Roman Emperor Augustus and His Trusted General

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2:06New Zealand quite recently. Well, Smart Travel podcast from NerdWallet was a great help. They dig into which airport lounges are really worth it, and which are just an airport gate with better snacks and worse lighting. And what actually happens when an airline loses your luggage for 12 days and how to get real money back instead of a free drink and an apology? Plus, the tip I really needed. How to book flights without it turning into a part-time job. Travel smarter and spend less with help from NerdWallet. Follow Smart Travel wherever you get to your podcasts. Gripper is 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?

3:08Why did Augustus erase not just one of Rome's most consequential statesmen, 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 linchpin 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 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, 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 says he's much

4:10more than just Augustus' number two. Yes, I was sure 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 have been the mere loyal friend. There was a lot more to him than that. We know what he did, but we don't know what he was like. And for a historical novelist, 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. There were more or less the same age. In the 25 years after Agrippa died, he was just gradually written out of the record, and

5:12the great will, a testament that Augustus left carved in bronze in 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 he was there waiting to be restored to his proper place, anyway. And you describe him as the bear to Augustus' 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 stoopsholder and 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

6:14in 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 complemented 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 have quite a lot of source material of 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

7:15Octavius came from a grand family and Agrippa, Plabian and indeed we hardly know anything about his family. But they were at school together and somehow or other, these two 1718-year-olds end up taking over the world. So this is in itself a compelling narrative. It's the ultimate body movie in a way. And so 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 one could take the facts that we know in the Battle of Actium and the various dates. And in between the events, try and imagine what was going on between them and what they were feeling. And that's really justification for historical fiction. Agrippa is almost perfect for a historical novelist now and I look back on it because

8:18I 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 sons, for instance, how did he feel about that. We simply don't know because as far as I'm aware, Agrippa left behind no letter, no speech, no real quotation from any sort. He's blank. And yet he was the co-reual of the Roman world. And arguably the architect of the great victories, especially Actium. We'll tackle this chronologically from the beginning to the end, but naturally I know there's so many achievements of Agrippa we can't cover the mold. But I would like to start with his background, which I was very interesting. He 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 Agrippa's? We know pretty well nothing.

9:20I mean, we know his father was called Lucius because that's on the inscription on the pantheon, the great building that Agrippa left behind. We know that he was Plabian or at least 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 Agrippa, that it was a difficult delivery. And he carried that moniker around with him throughout his life. 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 my seniors, we simply don't know. We don't know why Agrippa should have been given such special marks of favor 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

10:25he 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 Agrippa'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 the 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 his affections lighted on this young man who Octavius, who he'd hardly seen, he'd been in gold 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.

11:29We do know something about Agrippa that he came, his family, his father was a steric and they supported the Senate and against Caesar and they supported Pompey. And Agrippa's brother fought with Kato 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 freedom. And that's the first interaction we get between the two of them. And then that both young men were 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, that's the one, that's one of Caesar's last big ones. 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

12:34settled 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 Agrippa. And that's the big part of Julius Caesar 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. Albania, isn't it? It's Apollonia. Yeah. Yeah. So they, I'm season when he'd finished the Wanda Battle of Munda and Suppress or Concord 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

13:44get 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's he's 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's parents to go back and try and claim this inheritance. And it was such a big moment for two people who are teenagers still at the time to make that decision, are you going to go into the line's den, right back to Rome with all of these battle hard and generals, Marcansian, so on, you know, vying for power. And the fact that Agrippa and Octavius together decide, yeah, we're going to give it a go.

14:45Well, 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 end the end there, landed at the great port of Brondissium 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 we kind of 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 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.

15:48So off the two of them go. And a gripper is very much his wingman, his sort of best friend and he watches his back essentially. Well, it's going to say, I mean, imagining a gripper'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. I think 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, Octavius, and they 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 gripper, everything that he had, he owed to his friendship with Octavius. And so the two of them set off on the great life's adventure, really.

16:52And each needs the other. Do you think that's something we do always need to remember of a gripper that his fate is very much where there'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 Octavius-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 spirit at 18-year-old want to thrown you a lot and do whatever you can? And so they returned 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 him. He's technically the richest man in the world, but the money doesn't seem. Certainly, Mark Antony's reluctant to give up the money.

17:53And so this is the first great clash. And where Octavius makes it absolutely clear to Mark Antony, 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 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 Antony, 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 there are 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, he always seems to be at the forefront with Octavius, with Octavius in the fighting.

