Roman Emperor Augustus and His Trusted General

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He's 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. But 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? Why did Augustus erase not just one of Rome's most consequential statesmen, but as most

“loyal and steadfast friend from the city's public records?”

And how did a man born into relative obscurity rise to become the lynchpin of Augustus's 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, A Gripper, which charts the general's journey from his earliest meetings

with the 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 a gripper.

“I think the big message to first off says, he's much more than just Augustus's 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 to be the mere loyal friend, there was a lot more to him than that, and we know what he did, but we don't know what he was like. And for historical novelists, 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. It was more or less the same age, and in the 25 years after a gripper died, he was just gradually written out of the record, and the great will of testament that Augustus left carved

in bronze in his tomb, which runs in English translation about three and a half thousand words. The name of gripper only occurs twice and just briefly at that in passing. So, he was there waiting to be restored to his proper place in a way.

“And you describe him as the bear to Augustus's 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 stoop-sheldered bad teeth, not at all like the heroic image that was put out of him. But he was very clever and most formidable politician, one and most formidable politicians in history. A gripper was almost exactly the opposite. He wasn't

really much of a politician. He wasn't, I don't think, particularly sli or cunning, but he was a tremendous soldier, strong as an arcs, and really they complimented one another, Octavius Augustus was the brains, and he was the brawn, in crude terms, a knife I think would have

have quite a lot of source material to 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, you hear you have a couple of teenagers who were at school together, and rather strangely that they should have been at school because Octavius came from a grand family and a gripper, oblivion, and indeed we hardly know anything about his family. But they're at school together, and somehow or other, these two, 17, 18-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 you know, you want just follows it as they survive and then eventually come to dominate and of course their own personal relationship evolves over the years. So you

“know, one could take the facts that we know in the Battle of Actium and the various dates,”

and in between the events, trying to imagine what was going on between them and what they were feeling and that's really a justification for historical fiction. A gripper is almost perfect for a historical novelist. Now when I look back on it, because I 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

children's two sons, for instance, how did he feel about that? No, we simply don't know because as far as I'm aware, a gripper left behind no letter, no speech, no real quotation from a member of any sort. He's blank. And yet he was the co-rule of the Roman world and arguably the architect of the great victories, especially Actium. We'll tackle this kind of a chronologically from the beginning to the end, but naturally I know there's so many achievements of a gripper,

we can't cover them all. But I would like to start with his background, which I'm very interesting. You 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 a gripper? We know pretty well nothing. I mean, we know his father was called Lucius, because that's on the inscription on the pantheon, the great building that a gripper left

behind. We know that he was plebian, 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. The general consensus is that probably his name a gripper comes from a gripper that it was a difficult delivery. And he carried that moniker around with him throughout his life. And 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 seeners, we simply don't know. And we don't know why a gripper 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 it. He wanted to take a gripper and Octavian's with

him on his campaign in the east, which he'd never was able to fulfill. It's a puzzle. And that's

one of the things I said out to try to solve. But this is, so the start of a gripper'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 a 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, you know,

his affection is lighted on this young man who Octavius, who he'd hardly see, and he'd been in

“goal fighting for, I think, 11 years. And a gripper was by this time a good friend of Octavius,”

and so the two sort of rose together. And Caesar is the old dominant figure. We do know something about a gripper that he came, his family, his father was a stoic, and his, they supported the Senate, and against Caesar, and they supported Pompey, and a gripper's brother fought with Keto

and fought with the Republic and Army in Africa, and was captured. And one of the first things we see

and indeed Caesar did free him. And that's the first interaction we get between the two of them.

“And then that both young men were became legioners, or joined the legions. Octavius was too sick,”

typically, to go and fight, but a gripper did, and a pierced of thought at the battle of Monde. That's the Monde, and that's the one, that's one of the Caesar's last big ones. It's Caesar's last great battle, and it's a gripper's first. And at the end of the battle, when the sons of Pompey had been defeated, and Caesar had settled Spain, he began the voyage back to Italy, and he took a gripper 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 a gripper. And that's the big part of Julius Caesar in this story, because from then on, it feels that a gripper and Octavius. They're quite inseparable from that moment, aren't they? I mean, the next part

“of this story is that they go over to what is now, I think it's probably, it's Albania, it's Albania, isn't it?”

