Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa

Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa (born 63 bc?—died March, 12 bc, Campania [Italy]) was a powerful deputy of Augustus, the first Roman emperor. He was chiefly responsible for the victory over Mark Antony at the Battle of Actium in 31 bc, and during Augustus’ reign he suppressed rebellions, founded colonies, and administered various parts of the Roman Empire. Of modest birth but not a modest man, Agrippa was disliked by the Roman aristocracy. In his own interest he scrupulously maintained a subordinate role in relation to Augustus, but he felt himself inferior to no one else.

Virtually nothing is known of his early life until he is found as the companion of Octavian (the future emperor Augustus) at Apollonia, in Illyria, at the time of Julius Caesar’s murder in 44. Octavian, the adopted son of Caesar, returned with Agrippa to Italy to make his political claim as Caesar’s heir. In 43 Agrippa is thought to have held the office of tribune of the plebs; presumably in this capacity he prosecuted the tyrannicide Cassius, then absent in the East.

In the struggle for power after Julius Caesar’s death, Agrippa served as one of Octavian’s key military commanders. In 41–40 he fought against Mark Antony’s brother Lucius. In 40 he held the post of praetor urbanus (magistrate mainly in charge of administration of justice at Rome) and was a major figure in negotiating a settlement between Octavian and Antony at Brundisium. During the next two years he was away on campaigns in Aquitania and on the Rhine River. When he returned to Italy, he conspicuously refused to celebrate a triumph for his successes in the north, but in 37 he held the office of consul. In the spring of 37 Octavian and Antony came to an agreement at Tarentum, and it must have been then that Antony arranged the marriage of Agrippa to the daughter of Titus Atticus, a wealthy friend of Cicero.

Octavian’s efforts to resist at sea the son of the republican general Gnaeus Pompey, Sextus Pompeius, had not met with success. Agrippa therefore took charge of the operations. He constructed a fine harbour at Puteoli in the Bay of Naples and then won, in 36, two decisive naval victories (at Mylae and Naulochus), ending the threat from Pompeius. For this achievement Agrippa was awarded a golden crown. In 35–34 Octavian waged a vigorous campaign in Dalmatia, and in this Agrippa had a distinguished military role. In 33 Agrippa served as curule aedile (magistrate of public buildings and works) at Rome, even though it was a much lower post than the consulate that he had already held. He used the opportunity to win favour for Octavian by spending his own funds lavishly on building baths, cleaning sewers, and improving the water supply. When Octavian and Antony finally came into direct conflict at the Battle of Actium in 31, Agrippa commanded the fleet and was primarily responsible for Octavian’s victory.

During Octavian’s absence from Rome after Actium, Agrippa managed affairs in the city together with Maecenas, the great patron of poets. In 29–28 Agrippa and Octavian jointly conducted a census and carried out a purge of the Senate; in 28 and 27 Agrippa held the consulate again, both times with Octavian (from 27, Augustus) as his colleague. In 23, a year of constitutional crisis, Augustus fell ill and presented his signet ring to Agrippa, who seemed thus to be designated the emperor’s successor. Agrippa took Augustus’ daughter Julia as his wife after divorcing a niece of Augustus (Marcella the Elder), who had replaced Atticus’ daughter as his wife some four or five years previously.

Agrippa went immediately to Mytilene on the island of Lesbos, from which he administered affairs in the East. The nature of Agrippa’s constitutional power (imperium) at this time is controversial. It has been argued whether the Senate in 23 gave him an imperium greater than that of any other provincial governor in the East (imperium majus). After Augustus’ death Roman historians claimed that Agrippa’s sojourn at Mytilene was a kind of exile as a result of Augustus’ preference for his own nephew Marcellus. This appears implausible. Agrippa was soon back in Rome to act on behalf of the emperor, who himself left for the East in 22. Before Augustus’ return, in 19, Agrippa had left for Gaul and Spain. In Spain he finally subdued the recalcitrant Cantabrians.

Returning to Rome in 18, Agrippa received the power of a tribune (tribunicia potestas), which Augustus also possessed. Perhaps, too, he received an imperium majus, if he had not been granted it in 23. He participated in Augustus’ celebration of the Secular Games at Rome in 17, after which he returned to the East as vicegerent of the emperor. In 15 he accepted an invitation from Herod I the Great to visit Judaea; while in the East, he established colonies of veterans at Berytus and Heliopolis, in Lebanon. He next settled an uprising in the Bosporan kingdom on the Black Sea and set up the cultivated dynast Polemo as king. Herod led a fleet to support Agrippa in the Bosporan affair, and, when it was over, the two traveled together along the coast of western Asia Minor.

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In 13 Agrippa’s tribunicia potestas was renewed, and at this time without doubt he received (or had renewed) a grant of imperium majus. Troubles in Pannonia required his presence, but the rigours of the winter of 13–12 caused a fatal illness; he died in March of 12 bc. Augustus delivered a funeral oration in honour of his colleague; a fragment of that oration, in Greek translation, has recently come to light.

Agrippa deserved the honours Augustus heaped upon him. It is conceivable that without Agrippa, Octavian would never have become emperor. Rome remembered him for his generosity in attending to aqueducts, sewers, and baths; and in the mid-20s he completed the celebrated Pantheon. One of Agrippa’s five children by Julia, Agrippina the Elder, was the mother of one emperor (Caligula) and the grandmother of another (Nero). Agrippa’s autobiography is lost, but an extensive geographical commentary that he wrote influenced the extant works of the geographer Strabo and of Pliny the Elder.