18:53Yes, he was always by his side. I think he was all, he was sort of bodyguard in many ways. He didn't have senior military commander at that stage, because he was only, he was very young. And there was a man called Selverdeanus, who was, who was more of a senior figure, who took charge of the army for Octavius. But gradually, a gripper 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. I mean, remember Brutus and Cassius had been amnestyred 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, he made a deal with Mark Antony and with Leopardus, the other military commander.

19:58And the triumph, where it was born. And so they decided to go after the assassins. And a gripper was there again. Once again, Augustus Octavius still fell ill. Wasn't able to take part in the Great Battle of Philippi. He was too sick, but a gripper was there. But a gripper was there and he fights. And then he's, from that moment on, he's very much representing Octavius on the battlefield. I think we've got just a year or so later, the story of Mark Antony's wife, Fulvia, and his brother Lucius in Italy and there. Well, when I first started, when I announced that I was through, that I was going to do the book, I had lunch with Mary Beard, who I've known for many years ever since writing Pompeii. 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, because the civil wars are endless. So first of all, will you have the civil war that sees the winds against Pompeii in the Senate?

21:01Then you have the war between Octavius and Mark Antony. And then you have the war between Octavius and Mark Antony now allied against Brutus and Cassius. They defeat them at the Battle of Filippi. Octavius returns to Italy only to find that Mark Antony's brother and Mark Antony's wife have decided to rebel against them. So then he has to deal with them. There's another civil war. And blow me out, no sooner as he dealt with them, the Mark Antony returns. And there's a, 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 Actions between Octavius and Mark Antony. And soon or later, there was going to be a showdown between the two of them. So, so, and the thing that one of the great qualities of a gripper, he was brave soldier and an inspiring leader.

22:03He was also the most brilliant organizer. And he's really the father of the Roman Navy. I mean, he, they faced this, this, this, one of the other things that is in the story and people forget is how important sex does pompy. Well, sex does pompy 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 Antony. And it was a gripper that built the Navy and commanded it and won the battles, the naval battles in Sicily, that finally put take, put pay to sex does. And, you know, we want to stress that because up to that point, he'd be involved in land battles, Julius Caesar fighting British and Cassius and so on. And it's that, 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 Antony,

23:10he's able to defeat him. Yes. I mean, what, and not, you know, 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 sex does on Sicily. And so he builds the port as Julius, as it became known, on the Bay of Naples, a harbor and two natural harbors, a smaller outer one and then a large inner harbor. And it's an immense construction project. I mean, using hydraulic cement, he was the kind of concrete king of, of ancient Rome. Don't tempt us to put that as the title for this episode. Yeah, the concrete king. Yes. 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 harbor, which he kept concealed, in fact.

24:14And 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 searute between Rome and Egypt, and where they get most of their grain from. So tactically, strategically, although this isn't as glamorous as, let's say, the big, victory at Actium against Marcantini 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, 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 there were, 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.

25:17And Rome was starving. I mean, they were not able to get enough grain into the country to feed people. So it was vital that soon later, sextus was taken out, and a large part of the credit for that does go to a gripper. More continue this story of a gripper. Right after this. When you're running a growing business, the right systems can unlock your full sales potential, and make fulfilling every order effortless. Switch to ship station before peak season, so you're prepped and ready before the rush hits. Ship station connects Shopify, Amazon, TikTok Shop, and over 200 more marketplaces with one platform that does it all. You can manage orders, sink inventory, track returns, all automatically. Everything your operation needs, all in one place. Upgrade your shipping operations to stress-proof your biggest sales days and capture every bit of potential revenue, go to shipstation.com and use code audio and get 30 days free. At Edward Jones, we believe Rich isn't about having life all figured out.