It's Appalonia. Yeah. Yeah. So they, um, Caesar, when he finished one of the battle of Monde, and suppress or conquered Spain, his plan then was to move east with what would have been the

biggest invasion force ever assembled about 200,000. And a gripper and Octavius was sent out to

Albania to sort of have military training to get acquainted with the legions that were already mustering there for this great expedition against Pothia. And there they were. They've been there about six months, five or six months when the news came, that Caesar 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' parents to go back and try and claim this inheritance. This is such a big moment for two people who teenagers still at the time to make that decision, are you going to go into the, the lines den right back to Rome with all of these battle hard and general's, Mark Hansen and so on, you know, vying for power. And the fact that a gripper will Octavius together decide, yeah, we're going to give it a go. Well, that's it. It's just,

I mean, it is a great adventure. And they said often they landed in the south of Italy, they didn't in the end, they landed at the Great Port of Brundesian 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 began to kind of march across other than 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 he was Octavius who medically, 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. So after two of them, two of them go. And a gripper is very much his wingman, he's sort of, you know,

best friend and who watches his back or something. Well, he's going to say, I mean, imagining a gripper's viewpoint of this, is 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 linked to it? And does he realise 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 as he 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 a 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, and each needs

his fate is very much, whether it's because of his poorer birth status, probably plays the past in his fate, from now on, he's very much entwined with that of Octavius/Optavian.

Yeah, completely. I mean, he's the best friend of the most potential, 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, you know, and so they return 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, 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. And so, this is the first great clash

when, 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 bear 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 their 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 a gripper, he always seems to be at the forefront, with Octavius, with Octavian in the fighting. Yes, he was, he was always by his side, I think he was almost, 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 Salvador de Anas, 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. Remember Brutus and Cassius had been amnested

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 Leppardus, the other military commander, and they triumphed for 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, was not able to take part in the great battle of Philippi, who was too sick, but a gripper was there. But a gripper was there, and he fights,

and then he's from that moment on, and 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, Favia, and his brother”

Lucius in Italy. When I first started, when I announced that I was going to do the book, and I had lunch with Mary Beard, who I've known for many years ever since writing Pompeii, and she said, "Oh dear, 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, when you have the civil war, the Caesar wins against Pompeii in the Senate, then 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 Philippi. Octavius, it turns 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 bloamy, no soon as he dealt with, then the Mark Antony returns, and there's a war cranked 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. As soon as later there was going to be a showdown between the two of them. So, and the thing that one of the great qualities of a gripper, well, he was brave soldier,

the Roman Navy. I mean, they face this, this, this, one of the other things that is in the story

“and people forget is how important sex does Pompeii was. Sex does Pompeii was the surviving son”

of Pompeii, the great, and he controlled Sicily and had a fleet, and he really gave his loss to history, but he was of 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 tape, put paid to sexes. And, you know, we want to stress that

because up to that point, he'd be involved in land battles, Julius Caesar, fighting Brutus and Cassius, and so on, and it's 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, he'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 sexes on Sicily, and so he builds the portus Julius as it became known on the Bay of Naples, a harbour, and a two-natural harbour is a smaller out-one and then a large inner harbour, and it's an immense construction project, I mean, using hydraulic cement, he was the kind of concrete king of ancient Rome. Don't tempt us to put that as the title for this episode. Yes, the concrete king, yes.

