The Ancients - Robert Harris on Roman General Agrippa

Episode Date: August 30, 2026

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?MOREHow Slavery Built the Roman EmpireListen on Apple Listen on Spotify Young Caesar v Mark AntonyListen on Apple Listen on Spotify The Ancients is now on YouTube! Watch here: @TheAncientsPodcastPresented 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 SoundsThe 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 for more information.

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Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe. Agrippa. He's 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 statesman, 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 lynchpin of Augustus' Imperium before being forced back into the shadows?

I'm Tristan Hughes, this is the ancients, and to help me answer these questions, I'm thrilled to be joined by the acclaimed and best-selling author Robert Harris. Robert's new book, Agrippa, which charts the general's journey from, from his earliest meetings with Julius Caesar to endless wars to expand the empire is out now. Robert, it is such a pleasure to have you on the podcast. Oh, well, thank you for having me on. It's great to be here. 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. 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 to have been the mayor 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 historical novelists, that's really the perfect situation. 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.

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, 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's there waiting to be restored to his proper place in a way. And you describe him as the bear to Augustus's fox. Now, what do you mean by that? Well, Augustus was not a very healthy man who lived to be 75, but he wasn't, for much of his life, 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, but he was a tremendous soldier, strong as an ox. And really, they complimented 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. 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 looking at the surviving evidence and then creating a compelling narrative from it? 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, 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're at school together, and somehow or other, these two 17, 18-year-olds end up taking over the world. So this is in itself a compelling narrative. It's the ultimate. a buddy movie in a way. And so, you know, one just follows it as they survive and then eventually come to dominate.

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 the. them and what they were feeling and that's really a justification for historical fiction. Agripp 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 where he really came from, what he was actually like, what his marriages

were like, what he felt when Augustus adopted his two chilts, two sons, for instance. How did he feel about that? No, 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.

We'll tackle this kind of chronologically from the beginning to the end. But naturally, I know there's 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 Agrippers? We know pretty well nothing. I mean, we know his father was called Lucius because that 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. 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 Agripartum 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. But as to why they pitched up together in the same. school on the Palatine being taught by Mycenae, 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 it he wanted to take Agrippa and Octavius with him on his campaign in the East, which he never was able to fulfill. It's a puzzle, and that's one of the things I set out to try to solve.

But this is, so the start of Agripper's story proper, it begins also alongside Julius Caesar. So he's a big character right at the beginning. 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 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. 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 and 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 the two of them. And then that both young men became legionaries or joined the legions. Octavius was too sick, typically, to go and fight. But Agrippa did and appears to have fought at the Battle of Munda. That's the Munda, and that's one of Caesar's last big ones in Spain, isn't it? It is Caesar's last great battle, and it's Agrippa's first.

And at the end of the battle, 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 the two of them had, you know, a month or more, a voyage, leisurely voyage with Caesar, having dinner with him and so on. So, yeah, he looms very large in the early life of Agrius. Gripper. And that's the big part of Julius in this story because, I mean, from then on it feels like Agrippa and Octavius. 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. Yeah. Yeah. So they Caesar, when he finished won the battle at Monda 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 news came that Cesar 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, parents to go back and try and claim this inheritance. 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 Lions Den, right, back to Rome with all of these battle-hardened generals, Mark Anthony and so on, you know, vying for power. And the fact that Agrippar and Octavius together decide, yeah, we're going to give it a go. 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 Brundizium 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 his soldiers. 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 legal right to call himself Caesar, which was given to him by his great uncle. So off the two of them go.

And Agrippa is very much his wingman, his sort of, you know, best friend and he watches his back, essentially. 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 realize that, well, that's kind of very much going down the military route and helping him in that sphere more than anything else? 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 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 status of grip, everything that he had. he owed to his friendship with Octavius. And so the two of them set off on a great life's adventure, really, and each needs the other. Do you think that's something we do always need to remember of Agripper, that his fate is very much, whether it's because of his poorer birth status,

probably plays a part in it. His fate from now on is very much entwined with that of Octavia slash Octavian. Yeah, completely. I mean, he's the best friend of, the most, potentially the most powerful man in the world, if Octavius can pull it off. I mean, who wouldn't, as a spirited 18-year-old, want to throw in your lot and do whatever you can?

And so, you know, and so they return 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 Anthony is reluctant to give up the money and so this is the first great clash when and where Octavius makes it

absolutely clear to Mark Anthony 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 and there and 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 the adventure goes on. And in the end, of course, it ends up in war with Mark Anthony, as it was pretty well always going to have to be. And also just before that, there is that brief moment when they, yes, there's war, then their 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. Yes, he was, he was always by his side. I think he was sort of bodyguard in many ways. He didn't have senior military command at that stage because he was very young. And there was a man called Salverianus, who was,

who was more of a senior figure who took charge of the army for Octavius. But gradually Agrippa comes to the fore. He fights in the battles. He's entrusted with certain key tasks. For instance, he is the one who prosecutes in absentia, Cassius. Remember, Brutus and Cassius had been amnested. 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 made a deal with Mark Antony and with Leppardis, 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, Octavus still, fell ill, wasn't able to take part in the Great Battle of Philippi. He was too sick, but Agrippa was there. But Agrippa was there, and he fights. And then he's, from that moment on,

he's very much representing Octavian on the battlefield. I think we've got just a year or so later, the story of Mark Anthony's wife, Fulvia and his brother Lucius in Italy. Well, when I first started, But when I announced that I was going to do the book, and 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. Everybody's confused about it, because the civil wars are endless. So first of all, when you have the civil war, that Caesar wins against Pompey in the Senate, then you have the war between Octavius and Mark Anthony, and then you have the war between Octavius and Mark Anthony now allied against Brutus

