Agrippa

The novel is a work of historical fiction set in the final decades of the Roman Republic and the birth of the Roman Empire. It takes the form of a first-person memoir written by Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, Rome's greatest general and the closest friend of Augustus Caesar.

The narrative opens with Agrippa at 50, explaining what has driven him to write. After rushing to Illyricum, a rugged frontier region beyond the Alps, to quell a Germanic uprising, he negotiates a truce and returns secretly to Rome to collect his pregnant wife, Julia, Augustus's daughter. Arriving home at nightfall, he discovers Julia in bed with Tiberius Claudius Nero, Augustus's adopted son, who is also married to Agrippa's own daughter Agrippina. Unable to kill Tiberius because of his political importance, Agrippa retreats alone to his villa on the Bay of Naples. Refusing food and seeing no one but his doctor, he begins setting down his life story.

Part One, titled "Octavius," traces Agrippa's boyhood and his bond with the future Augustus. Born feet-first, a birth that killed his mother, Agrippa carries a name derived from the Latin aegri partus, meaning painful birth. Taunted as a child, he learns to fight early and ferociously. Shortly before his 14th birthday, he is sent to a prestigious academy on the Palatine Hill, where the only boy as unpopular as himself is Gaius Octavius, a sickly child whose uncle is Julius Caesar. When Agrippa fights off two bullies attacking Octavius, the two become inseparable, their talents complementary: Octavius helps with classwork, and Agrippa teaches him to fight. Gaius Cilnius Maecenas, a witty older student claiming Etruscan royal descent, enters their circle as a tutor and becomes a lifelong political adviser to both.

Their world changes when Caesar crosses the Rubicon and plunges Rome into civil war. Through Octavius, Agrippa petitions Caesar to free his brother Lucius from slavery after the Battle of Thapsus in North Africa. Caesar agrees, studying Agrippa with unsettling intensity. Both young men later enroll in Caesar's Tenth Legion for the Spanish campaign. At the Battle of Munda, Agrippa fights in the front line and witnesses Caesar charge bareheaded into the fighting to rally his men. On the voyage home, Caesar privately makes Agrippa swear to guard Octavius like a brother for life.

Caesar sends both to Apollonia in Macedonia to train with legions assembling for a planned eastern campaign. There, a letter from Octavius's mother Atia arrives, dated the Ides of March, reporting that Caesar has been assassinated by senators including Brutus and Cassius. A second letter reveals that Caesar's will adopts Octavius as his son and heir. When Octavius hesitates, Agrippa tells him to ask what Caesar would have done. The young heir sails for Italy.

What follows is a relentless accumulation of power. Landing near the port of Brundisium with only 10 companions, Octavius attracts hundreds of Caesar's veterans and marches toward Rome. He cultivates Marcus Tullius Cicero, the aging orator and former consul, to gain the Senate's legitimacy while building his own army. When Mark Antony, Caesar's former lieutenant, treats Octavius with contempt, Octavius recognizes the behavior as weakness. After both Senate consuls die fighting Antony at Mutina in northern Italy, the second under circumstances Agrippa admits were engineered by Octavius, the young man marches on Rome with eight legions and is elected consul at 19.

To destroy Brutus and Cassius, Octavius forms the Triumvirate, a three-man alliance with Antony and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus. They divide the provinces and draw up proscription lists, which order the execution of political enemies and confiscation of their property. Over a hundred senators and a thousand knights are killed. Each triumvir sacrifices an ally: Octavius, at Antony's insistence, surrenders Cicero. At a dinner, Antony produces Cicero's severed head and hands. Octavius shows no reaction.

Part Two, titled "Caesar," covers the decisive military campaigns. At Philippi in Macedonia, Antony carries the battle while Octavius lies bedridden. Antony's men cheer him as their general while Octavius is met with jeering. Agrippa's military genius emerges fully in the years that follow. Given his first independent command during the war against Antony's brother Lucius, he besieges and captures the town of Perusia. To defeat Sextus Pompey, the son of Caesar's old rival who controls Sicily and blockades Rome's grain supply, Agrippa builds the Portus Julius, a vast naval base on the Bay of Naples. He designs warships equipped with grappling claws called harpaxes and wins decisive naval victories at Mylae and Naulochus that destroy Sextus's fleet. Back in Rome, Agrippa undertakes a massive program of public works, repairing aqueducts, digging hundreds of wells, and building free bathhouses and drinking fountains across the city.

At the Battle of Actium, Agrippa commands the fleet against the combined forces of Antony and Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt and Antony's lover. He lures the enemy into open water and employs his grappling tactics to devastating effect. When Cleopatra's squadron breaks through the fighting and Antony transfers to her flagship, they escape to Egypt. Agrippa wins the battle, but Caesar berates him for letting Antony escape. Sent home to manage the legions while Caesar conquers Egypt, Agrippa learns during the death vigil of his father-in-law Atticus that Julius Caesar had an affair with his mother. The revelation explains the mysteries of his life: his expensive education, his father's coldness, Caesar's intense interest in him. Caesar captures and executes the 16-year-old Caesarion, Cleopatra's son by Julius Caesar, who was Agrippa's half-brother.

Part Three, titled "Augustus," covers the establishment of one-man rule. Caesar stages a dramatic withdrawal from power, then accepts the Senate's plea to return on his own terms: control of the major provinces and the permanent title Augustus. The Republic dies without protest. Augustus forces Agrippa to divorce his beloved first wife, Caecilia, and make a dynastic marriage. Agrippa builds prolifically, including the Pantheon with its unprecedented unsupported concrete dome. When Augustus's chosen heir, his nephew Marcellus, dies suddenly, Agrippa is recalled from self-imposed exile on the island of Lesbos, where he had withdrawn after Augustus publicly humiliated him by staging a scene to avoid acknowledging him as his designated successor. Agrippa then marries Augustus's daughter Julia. Augustus adopts Agrippa's two sons, Gaius and Lucius, as his own, legally removing them from Agrippa's paternity.

During a tour of the eastern Mediterranean, the marriage deteriorates as Agrippa grows withdrawn and Julia takes lovers. The memoir circles back to its beginning: Agrippa's discovery of Julia with Tiberius and his retreat to the Bay of Naples. After completing his manuscript, he frees his slaves, distributes his money, and announces his intention to starve himself to death. In a delirious state, Livia, Augustus's wife, appears at the foot of his bed, reading the memoir from the chest she has opened. She reveals that Augustus always knew Agrippa was Caesar's natural son. The true shock, she says, will be discovering what Agrippa really thought of Augustus. Caesar chose between the bear and the fox when selecting his heir, and in politics, it has to be the fox.

A brief postscript records that Agrippa died in March 12 BC. All five of his children by Julia meet unhappy ends; his grandson Gaius becomes the emperor known as Caligula. Augustus outlives Agrippa by 25 years, and his official testament mentions Agrippa only twice. The Pantheon burns down a century after completion. The version rebuilt by the emperor Hadrian still stands, bearing Agrippa's name above its entrance.