Read Marcus Agrippa: Right-hand Man of Caesar Augustus Online
Authors: Lindsay Powell
Tags: #Bisac Code 1: HIS002000, #HISTORY / Ancient / General / BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Military, #Bisac Code 2: BIO008000 Bisac Code 3: HIS027000
Marcus Agrippa: Right-hand Man of Caesar Augustus (44 page)
While touring the prosperous seaside town of Lampasakos (near modern Lapeski), noted for its reverence for Priapus, Agrippa was smitten by a work of the master sculptor Lysippos.
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The statue was called the Fallen Lion and depicted the noble animal in its moment of death. Agrippa passionately believed that great art should be displayed for all people to enjoy, not just a privileged few, and he personally set an example for others to follow. He purchased the piece, had it packaged up, transported to Rome and ‘dedicated it in the sacred precinct between the Lake and the Euripus’ on the
Campus Martius
.
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He also paid the people of Kyzikos in neighbouring Mysia the enormous sum of 1,200,000
sestertii
for two paintings, one of Ajax and the other of Venus, and had them shipped home for public display.
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The city had another reason to be grateful to Agrippa. In 20 BCE, while he was travelling through the Orient, Augustus had taken away the city’s freedom; Agrippa now formally restored it.
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With short layovers as the need arose, the flotilla sailed on down the coast. Dedications and statues of him or Iulia as the wife of Agrippa found at Mytilene, Smyrna, Samos, Kalymnos, Kos and Keramos hint that the couple stopped there on their journey.
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In Lykia they may have stopped at Letoon, Myra – where an inscription hails Agrippa as ‘benefactor and savior of the Lykian people’ – and Patara.
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Along the southern coast of Asia the shipping lanes were free of pirates these days and the seas were regularly patrolled by ships of the Roman navy. Cyprus provided an obvious stop
en route
to their final destination. It was a prosperous island. Strabo notes how its fertile lands produced wine and oil of good quality and a sufficient supply of grain to feed its own population.
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Its political and religious leadership was particularly mindful of its Roman overlords. The people of Paphos, delighted to see the wife of the proconsul, raised a statue to her.
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Their calendar began with the month of October which they had already named after Augustus. Six years before Agrippa’s arrival, the people had voted to rename the second month of 30 days’ duration after him –
Agrippaios
, equating with 2 November to 1 December in the Julian calender.
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What Agrippa thought of the unusual honour is not recorded.
Agrippa finally reached Syria around mid-15 BCE. Antiocheia on the Orontes River (Antakya in Turkey) was the city Roman officials usually chose as their base of operations. The city had been founded in around 307 BCE by one of the successors of Antigonos Monophthalmos, a general of Alexander the Great. Later captured by Seleukos (Seleucus) I Nikator over subsequent years, it developed into a cosmopolitan city. Sprawling beneath Mount Silpios, Seleucid surveyors had laid out the main street some 2.5km (1.6 miles) long, running south-west to north-east, following the direction of the river (
map 17
).
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Streets ran off it in a gridiron pattern, forming regular residential and commercial blocks (
insulae
).
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An island in the middle of the Orontes, to the west of the main city, was the location of the palace complex that was the home of Roman governors of the province of Syria, from the time Cn. Pompeius Magnus conquered the remnants of the Seleucid Empire in 64 BCE; it was likely here that Agrippa chose to lodge. Ranking alongside Alexandria, Athens and Rome, Antiocheia was considered one of the truly great cities of the day. The city’s rulers competed to leave to their successors a more beautiful place than they had inherited.
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Roman benefactors, too, among them Iulius Caesar, Augustus and King Herodes, added to the material fabric of the urban environment. Through their generosity the city’s amenities included temples and shrines to Minos, Demeter, Herakles and Iupiter Capitolinus; a theatre, a
stoa
, a city hall, colonnades, and, in the second century BCE, King Antiochus IV built the largest bathing complex in all of Asia, containing no fewer than ten baths. Crystal-clear water was channelled from natural springs outside the city through aqueducts to public fountains, baths and residential neighbourhoods.