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

but he was also the most brilliant organiser. and he's really the father of the Roman Navy. I mean, they faced 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 Anthony. 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. 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 Anthony, he's able to defeat him. Yes. I mean, 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 Mediterranean and 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 harbors, a smaller outer one and a large inner harbor. And it's an immense construction project. I mean, using hydraulic cement, he was the kind of concrete king of ancient Rome. Don't tempt us to put that as the title for this episode. Yeah, the concrete king.

Yes. But he's 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. 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, strategically, Although this isn't as glamorous as, say, the big victory at Actium against Mark Antony several years later, for a grip 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. Yeah, no, absolutely, because not only, I mean, first of all, it was an insult to the honour of Octavius, who was technically supposed to be the governor of Sicily, 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 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. And we'll continue the story of Agrippa.

right after this. Robert, before we keep going ahead chronologically with the Gripper'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? 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 I remember exactly, but in his 20s. And he returned to Rome. At this point, Octavius' 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 his help.

And of course because Octavius was in, you know, he was unpopular, either it was very strongly suggested to Agrippa or Agrippa was shrewd enough to realize this was no time to have a triumph when the boss was in. difficulties and so he forewent the triumph and entered Rome at 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 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 military talent who has to constantly play down his own importance. How much glory can you take from your own victories almost? Yes, a fascinating question to think about in that time period for someone like a gripper. Yeah, and he, so he never had a 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. Well, we must focus then briefly on Actium before we go on because I said,

this is the crown in glory. We're giving back 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? 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 nearly a year, and Harris, Mark Anthony 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, Octavius marches south to the bay, to the small village. town settlement of Actium and in the inner harbour there is the entire fleet of Mark Anthony and Cleopatra, the combined fleet. She is there too. She has brought all the treasure of Egypt with her. And 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 Anthony 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 and he commanded the forces and mastermind of the tactics, which eventually won the battle. We should say here that he revolutionised naval tactics. He put new devices onto ships, a kind of grappling hook that was fired by a catapult that was attached to a chain. And this would thud into the enemy. his hull and then they would literally hold the whole themselves alongside and and storm the ship. He developed a lot and collapsible towers on the on the boats from which from which these catapults could be fired all sorts of things like that and his tactics at actium were to

draw out Mark Anton's ships and took advantage of the of the wind to then turn around and and go at them a full tilt. And the battle was, they were both sides were very evenly matched. And the battle, it looked like it might go Mark Anthony'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 Anthony and off they headed with all the treasure of Egypt. And you can imagine the effect this had on Mark Anthony's sailors, 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 Antoine. Anthony and Cleopatra. 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 like Agrippa is the mad scientist, right, of his engineers, thinking how they're going to challenge this big fleet.

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.

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's sent to Gripper back with the most awful. job you could have. Mark Anthony'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 and 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, 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 Marsenum, the naval port. Imagine the organisation that this requires, the qualities of leadership. It's staggering. And does that aqueduct, did that go around Mount

It went around Vesuvius, yes, and was ruptured before the great ex-the, 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 it. 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 interest in kind of hydraulic engineering in the bringing of fresh water to settlements and so on. 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 sewer at the Cloaca Maximum, ran through the centre of Rome, and he built a new aqueduct entirely, the aquavergo. And by the time he had finished, the citizens of Rome were receiving more water per head than the citizens of New York received today. That's quite a fact right there.

Yes, it is quite a fact. And he then built the great act. aqueduct around the Bay of Naples. He built one at Cologne, and he started work on the great Neem aqueduct with the famous bridge, which still stands. So you were looking here, 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 Nassau. They didn't know what it was particularly, but 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. 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 the material together to create the roof. 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'm guessing Augustus is there as well, but a grip. No, no. Augustus's name is not there at all, so just a gripper's name. Let me just remind myself, I've got the book here. It's the thing, it's the, 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 viewers, we'll remember, it says N. Agrippa, L.F. Koss, Turtium, Feckett.

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. 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. Oh, yeah, no, definitely. I mean, but again, none of the, in Augustus's testament, there's no credit given to agree. for any of the buildings, any of the battles or anything else. What does Augustus say he found Roma city of brick, left it the city of marble?

