Robert Harris’s Agrippa: A fascinating but not gripping read

The memoirs of a man who saw Rome go from Julius to Octavius

Agrippa’s real name was Marcus Vipsanius; the nickname came from the manner of his birth. Born feet first, he killed his mother in the process — a painful birth, or aegri partus, later corrupted to “Agrippa”. It’s a grim opening note, and Harris lets it colour everything that follows. Beyond his battlefield record, Agrippa drove several of Rome’s great building projects, most famously the Pantheon, which still carries his name: “Marcus Agrippa, son of Lucius, in his third consulship, did this.”

That tension — between the man of war and the man of stone and mortar — is what Harris leans on structurally. He frames the novel as Agrippa’s own memoir, written near the end of his life, prompted by one particular disappointment: catching his young wife’s infidelity. The memoir isn’t meant for anyone else’s eyes. It reads as the outpouring of a man who has seen and survived too much, and Harris commits fully to that voice, the result is a book that feels written by a man of deeds, not words.

From mother-killer to Octavius’s right-hand man

That commitment shows early, in the chapters on Agrippa’s childhood. Harris gives us a father who withheld love, perhaps blaming his son for his wife’s death, and schoolyard taunts of “Agrippa, Agrippa, mother-killer”. It’s the kind of childhood that breaks people. It made Agrippa a fighter instead:

“I would take on anyone who crossed me. Even on the rare occasions when I was beaten, I gained a reputation for reckless aggression that ensured I was left alone. In time, the name ceased to be a mark of shame and became a badge of invincibility. I had survived a dangerous birth. I had defied Nature. My strength was supernatural.”

It’s this reputation that brings him to young Octavius—Julius Caesar’s grand-nephew—and the two become inseparable: the cunning, slightly built Octavius and the straightforward, muscular Agrippa. Their contrast drives the book. In many ways the novel belongs to Octavius as much as to its narrator; he appears within the first pages and doesn’t leave until the last, his wife the final person Agrippa speaks to before he dies.

The battles and the building

Caesar’s assassination tests the friendship and forges it into something more consequential. Octavius emerges as Caesar’s chosen heir; Agrippa becomes his trusted lieutenant, and together they take on Mark Antony, memorably sketched as “a statue of Hercules with a club in one hand, a wineskin in another”. They make peace with him just long enough to defeat Cassius and Brutus at Philippi, then turn on him again, this time for good, once he allies with Cleopatra.

It’s a lot of bloodshed for one lifetime, and Harris lets the toll show. The constant fighting, the shifting alliances, the cycle of trust and betrayal wear the warrior out of Agrippa, and he turns increasingly to engineering. “History records many soldiers and statesmen but seldom mentions engineers,” he writes. “Yet these are the men who really made Rome great.” Even so, his reputation — and Octavius’s trust in him — keeps pulling him back into campaigns almost to the end.

A must for history buffs, but not a riveting read

Readers interested in Ancient Rome will find plenty to love here: Caesar, Antony, Cicero and the rest pass through its pages, alongside famous campaigns like Philippi and Actium. But this is also where the book’s central trade-off becomes clear. Harris commits so fully to Agrippa’s stoic, understated character that the prose often reads like a diary with major events dispatched in a handful of flat sentences, with little room left for drama to build. Take the scene where Octavius and Agrippa arrive for a secret meeting during the war against Antony:

“The villa lay just outside the town, on the edge of Lake Volsini. It was large and ancient, at the end of a drive. At first glance it appeared deserted. I suspected a trap. We drew our swords. Inside, a fire had just been laid. A steward appeared.”

Readers used to the deadpan style of Caesar’s own commentaries will take this in stride. General readers may find it harder going — the dialogue is stilted, and high drama is in short supply. What compensates, a little, are the pithy lines scattered throughout: “Hypocrisy is the essence of diplomacy,” or “All power depends on force. All force depends on money.” There are occasional flashes of real drama too—Caesar tearing off his helmet to rally his troops—and Harris adds a small twist near the end that caught us off guard.

Even so, anyone hoping for the flair of Pompeii or the pace of the Cicero trilogy will likely come away wanting more. Agrippa is essential reading for anyone serious about the period, but it isn’t a book for readers who want their fiction fast. It rewards patience.

Agrippa is no page-turner. But like its subject, it is steady, stoic and steadfast enough that one is tempted to grant Harris’s own book an inscription in the Pantheon style: “Marcus Agrippa, son of Lucius, did this.”

Agrippa by Robert Harris
Penguin Random House
384pp
Rs 999