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27:18colder, darker nights? Well, look no further than the award-winning after-dark myths, misdeeds, and the paranormal with me, Maddie Pelling. And me, Anthony Delaney. We are historians and love all things gloomy and macabre. From Tudor Executioners, an ancient Egyptian death rituals to which trials and folklore feel transported back in time on after-dark. Out every Monday and Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts. And guess what? We're also now on YouTube After Dark, a podcast from History Hit. Robert, before we keep going ahead chronologically with the Gryppas story, there's always a really interesting episode early in his career that I like to ask about quickly, because it seems to reflect his dare say modesty or kind of knowing his place, I guess,

28:19with 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 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 sex, the Senate had been a disaster. And the reason that a Gryppa came back to Rome seems to have been because Octavius needed his help. And of course, because Octavius was in, he was unpopular. It was either it was very strongly suggested to a Gryppa, or a Gryppa was

29:21shrewd enough to realize this was no time to have a triumph when the boss was in difficulties. And so he forwent the triumph and entered Rome, the moment he did that, he couldn't triumph. And he never had a triumph. He was the greatest general and a 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 frontman who's the kind of,

30:23you know, quasi-emperor, and this, 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 the 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. Octavius has a great testament at the end of his life says, I swept the sea clear of pirates. There's no mention of a gripper. Similarly, actium, there's no mention of the fact that the fleet was built and commanded by a gripper. Well, we must focus then briefly on actium before we go on to, because I said, this is the crowning glory. We're giving him his credit, his due for his role in this

31:28victory, because how central is a gripper 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 Antony and Cleopatra's forces and gets them bottled up really. Then Octavius joins with the army and they run the voodoo on the island of Corfu or Corfu. Octavius marches south to the bay, to the small village town settlement of actium. In a harbour there is the entire fleet of Mark Antony and Cleopatra, the combined fleet. She is there to, she has brought all the treasure of Egypt with her.

32:34It's clear that this is going to be the decisive moment. Whoever wins here is really going to take over the world. Mark Antony didn't want to give battle on land. In the end, it became obviously it would be a naval battle. A gripper had been in command of the navy for the whole of the campaign and he commanded the forces and masterminded the tactics, which eventually won the battle. We should say here that he revolutionized the naval tactics. He put new devices on to ships. They kind of grappling hook that was fired by a catapult that was attached to a chain. This would thud into the enemy's hull and then they would literally haul themselves alongside and storm the ship. He developed a lot and collapsible towers on the boats from which these catapults could be fired. All sorts of things like that and his tactics at actium were to

33:38draw out Mark Antony's ships and took advantage of the wind to then turn around and go at them full tilt. The battle was, they were both sides were very evenly matched and the battle, it looked like it might go Mark Antony's way because the Egyptian fleet, which had taken no part in the action but stayed in the bay, suddenly appeared. Instead of fighting, it sailed clean through the lines which by this time were broken because they've been fighting all day. Cleopatra stopped to pick up Mark Antony and off they headed with all the treasure of Egypt. You can imagine the effect this had on the Mark Antony's sailors and that was the end of the actium. There was an overwhelming victory for a gripper 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

34:43Mark Antony and Cleopatra. And a gripper is the man behind that. How fun must it have been to create that story from the viewpoint of a gripper and I'm thinking in particularly with the creation, the ingenuity, the thinking of these new contraptions while he's building this fleet, how to tackle these other ships and to do it almost in a way I gripper is the mad scientist of his engineers thinking how they're going to challenge this big fleet. Yes, well this is the great thing about a gripper. He's multi-talented. 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 an after the victory of actium I think Octavius felt he had to win the next battle on his own and so he sent a gripper back with the most awful job you could have. Mark Antony's army which was huge

35:46had surrendered. It was about a hundred thousand men or something like that and he said to a gripper, 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 a gripper do? He got back with about 30,000 de-mobled 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 my scene and the naval port. Much in the organisation that this requires, the qualities of leadership, it's staggering. And did that go around Mount the Seabed? It went around Vesuvius, yes. And it was ruptured before the great, ex the one in Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD. It was already been ruptured by the ground, beginning to

36:52shift as the terrain altered. But I came across a gripper's name then when I was writing that book more than 20 years ago and I thought this guy would be worth writing it. I'll come back to him. Yeah, come back to him. And do we see time and time again with the story of the gripper as the architect that he's very much interested in kind of hydraulic engineering in the bringing your 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 and repaired the great sewer at the Clowica Maxima, the ran through the centre of Rome and he built a new aqueduct entirely, the aqua Virgo. And by the time he had finished the citizens of Rome were receiving more water per head than the

37:54citizens of New York received today. That's an effect. Yes, it is quite a fact. And he then and he built the great aqueduct in 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 they were able to use the volcanic sand around the Bay of Naples. 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

