you know, these are my thoughts on the matter, is someone who kind of gives his unfiltered thoughts to, you know, who becomes the first emperor of Rome. You can imagine that relationship.

• 55:16Speaker 02

  Yes, absolutely. I mean, you know, all my life, I've written about politics. I was a political journalist. And one thing I did notice is that the top man, the prime minister or whoever, the aides or advisers they like are the ones that give them the unvarnished truth. There, obviously, there's lots of sycophants saying the things they want to hear, but the person they turn to is the one who says, that was a disaster. I mean, you know, you're heading for trouble here. And I think Agrippa fulfilled that role. I think he was very loyal in public. I don't think we ever detect any note of or hint of criticism, although I'm sure it would have been suppressed if there had been any.

• 55:57Speaker 02

  He reserved it for private times. But there are a couple of references in the sources to him leaving, he getting fed up, he'd had enough and going, and also that he was felt to be getting slightly above himself, you know. So he wasn't just a yes man. They needed one another. It was one of the great partnerships in world history.

• 56:22Tristan Hughes?

  And then it ultimately ends with Agrippa's death. Do we know anything about how he dies?

• 56:26Speaker 02

  Well, we do. We know that he died either somewhere around his 51st birthday, either just made 51 or he died at the age of 50. He had retreated to the Bay of Naples. He was increasingly estranged from his wife. Exhausted, old, ailing, he retreated to his villa on the Bay of Naples. We know exactly where it was. It was on the southern slopes of Mount Vesuvius, very close to the coast.

• 56:57Tristan Hughes?

  And close to his aqueduct, I guess, you know.

• 56:59Speaker 02

  And yes, he would, he would have enjoyed the fruits of his own labours. And the villa was discovered in the 20th century and excavated and then covered up again. You can't actually go and see it, but they did take things out from it. And there he died. Augustus was in Greece, hurried back as soon as he knew, heard what had happened. And Agrippa was, was cremated and his ashes were put in the great mausoleum of Augustus. So even in death, he was just given his little niche in the, in the boss's tomb.

• 57:41Speaker 02

  He had wanted to have his own burial spot on the field of Mars, but he didn't get that either.

• 57:48Tristan Hughes?

  So I was actually going to say, so Augustus honours his old friend in death, but at the same time, honours him, but only to an extent where Augustus is still the main focus.

• 57:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, puts him in his place, yes. I think the scene at the end of the book where I have him showing Agrippa where he's going to be interred is my favourite in the whole book, actually, because the exquisite pain for Agrippa of knowing that he's just going to be stuck here, but he can't say, you've got to be joking. He has to say, well, thank you, that will be marvellous. And that's the last time that they're together.

• 58:27Tristan Hughes?

  Robert, this has been fascinating to go through his story. I'm really well to get through it, because there is so many episodes we could talk about, but I think we've covered lots of the big ones. Having written now the book for Agrippa, you've put him back in the spotlight. How do you think we should remember Agrippa today?

• 58:45Speaker 02

  Well, I think he needs, he should be remembered with some, with great respect. I mean, as a soldier, as an administrator, as an engineer, as an architect, as a builder, and as a man who I think genuinely wanted to bring the maximum amount of good to the people. I mean, he built the aqueducts into Rome. He used to provide hundreds, literally hundreds of drinking fountains. And he built bathhouses which could be used both by men and women, and one day a week they were free for everybody. I mean, of course, this had a political purpose to try and make the regime popular.

• 59:29Speaker 02

  But that and the great aqueduct around Vesuvius, which fed a quarter of a million people. I say in the book that he feels that these are his greatest victories in many ways. And I feel that they were. I think that he would have felt that. I think he probably was one of those soldiers which, who actually wearied of war and seeing so many people killed and enjoyed the process of building. And I think in many ways, it's for that he should be remembered.

• 1:00:01Tristan Hughes?

  I know it's out of your comfort zone going through ancient Egypt, but it feels strangely similar in a weird kind of way to Ramesses the Great, who does all this fighting in his early years and then the great building projects of later on and Abu Simbel and the like. But I won't go down too much of that. Robert, this has been absolutely fantastic. Last, but certainly not least, your new novel, all about Agrippa, it is called.

• 1:00:23Speaker 02

  It's called Agrippa with a stroke of imaginative genius. Yes, and it's his memoirs, really. Yes, it is purports to be his memoirs, written on the Bay of Naples, looking back over his life, right back to his birth, and it ends with his death.

• 1:00:43Tristan Hughes?

  Robert, it just goes to me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show.

• 1:00:47Speaker 02

  Thank you for having me on. I've enjoyed it.

• 1:00:49Tristan Hughes?

  Thanks so much for joining us on The Ancients today. I hope you enjoyed the episode. And if you are loving The Ancients, then why not become a History Hit subscriber? As a subscriber, you will have access to hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a new release every week, plus early access and ad-free podcasts. You can sign up at historyhit.com/subscribe. See you in the next episode.

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