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Not to be outdone, Agrippa made his own mark upon Antiocheia. Beyond the east gate he constructed an entirely new residential area, enlarged the public theatre with an additional zone of seating and paid for baths, which were named after him.
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Map 17. Plan of Antiocheia.
Ever restless, Agrippa was soon occupied with the business of state elsewhere. He left the city and travelled the 265km (164 miles) south along the coast road to
Colonia Iulia Augusta Felix Berytus
(Beirut), the first city of veterans to be founded in the province some years earlier.
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In his official capacity he would assign lands to the retired soldiers of
Legiones
V
Macedonica
and VIII
Augusta
to bolster development of the fledgling community.
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Encouraging the success of such
coloniae
was important to the long-term stability of regions of the empire where conflict was still fresh in the memories of populations, as at Patrae in Achaea and Cartago Nova or Legio in Hispania Citerior. Retired troops acted as advocates for the Roman way of life through trade with local people and by demonstrating the rule of law.
Returning to Antiocheia again the proconsul learned that an earthquake had damaged parts of the city. Agrippa assisted with repairs.
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He paid for the rebuilding of the stadium, and on its completion, was able to watch an event staged there.
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Discovering that his friend was only 500km (310 miles) away, Herodes urgently sent an invitation to Agrippa to join him in Hierosolyma.
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Agrippa may have politely declined the first invitation, but the request was ‘greatly pressed’, notes Josephus, ‘and to it Agrippa agreed, and came into Iudaea, whereupon Herodes omitted nothing that might please him.’
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Agrippa’s delegation – presumably including Iulia and the two boys – set sail from the port at Seleucia in Pieria and arrived at Caesarea on the Sea sometime in the autumn of 15 BCE with the intention of not staying the winter.
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There was much to see in this most ancient country. The king was proud of his nation’s identity and religion, yet he was mesmerically drawn to Classical material culture.
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He trod a fine line: to rule his own people he had to project an image of orthodoxy, while to the outside world he wished to present himself as modern and a cosmopolitan. Over decades he had indulged his passion for building on a vast scale, blending Greek and Roman with Jewish architectural traditions. Herodes was eager to parade his Roman guest before his work. He proved to be the keen tour guide, and,
entertained him in his new-built cities, and showed him the edifices he had built, and provided all sorts of the best and most costly dainties for him and his friends, and that at Sebastia and Caesarea, about that port that he had built, and at the fortresses which he had erected at great expense, Alexandrium, and Herodium, and Hyrcania.
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Agrippa would, no doubt, have been fascinated with the engineering minutiae of Herodes’ constructions. Herodium, an immense artificial hill at the top of which was a fortified palace with all modern conveniences and comforts, and just being completed at the time of Agrippa’s visit, was where he intended to be buried.
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Sebastia (Sebaste), named after Augustus, was an ancient town in Samaria which Herodes completely rebuilt in the grandest Roman style.
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The client-king was especially proud of the artificial harbour called Sebastos he had built at Caesarea on the Sea. Begun in 22 or 21 BCE and already several years in the making, his engineers had sunk moles of giant man-made blocks and laid them one on top of the other to form into jetties and breakwaters.
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Excavations have revealed the dimensions of at least one of these ‘blocks’ to be 11.5m (37.8ft) long by 15m (49.2ft) wide by 2.4m (7.9ft) deep.
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To make them, his civil engineers created box-like formworks of timber uprights and horizontal planking with elaborate lap joints and mortising, and tie beams to prevent them collapsing inwards.
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The inner and outer sides of the formworks were filled with hydraulic mortar, then towed off shore and sunk. Rubble or aggregate (
caementa
) and mortar of volcanic
pozzolana
from Italy was poured into the open cavity, which cured by chemical interaction with the water to form concrete, and stone was laid over the top above sea level to form roadways. On the outer harbour wall the megalomaniacal Herodes was erecting the ‘tallest and most magnificent tower’.
