Marcus Agrippa: Right-hand Man of Caesar Augustus (41 page)

Like the Greek statue, guests attended the baths nude. They changed out of their clothes in a public locker-room where they could leave their belongings in alcoves. Fitness enthusiasts could avail themselves of the colonnaded exercise yard outside. Keen swimmers could use the
Euripus
, a manmade canal fed directly by the
Aqua Virgo
– indeed, an estimated 20 per cent of the water it carried was just for this purpose – which extended right down to the Tiber.
²²¹
The first to try the fresh spring water as it filled the canal and bathing pools were struck by its coldness, clarity and purity. The soft, cool water was considered particularly fine to swim in and the poet Martial declared that it was so brilliantly clear that an observer could scarcely perceive it even was there, and only the polished marble surface over which it flowed, with barely a ripple, revealing it.
²²²
Seneca used to mark the beginning of the New Year by taking a cold plunge in the
Virgo
, while Ovid hung around its porticoes to enjoy the views of the
Campus Martius
, and to find women.
²²³

To the west of the bathing complex, Agrippa created an immense artificial lake, the
Stagnum Agrippae
, but about which little is known. Completing and uniting these leisure facilities, between
Euripus
and the artificial lake Agrippa created a great park called the
Horti Agrippae
. Eager to leave Rome’s crowded streets and cramped alleyways, people thronged the park’s gravel paths to enjoy the manicured lawns and careful plantings, managed fishponds and collections of artworks.
²²⁴
Art mattered to Agrippa, and it was important to him that it could be enjoyed by all. He made an impassioned speech during his lifetime on the subject of public ownership of art, about which Pliny the Elder later wrote:

Among the many items put on display in the new Gardens which bore his name, Agrippa dedicated statues he had purchased on his travels in Asia.
²²⁶
The combined effect of the lavish development of temple, baths, canal, lake and park, which together transformed the unkempt
Campus Martius
into a manicured playground for the Roman people, was one of opulence and splendour. It was made all the more appealing for its accessibility to all classes of society with free admission. For Agrippa it was the manifestation on the grandest scale yet of his personal belief in
mens sana in corpore sano
, ‘a sound mind in a healthy body’ – that society’s well-being could be improved through a publicly encouraged culture of bathing and art.
²²⁷
Whether he was in Rome in June to inaugurate the attractions is not recorded.

Communities across Italy also received benefits from Agrippa’s deep purse. A building erected at Brixia (modern Brescia) and a new basilica at Septempeda (San Severino Marche) bear evidence of his generosity.
²²⁸
At Pompeii, graffiti scratched on a painted wall outside the Nucerian Gate, which include the words
balneus Agrippae
(the rest is illegible), may refer to a bathhouse named after the great commander.
²²⁹
Given the thrice consul’s known interest in the pleasures offered by water, it was a fitting name for the establishment.

By 19 BCE Vergil had completed his epic work, the
Aeneid
. In Book 8, Vergil describes the scene depicted on the shield of Aeneas. He finally accorded Agrippa his due in the poetic account of the Battle of Actium:

Poetic licence might prevent it from being an accurate depiction of Agrippa’s role, but at least his place in the legend was now assured. Agrippa is known to have written a memoir during his lifetime, like many Roman commanders did.
²³¹
Sadly it has completely vanished so we cannot read his own version of the naval battle. Unfortunately also for Vergil, in July of that year he was travelling through Greece and by chance met Augustus’ party in Athens, which was in a fine mood on its return from the east. The 21-year-old Ti. Claudius Nero had installed the pro-Roman Tigranes on the Armenian throne and placed the crown on his head with his own hands; and on the banks of the River Euphrates the
signa
, along with the surviving Roman prisoners, were handed over to Augustus by Frahâta IV on 12 May – perhaps concluding the covert negotiations originally brokered by Agrippa.
²³²
Vergil was persuaded to return to Italy with the imperial family. Unexpectedly he fell ill in Megara and when the group reached Brundisium on 21 September, the poet died.
²³³
It was a tragic way to end what had been a fantastically triumphant oriental tour for the
princeps
.

At Agrippa’s home, however, there was reason to be cheerful. Iulia had given birth to a daughter, the couple’s second child. She was named Vipsania Iulia Agrippina (more often referred to as Iulia the Younger).
²³⁴

Agrippa’s return to Rome was highly anticipated by Augustus. The periodic outbreaks of public disorder had still not been contained and his life continued to be the subject of plots.
¹
It had become crystal clear to him that Agrippa was indispensable. He needed his right-hand man not only for his willingness to go to the furthest frontiers to corral the motley confederation of disparate peoples that made up the empire, but also to help him govern the high-maintenance, petulant population of Rome. He realized how completely he had come to rely on his best friend. Privately, Agrippa must have arrived at the same conclusion. It would be years before his son Caius – Augustus’ only grandchild and direct descendant – would be eligible to enter politics. Until that time came, Agrippa would remain his most vital ally and peerless confidant, and the natural successor as
princeps
should Augustus’ life end before his own (
fig. 8
,
plate 2
).
²

Augustus publicly recognized Agrippa’s elevated status in 18 BCE. When the five-year power of
imperium proconsulare
, originally granted to him in 23 BCE, expired at the start of the year, Augustus saw to it that it was renewed.
³
Despite innumerable temptations over many years, Agrippa had remained unswervingly loyal to Augustus. He had demonstrated he could be trusted like no other man. In Augustus’ eyes he had earned the right to continue to have authority to govern all the imperial provinces – and the armies stationed there – for another five years. But this time, there was to be more. Augustus chose Agrippa – in Tacitus’ words – as ‘his associate (
socius
) in power’.
⁴
It was a highly significant development. Dio writes ‘Agrippa was promoted to the supreme power, one might say, by him’, explaining,