38:56pantheon. The pantheon has still I think the largest unsupported dome in the world and how did he manage it. He used pumice stone from the around the Bay of Naples, light frothy, it was his lightest cardboard, really, or paper but strong and that bound 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 a little bit of a grip. Well, Augustus's name is not there at all. Just a grip is there. 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 9 million visitors a year to the pantheon. It's the most visited site in Italy and for any list no viewers will remember it says, and a gripper LF-Cost Turtium Feket, Marcus a gripper son of Lucius in his third console ship

40:02did it. I mean that sort of that terse language in a way is a clue to the man. For someone who had to 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 a gripper for any of the buildings, any of the battles or anything else. What does Augustus say you found Rome a city of brick left it in the city of marble? Should it more be a gripper founded the brick and left it marble or maybe maybe a bit of both for well he certainly was encouraged by Augustus to do it and but he put a lot of his own money into it and everything was called Julie, Aqua, Julia, you know Aqua Augustus everything he was careful to make sure it was all the boss got all the credit that that's the story of his life. I guess should we

41:06also highlight there I mean that kind of economic side of the gripper as Augustus's star has risen as he's become you know the first emperor I guess we should say. So has a grippers and financially his star has risen to. 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 Mary a niece of Augustus and then later he married Augustus's only child his daughter Julia and 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 a gripper always took all this kindly there was certainly

42:09at one point he left Rome completely and went to live on Lesbos and but it 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 an novel you've got to try and find the human man and I just tried to imagine how he must have felt the proud man who nevertheless had to subsume himself and indeed had lost control of his own children. And do we do we see him as well like being a patron like to particular artist or particular figures like Augustus is you know you think of like Virgil and the Ineid and my seniors and they're like like can you explore the figure of the gripper as well like what he would do in his spare time was he 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 one of his achievements he was interested in physical things certainly in architecture

43:17and 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 seniors produces two pet poets and a gripper listens to them and one is taught recites of poems 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 a gripper not between a gripper and Augustus but between a gripper and those other key figures in Augustus is in the circle. Yeah very much it was it's fast you know you you have facts and then you just try to think of the human beings and what it must have been like and the his relationship with Livia a gripper's relationship with Livia the most formidable woman of the ancient world and I would think

44:20his 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 and because towards the end he developed some problem with his leg we're not sure whether it was gown arthritis or ulcer or something but anyway it seems to have killed him in the end but and the relationship with my seeing us the the the power behind the scenes you know the the widely kind of schema 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

45:24seem to have been particularly attractive I don't think no he he was cruel vengeful there were a few too many stories of him gouging out people's eyes and having people put the death suns in front of their father and this sort of thing for it for there not to be some kind of truth in all this there were no such stories about a gripper who I think is an altogether cleaner straighter kind of character we'll explore their later life together right after this Granger knows if you're a procurement manager at an industrial manufacturing facility you're balancing inventory and budget while sourcing critical supplies across the operation too much inventory cost climb too little production slows Granger's two billion dollars in onhand inventory helps you get what you need when you need it so you can help keep budgets balanced in lines moving call 1-800-granger click ranger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done at Edward Jones we believe rich isn't about having life

46:32all figured out it's opening yourself to all the possibilities that's why your dedicated financial advisor provides long-term planning built around you meeting you where you are and helping you get closer to where you want to be so no matter where you're starting from you can move forward with confidence the key to being rich is knowing what counts let's find your rich Edward Jones member s-i-p-c so Robert we're now way past the Basil of Actium at this point a gripper has shown how he is capable in so many different theaters 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 a gripper he does even if there are there maybe tensions there might be tensions starting to

47:33emerge he still sees a gripper as someone he can rely on when he contact after the Battle of Actium there's no doubt that the gripper is the number two and he is the most powerful man in the Empire after Augustus and Augustus names him as is air at least until a member of the family can come of age so so there's no doubt that a gripper is a set effectively the co-rule of the world he has the same powers as a Tribune that Augustus has he is at all in terms of purposes co-rule and the chief organizer of the army and the great thing I mean Augustus pulls off this wonderful contract that the facade of the Republic is kept in place there are still elections and debates in the Senate and so on provinces are handed out but the key provinces all belong to Augustus the

48:38ones that have the big armies in them goal Spain and so on and that fascinated me because that seems to me in many ways the way the one modern world is going we have the facade of democracy but actually behind the scenes is the oligarchs of 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 then novel by the end is about succession planning I mean I felt like I was right I was revisiting the TV series it's who is going to get control of the emperor who's going to if we're not going to go back to a system of consoles and