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When finished it would contain chambers with high-level views over this cosmopolitan city which could be enjoyed by Herodes and members of his royal family when visiting, and, on account of its great height, the tower would also function as a lighthouse at night.
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It was state of the art for the first century BCE and precisely the sort of engineering project involving massive scale and moving water that Agrippa would delight in seeing first-hand. Indeed, Agrippa might even have proposed to Herodes the idea for the harbour – or ways to build it – when he visited him years before in Lesbos.
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Agrippa had personal experience of constructing a harbour – the
Portus Iulius
almost two decades before – and he could have readily suggested architects and surveyors to the king who could help him realize his vision using that most quintessential of Roman technologies, hydraulic concrete.
107
The visitors finally reached the nation’s capital. Herodes arranged a formal entrance for his honoured guest and personally ‘conducted him to the city of Hierosolyma, where all the people met him in their festival garments, and received him with acclamations’.
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The warm welcome for the pagan Roman seemed genuine. In turn, Agrippa showed great interest in the religious sensibilities of his monotheistic hosts. Showing his respect, he offered a hecatomb – the sacrifice of 100 cattle – to the god of the Jews, ‘and feasted the people, without omitting any of the greatest dainties that could be obtained.’
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The attention to detail, so typical of Agrippa, would have pleased Herodes and his subjects very much. To mark the visit, the client-king had had his friend’s name inscribed over one of the gates to the Temple.
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Meanwhile, Iudaea worked its magic on the Roman visitor:
He also took so much pleasure there, that he abode many days with them, and would willingly have stayed longer, but that the season of the year made him make haste away; for as winter was coming on, he thought it not safe to go to sea later, and yet he was of necessity to return again to Ionia.
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Perhaps Agrippa was just being polite, but that seems unlikely. In Herodes the Roman proconsul had found a genuine friend. In a final flourish to what had been a splendidly successful state visit, Herodes lavished gifts on his guest and then escorted his friend and his entourage to the port as crowds scattered flowers along the route.
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Having weighed anchor, the oarsmen rowed in practised unison and the sleek ships set off on their homeward voyage. There was a long trip ahead of them. Agrippa would not be residing for the winter in Antiocheia, but at Mytilene.
His choice of destination may have been caused by the reports of deteriorating political situation in the Crimea. Agrippa had been alerted to the activities of an usurper of the throne to the Cimmerian Bosporus located on the northern shores of the Euxine (Black) Sea.
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His name was Scribonius. He was a man claiming to be the son of Mithradates VI of Pontus and to have received the kingdom legitimately from Augustus after the death by suicide of Asander, the late king.
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Agrippa did not accept this version of events and wrote to Polemon, the present king of Pontus who was geographically closer to the trouble spot, with instructions to move quickly to expel Scribonius. Meanwhile the people of the kingdom had taken matters into their own hands and assassinated the pretender. The crisis was already over when Polemon berthed his ships at the dock at Tanaïs. Complicating matters, the arrival of Polemon led to fears that he would lay his own claim to the kingdom and the local people resisted his intervention in what they considered an internal matter.
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A battle ensued, which resulted in Polemon sacking the city, yet undaunted, the people continued their resistance.
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Judging the situation to be spiralling out of control, early in the spring of 14 BCE Agrippa himself now set off for the Crimea with a fleet of ships to personally take charge. Before his departure, Agrippa wrote to Herodes asking for ships, and the king immediately and enthusiastically responded to the request, but when his fleet, delayed by winds at Chios, reached Lesbos its admiral found the Roman ships and their admiral had already left.
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Herodes sailed on and finally caught up with the proconsul at Sinope in Pontus (Sinop on Cape Ince in Turkey).
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By Josephus’ account, Agrippa was delighted by the arrival of his Judaean friend, and quite astonished that he would willing leave his kingdom to come to his assistance.
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With sails unfurled, the combined allied fleet prepared to set sail for the Cimmerian Bosporus on the far side of the Black Sea.