Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa

• 1. Introduction

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  Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa was born around 63 BC into a plebeian family of no great distinction in Roman public life, and yet he would become the man without whom, in the words of historian Glen Bowersock, Octavian might never have become emperor. His name appears on the Pantheon in Rome, the inscription preserved on a building that has stood for nearly two thousand years. How did a boy from the Italian countryside, born with a breech birth so difficult it may have killed his mother, rise to command the most powerful navy in the ancient world, nearly match the constitutional authority of an emperor, and leave his mark on the shape of Rome itself? The answers run through naval battles and diplomatic crises, public works and political intrigue, three marriages and a death at fifty that left Augustus mourning for over a month.

• 2. A Plebeian Education

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  Pliny the Elder recorded that Agrippa's cognomen derived from the manner of his birth: he came into the world feet-first, and the Latin word for that condition gave him his name. The same source noted he walked with a limp as a child. His father was named Lucius Vipsanius, and his mother's name has not survived. He had an elder brother who shared his father's name and a sister named Vipsania Polla.

  Scholars including Victor Gardthausen and David Ridgway have argued that Agrippa's family originated in Pisa, in Etruria. His family most likely gained Roman citizenship after the Social War in 87 BC, and like many Italians they moved to Rome to take advantage of the social mobility that followed. Agrippa's family was wealthy by ordinary Roman standards but had never been prominent in the circles of the highest aristocracy.

  The turning point came when he was enrolled alongside the boy who would become Augustus. Agrippa and Octavian were the same age and were educated together, forging a friendship that would last until Agrippa's death. In 45 BC, Julius Caesar sent both young men to study at Apollonia on the Illyrian coast alongside the Macedonian legions. It was there, in the fourth month of their stay, that news arrived of Caesar's assassination in March 44 BC.

  Agrippa and his friend Quintus Salvidienus Rufus urged Octavian to march on Rome immediately with the Macedonian troops. Octavian chose instead to sail to Italy with a small retinue, and on arrival he learned Caesar had adopted him as legal heir. That decision would set the course for everything that followed.

• 3. Building a Fleet From Scratch

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  Sextus Pompeius had cut off grain shipments to Rome by dominating the seas around Sicily, which was why Agrippa was made consul for 37 BC even though he was well below the usual minimum age of 43. Octavian had already suffered a humiliating naval defeat against Sextus, and he needed his most capable friend to fix the problem.

  Agrippa's solution was audacious. He cut through the strips of land separating the Lacus Lucrinus from the sea, forming an outer harbour, and joined lake Avernus to the Lucrinus to create an inner harbour. The resulting complex was named Portus Julius in Octavian's honour. Beyond the harbor itself, Agrippa developed larger ships and an improved form of grappling hook, giving his forces a technological edge.

  He also declined a triumph for his earlier military successes in Gaul, where he had put down a rising of the Aquitanians and fought Germanic tribes, becoming the next Roman general to cross the Rhine after Julius Caesar. When offered the triumph, Agrippa refused on the grounds that it would be improper to celebrate during a time of trouble for Octavian. That refusal said something about how Agrippa understood his own role.

  In 36 BC, the fleet was ready. Storms initially forced a withdrawal, but Agrippa commanded the second attempt. At Mylae and Naulochus, his forces destroyed all but seventeen of Sextus' ships and compelled most of his forces to surrender. For this feat, Agrippa received a corona navalis decorated with the beaks of ships. As the historian Dio remarked, this was a decoration given to nobody before or since.

• 4. Actium and Its Aftermath

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  On the 2nd of September 31 BC, Agrippa commanded Octavian's fleet at the Battle of Actium against the forces of Marcus Antonius and Cleopatra. The path to that battle had involved weeks of preliminary maneuvering along the Greek coast, including Agrippa's capture of the strategically important city of Methone at the southwest of the Peloponnese, a naval battle at Patrae against Antony's supporter Quintus Nasidius, and the timely arrival at Actium that turned around an ambush launched by Gaius Sosius.

  Dio records that in the days before the decisive engagement, Octavian learned Antony and Cleopatra planned to break through his blockade. Octavian initially wanted to let their flagships pass and pursue with lighter vessels. Agrippa objected: Antony's ships, though larger, could outrun Octavian's if they hoisted sails, and Antony's fleet had just been struck by storms, making now the right moment to fight. Octavian followed his friend's advice, and the victory that followed gave him mastery of Rome.

  Two years after the battle, in 28 BC, Octavian gave Agrippa the hand of his niece Claudia Marcella Major in marriage, and the two men held a consulship together. In 27 BC they held a third consulship together, and that same year the Senate bestowed on Octavian the imperial title of Augustus.