Agrippa was his partner in power. On account of his personal authority (
auctoritas
) Augustus was still the senior man of the two, but their executive powers were now virtually identical. Important was not to be seen as ruling as a tyrant encapsulated by the terrifying Latin word
dominatio
. Augustus was extremely careful to avoid any suggestion that he was a king in all but name, or that Agrippa was his co-regent.
⁶
Their titles and powers were those of the traditional magistrates of the Roman constitution. Yet it was also a consummately pragmatic solution which suited the Roman political temperament. Just as there were two consuls of the
Res Publica
in Rome, so there were two supreme caretakers of the greater Roman Empire, and the powers of each were also explicitly defined in law and limited in duration.
⁷
In this way, while his legal powers were equally matched by another’s, Augustus could not be portrayed as a
dictator
–or worse as
rex
, king.

There were dissenters. Schemes were hatched – or so it was supposed. The regime began to show signs of paranoia. ‘Many immediately and many later were accused,’ writes Dio, ‘whether truly or falsely, of plotting against both the emperor and Agrippa.’
⁸
An insight into how Agrippa felt about power and government is preserved in a proverb in which Seneca records that Agrippa ‘used to say that he was greatly indebted to’.
⁹
The origin of the maxim is itself revealing. The historian Sallust (C. Sallustius Crispus) – who was a
novus homo
from a provincial family, became a politician in Rome and might have been known to Agrippa – wrote about Rome’s war of 111–105 BCE against the Numidians. Before Micipsa, king of the Numidians, died he called for his natural sons Adherbal and Hiempsal, and his nephew by adoption, Iugurtha, to come to him. He explained it was his great wish that all three men would share his kingdom among them after his passed away. He told them,

Figure 8. Several portrait busts survive which have been identified as Agrippa. The most recognisable is the head from Gabii, as featured in a nineteenth century German textbook.

After the king died Iugurtha arranged for Hiempsal to be assassinated, and Adherbal fled to Rome to seek sanctuary. A high-level commission was set up in Rome and went to Numidia to negotiate a treaty on behalf of the refugee, but Iugurtha bribed the officials in return for the best lands. In 113 he declared war on Adherbal and, despite the intervention of a second Roman commission (which he also bribed), he took the city the man had retreated to and executed his cousin. He went too far, however, and killed Roman citizens and those of her Italian allies who had stood with Adherbal. Outraged by the violation, Rome declared war on Iugurtha in 112. Using bribery, treachery and trickery he continued to outwit the Roman generals sent to defeat him. Finally his father-in-law Bokchus, king of Mauretania, negotiated a peace treaty which, unbeknownst to Iugurtha, included him being handed over to the Romans. Finally captured by betrayal he was thrown into the Tullianum jail where he was left to rot. More than a war story, it was a tale of moral decay. It revealed the extent to which the ethical code, which had served the
Res Publica
so well in the past and had enabled Rome to defeat the other African power Carthage, had degenerated: the public interest had been displaced by self-interest. It was a state of affairs Agrippa evidently wanted to change in his own day. The insight that ‘harmony makes small things grow, the lack of harmony makes great things decay’ informed Agrippa’s view of the world tells us much about the man’s political outlook.

To work, political rule by the two associates required not only that concord truly existed between the two partners but also that the Senate and People believed it to be a true state of affairs. To convince them, the masters of image making turned again to the mints. Soon thousands of coins entered circulation, each bearing the image of the two men sitting side by side in their togas on curule chairs (
plate 28
), projecting the reassuring message of two loyal colleagues working together as magistrates in the service of the Roman People.
¹¹

They also turned to the emotional power of sacred ritual by laying on a lavish display of
pietas
to their homeland and the gods. In Roman politics a magistrate who showed humility and gratitude to the traditional gods was certain to gain the approval of voters. To imbue the regime and the state with divine blessings, in consultation with Agrippa, Augustus resurrected a religious event which had been long abandoned. Called the ‘Century Games’ (
Ludi Saeculares
), they celebrated a
saeculum
, the maximum length of a man’s life, reckoned as 110 years.
¹²
As the last recorded Games were held in the 140s BCE Augustus had to use the Sybilline Books to contrive the timing to align with his schedule.
¹³
The traditional format of the
Ludi Saeculares
comprised of sacrifices and theatrical performances held in honour of Dis Pater and Proserpina on the
Campus Martius
over three consecutive days and nights. In February 17 BCE, the Senate consented to the proposed event to take place during the summer of that year. Augustus and Agrippa, as tribunes and leading members of the college of the
Quindecimviri sacris faciundis
, were placed in charge of organizing them.
¹⁴
A key innovation they introduced was the dedication of the Games, not to the customary deities of the underworld, but to the Fates (Moerae), the goddesses of childbirth (Ilythiae), the Earth Mother (Terra Mater) and the Sun (Sol). This repositioning from darkness to light, from death to rebirth, better suited the return of a new golden age, indeed, of a ‘golden race’.
¹⁵
The organizers also included the Aventinus and Palatinus Hills for the first time as venues. Showing a sure knack for publicity, it would be promoted as a once-in-a-lifetime experience. At the start of summer, just before the opening of the Games, heralds wandered the city and ‘invited all the people to a spectacle, such as they had never witnessed and never would again’.
¹⁶
Augustus and Agrippa, along with the other members of the
Quindecimviri
, sat on a tribunal first in the Capitol and then on the Palatine from which they distributed to the people – all except freedmen and slaves – the required purifying preparations. These
lustralia
consisted of torches, brimstone and pitch. The population later assembled in these sacred places and in the temple of Diana on the Aventinus, each person bringing gifts of wheat, barley and beans, and kept vigils to the fatal sisters.