Should it more be Agrippa founded the brick and left it marble, or maybe a bit of both for that? Well, he certainly was encouraged by Augustus to do it, but he put a lot of his own money into it. And everything was called Juilli, Aqua Giulio, you know, Aqua Augustus, everything. He was careful to make sure it was all the boss got. all the credit. That's the story of his life. 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 agrippers and financially his star has risen too. 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' 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. And I don't think that Agrippar always took all this kindly. There was certainly, at one point, he left Rome completely and went to live on Lesbos, 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, you know, 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, he lost control of his own children. And do we see him as all like being a patron, like to particular artist or particular figures? Like Augustus is, you know, you think of like Virgil and the Aeneid and Mycenae and the like. Like, can you explore the figure of a gripper 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? 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 my scene is produced. is two pet poets, and Agrippa listens to them. And one recites a poem, there's nothing but agriculture, and the other one recites something so it's filthier than anything he's ever heard in the army camp. And these, of course, are Virgil and Horace.

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 is in the circle? 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.

Because towards the end, he developed some problem with his leg. We're not sure whether it was gout, arthritis or ulcer or something. At any rate, it seems to have killed him in the end. And the relationship with Mycenae, 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. I, you cannot help but salute

the achievement of Augustus, but the man himself does not. seemed to have been particularly attractive. Really? 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 and all this. There were no such stories about Agrippa, who I think is an altogether cleaner, straighter kind of character. Well, we'll explore their later life together right after this. Sir Robert, we're now way past the Basil of Actium 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 air, do you think he is, he starts to invest more and more power in Agripper? He does, even if there may be tensions, there might be tensions starting to emerge, he still sees Agripper as someone he can rely on when he can't act. After the Battle of Actium, 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 at all intents and purposes, co-ruler and the chief organizer of the army. And the great thing, I mean, Augustus pulls off this wonderful contraic 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,

ones that have the big armies in them, Goal, Spain, 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 is the oligarchs or the billionaires or the trillionaires who are really controlling everything. So, 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. 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 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 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. But I mean, was it also fun if once again putting yourself in a gripper's shoes to imagine, yes, we get this idea that a gripper, you know, he very much always portrayed himself as being Augustus's aid 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? Yeah, 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, named the successor in the will, which he was, everybody would have thought that you have to bear in mind, and this is a very strong thing in the novel, Augustus is always ill. I mean, constantly is 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 air. 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 or Gripper. Because you can imagine some senators of some powerful figures almost kind of leaning towards Orgrippa whenever they saw Augustus being ill, thinking I want to side with this person because he's most

likely to be a clear successor. 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 a gripper, but he looks like a bruiser. It's quite a pretty faced, yeah.

Yeah, he's a heavy, you know, you wouldn't want to get into a fight with a gripper, I think, is it just judging by the look of him. He'd say things as they were. 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. A couple of things to explore before we completely wrap up, Robert. One more is on these kind of 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.

Yes. So what is this story? Well, Marcellus was, now let me get this straight, he was the nephew of Augustus, who had, 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.

And he 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 novels, certainly, and I think also in the sources, there was 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, you know, about 20, I think, something like that. Nobody quite knew why. 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. marry his daughter, therefore any sons that are produced are the grandsons, the blood relatives of Augustus. And that is what Agrippa does. And for the second time in his life, when there's a marriage showman, 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 was an ideal person to father the imperial line. And then Augustus takes them away to rear his own children afterwards.

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 Libya. And then Tiberius did succeed. And that's another story entirely.

But it's quite something like, well, I love there, is you mentioning that it seems that Agrippa says at one stage, you know, to Augustus, I've had enough amount. 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. Yeah. And right out there, this is what I think you should do. You know, these are my thoughts on the matter.

It's someone who kind of gives his unfiltered thoughts to, you know, who becomes the first emperor of Rome. You can imagine that relationship. 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 advisors they like are the ones that give them the unvarned. punish truth. 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. He reserved it for private times. But there are a couple of references and the sources to him leaving, he'd 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. And then it ultimately ends with Agrippa's death. Do we know anything about how he dies?

Well, we do. We know that he died either somewhere around his 51st birth. 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. He 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. And close to his aqueduct, I guess. And yes, 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 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 boss's tomb. He had wanted to have his own burial spot on the field of Mars, but he didn't get that either. So I was actually going to say, so Augustus honours his old friend in death, but at the same time, honors him, but only to an extent where Augustus is still the main focus. Yeah, it puts him in his place, yes. I think the scene at the end of the book where I have him showing a gripper where he's going to be interred is my favourite in the whole book actually

because the exquisite pain for a gripper of knowing 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

I'm Robert this has been fascinating to go through his story. I'm really well to get through because there is so many episodes we could talk about but I think we've covered lots of the big ones. Having written

the book for Gripper, you've put him back in the spotlight. How do you think we should remember a gripper today? Well, I think he needs, you should be remembered 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. 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 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. I know it's out of your comfort zone going to 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 an Abu Symbol 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 Agripper, it is called? It's called Agripper,

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. Robert, it just goes to me to say, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show. Thank you for having me on. I've enjoyed it.

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 slash subscribe. See you in the next episode.