  In commemoration of Actium, Agrippa built the original Pantheon, dedicated during his third consulship. That building was destroyed in AD 80, but Emperor Hadrian used its design when constructing his own Pantheon around 125, and the later building's inscription preserves the original text naming Agrippa.

• 5. Rome Remade in Marble

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  Between battles, Agrippa remade the physical fabric of Rome. By 33 BC, he had become the first Curator Aquarum, the official in charge of the city's water supply. He renovated the Aqua Marcia aqueduct and extended its pipes to reach more of the city. He cleaned out and enlarged the Cloaca Maxima, the great sewer running beneath Rome. Streets were repaired, baths were built, porticoes were erected, and gardens were laid out.

  It was unusual for an ex-consul to accept the lower-ranking position of aedile, an official responsible for Rome's buildings and public festivals. Agrippa did so anyway. He staged lavish public spectacles and gave a boost to the public display of works of art. Augustus would later boast that he had found Rome a city of brick and left it of marble. That claim rested heavily on what Agrippa had done.

  After his third consulship, Agrippa spent time in Gaul reforming provincial administration, adjusting the taxation system, and building roads and aqueducts. The network of roads he built there came to be known collectively as the Via Agrippa, and some of those roads still exist today, either as footpaths or as working highways.

  In 29 BC, Agrippa established a standard for the Roman foot and defined a pace as five of those feet, with an imperial Roman mile equaling 5,000 Roman feet. Under his supervision, Julius Caesar's long-held plan for a complete survey of the Roman Empire was finally carried out. Agrippa constructed a circular map of the known world, which Augustus had engraved on marble and placed in the colonnade built by Agrippa's own sister Polla.

• 6. Power, Exile, and Return

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  Agrippa's friendship with Augustus was tested by the jealousy of Augustus's nephew and son-in-law Marcus Claudius Marcellus. Traditional accounts hold that Agrippa left Rome, formally to govern the eastern provinces, though he sent only his representative to Syria and remained at Lesbos himself, governing by proxy. Some historians have read this as honourable exile. Others, placing the events in the context of the crisis of 23 BC, argue it was a calculated strategic positioning: Augustus may have placed a loyal lieutenant in command of a significant army as insurance, in case the political settlement he was attempting to negotiate collapsed and he needed military backing.

  Marcellus died within a year of Agrippa's departure, and Augustus recalled him immediately. In 23 BC, as part of what became known as the Second Constitutional Settlement, Agrippa was granted proconsular imperium for five years. In 18 BC this was extended to cover the senatorial provinces as well, and he was granted tribunicia potestas, the powers of a tribune of the plebeians, without having to hold the office itself. These powers were considerable: veto authority over the acts of the Senate and other magistracies, the right to present laws to the People for approval, and the sacred status of a tribune's person, meaning anyone who harmed him or blocked his political acts could lawfully be killed.

  Augustus's confidant Maecenas reportedly advised him to bind Agrippa more closely by making him a son-in-law. In 21 BC, Augustus induced Agrippa to divorce his second wife Claudia Marcella Major and marry Julia the Elder, Augustus's own daughter and the widow of Marcellus. Through that marriage Agrippa became the father of Gaius Caesar and Lucius Caesar, both adopted by Augustus as heirs; of Julia the Younger; and of Vipsania Agrippina, who would become the mother of the emperor Caligula and grandmother of Nero.

• 7. Death and Legacy

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  Agrippa's last campaign was the beginning of the conquest of the upper Danube River region, which would become the Roman province of Pannonia in 13 BC. He died in Campania in 12 BC at the age of 50-51. He had built a tomb for himself, but Augustus had his remains placed in the Mausoleum of Augustus instead. A posthumous son was named Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa Postumus in his honour.

  Augustus honoured Agrippa with a magnificent funeral and spent over a month in mourning. He oversaw the education of Agrippa's children personally. The Roman tribe Agrippia was named in his honour.

  Beyond the battlefield, Agrippa was also a writer, and an autobiography he composed is referenced in ancient sources, though it has not survived. His geographic work endured in physical form through the marble map placed in his sister's colonnade.

  Glen Bowersock's assessment cuts to the point: Agrippa deserved the honours Augustus heaped upon him, and it is conceivable that without Agrippa, Octavian would never have become emperor. The Roman tribe named for Agrippa, the roads still walked in France, and the inscription that Hadrian chose to keep on the Pantheon rather than replace with his own name all point toward the same conclusion: Agrippa's imprint outlasted his lifetime by centuries.