49:44elections because we saw where that ended up we're going to have a strong man running the emperor 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 just some aristocrat and that is becomes very tricky and in the end in the distant future Augustus' 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 Agrippa's shoes to imagine yes we get this idea that Agrippa you know he very much always portrayed himself as being Augustus' aid

50:48as 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 I definitely I don't think this anything doubt about that need 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 would be if he was a name 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 on the edge of death so there's a question of who is named in his will as his heir he's all important and he did name

51:54the he did say a gripper 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 a gripper mad but he was there and if everyone thought that he would long out live 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 power for figures almost kind of leaning towards or gripper 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 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 my only face yeah yeah he's heavy he's a you know you wouldn't want to get into a fight

53:00with a gripper I think it's just judging by the look of him he'd say things as they were as you know he'd say things as they were and he'd lay about him I think he was often 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 well Marcellus was now let me get this straight he was the nephew of Augustus who had who 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

54:02been 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 the man in charge of the fabric of the city in which role he clashed with a gripper who regarded that as his department and I think there's in the novel certainly and I think also in the sources there was a strong implication that a gripper eventually said I've had enough of this and left Rome and disappeared for best part of a year and during the time he was away Marcellus suddenly died a young man probably 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

55:06or constantly at any rate this was the reason that a gripper 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 a gripper hatched the scheme that a gripper should divorce the Augustus's niece and marry his daughter therefore any sons that are produced are the grandsons the blood relatives of Augustus and that is what a gripper does and for the second time in his life when there's a marriage show and he feels that he's like the the stud for the junior Claudian dynasty he's been brought in to sigh the sigh the offspring and I think to a large degree that was true he was you know a very strong figure and could could and was you know an ideal person to father the imperial line and then Augustus takes them away to

56:10be and then 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 emperor's succession to him but had both died young again the finger of suspicion pointing unfairly I think at Livia and then Tiberius did succeed and that's another story entirely but it's quite something like well I love theirs you mentioning that it seems that a gripper says at one stage you know to Augustus it I've had enough yeah I'm out so at once again that gives you the sense that this is probably someone who for decades when Augustus and when he 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 is 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

57:15political journalist and one thing I did notice had is that the the top man the prime minister whoever the the AIDS or advisors they like are the ones that give them the unvarnished truth there obviously there's lots of sicker fans 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 a gripper 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 in the sources to him leaving he getting fed up and had enough and going and also that he was felt to be getting slightly above himself so he wasn't just a yes man they needed one another it was one of the great partnerships in world history and then ultimately ends with the gripper's death do we know anything

58:20about how he dies well we do we know that we know that he died either somewhere around his 51st birthday either just made 51 or we 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 he knew and yes he would he would have enjoyed the fruits of his own labors 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 a gripper was his was cremated and his ashes were put in the great morselium

59:27of Augustus so even in death he was just given his little niche in the in the bosses 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 going to say so Augustus honors his old friend in death but at the same time honors him but only to an extent where Augustus is still the main focus even in his place yes I think there's seen at the end of the book where I'd have him showing a gripper where he's going to be interred is my favorite in the whole book actually because the exquisite pain for a gripper of knowing that 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 marvelous and that's the last time that they're together you found see 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

1:00:30we've covered lots of the big ones and having written out 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 some with great respect I mean both as a soldier as a 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 there 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 the Vesuvius which fed a quarter of a million people I say in the book that he feels that these

1:01:33are his greatest victories in many ways and I I feel that they were I think that he would have felt that I think he probably was one of those soldiers which actually who actually were it 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 through ancient Egypt but it feels strangely similar in a way kind of way to Ramisee's the great who does all this fighting in his early years and then the great building projects of later on and I'd be simple and the like but I won't go down too much of that Robert this has been absolutely fantastic and last but certainly not least your new novel all about a gripper it is called it's called a gripper with a stroke of imaginative genius yes and it's his memoirs really yes it is it is but purports to be his memoirs written on the Bay of Naples looking back over his life right back to

1:02:34his birth and it ends with his death Robert it just goes 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 add free podcasts you can sign up at historyhit.com slash subscribe see you in the next episode you meet fin the single customer agent made for the entire journey from qualifying sales leads to

1:03:36resolving support issues fin works across teams carrying context from one conversation to the next learn more at fin.ai Edward Jones member s.i.pc