But he is 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 harbour, which you kept concealed, in fact, and then they were able to finally put to

see and defeat the pirates. And that is also big when you think of the importance of Sicily on the sea routes 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 of acting against Mark Antony 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, no, absolutely, because not only, I mean, first of all, it was an insult to the honor of Octavia, so it was technically supposed to be the governor of Sicily,

that this figure, sexist, was squatting there, and they were interrupted the trade, as you

say, the grain shipments from Egypt, but they also mounted a lot of pirate raids on the southern coast, and Rome was starving. I mean, they were not able to get enough grain into the country to feed people, so it was vital that sooner or later sexist was taken out, and a large part of the credit for that does go to a gripper. More continue the story of a gripper, right after this. You know, cut the nashweights. I have the mobile phone right now.

Your whole story is now over. With mobile phones in real life, Frank, just one mobile phone for 10 Euro a month, including the EU roaming, also in the Schweiz. Frank? No, Frank.

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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 gripper's story,

because it seems to reflect his dare say modesty or kind of knowing his place, I guess,

“we've 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 goal. 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's stock was very, very low. He had tried on his own to settle things with sexists and it had been a disaster. And the reason that a gripper 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 was very strongly suggested to a gripper or a gripper,

“was sure enough to realise this was no time to have a triumph when the boss was in difficulties.”

And so he, for, went to 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 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, two 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 front man who's the kind”

of, you know, who is our 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 to triumph, and he, despite, especially he should have had a triumph

after action, but not only did he not have the triumph for action or the naval victories in Sicily, Octavia's did. Octavia, and Octavia says, 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, action, there's no mention of the fact that the fleet was built and commanded by a gripper. Well, we must focus on briefly on Octavia before we go on to because this is the crowning

glory. We're giving him back his, his credit, his due for his role in this victory, because how central is a gripper to beating the forces of Mark Antony and Cleopatra at this big naval battle of Actin? Well, completely. I mean, he went out to the eastern Mediterranean, it advanced of Octavia, who followed with the army. By this time Octavia's course is called Caesar. He goes out ahead of him by over a year, nearly a year, and Harris,

Mark Antony and Cleopatra's forces, and gets them bottled up really, and then Octavia's joins with the army and they rendezvous on the honor to call food or call food, and they Octavia's marches south to the bay to the small village town settlement of Actin, and in the 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, and, you know, it's clear that this is going

to be the decisive moment, whoever wins here was really going to take over the world. And there was no, Mark Antony didn't want to give battle on land, and so in the end it became obviously it would be a naval battle, and 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 revolutionised naval tactics, he put new devices onto ships,

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 Actin were to draw out Mark Antony's ships and took advantage of the wind to then turn around and go at them a full tilt, and the battle was both sides 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, and but 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, and you can imagine the effect this had on the Mark Antony's sailors, and that was the end of the action. 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

Mark 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 kind of new contraptions, whilst he's building this fleet, how to tackle these other ships, and to kind of do it almost in a way, a gripper is the mad scientist, right, 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. I mean, he's a brave soldier, he's a formidable tactician, he's a great builder, he's a terrific

administrator, and he's politically screwed enough to never get ahead of his boss.

“I mean, it is astonishing. I mean, and after the victory at 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, had surrendered, it was about 100,000 men or something like that, and he said to a gripper, you take them back and to Italy and settled 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-moded legioners, 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 Massinim, the naval port. Much in the organisation that this requires, the qualities of leadership, it's staggering. And does that act? Do that go around Mount the sea? It went to Mount Vassuvius, yes, and was ruptured before the Great X, when Vassuvius erupted. In 79 AD it was already been ruptured

by the ground, beginning to shift as the terrain altered. But I came across a gripper's name then, when I was riding that book more than 20 years ago, and I thought this guy would be worth riding.

“I'll 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. He and repaired the Great Sewer at the Cloak of Maximum around 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 city. It's the citizens of New York received today. And 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 Colone, and he started work on the Great Neem Aqueduct with the famous bridge, which still stands.

of hydraulic cement, which was, you know, 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. It enormous speed with shuttering and

“and he used the same sort of techniques when he built the pantheon. 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 round the Bay of Naples. Light, frothy, this is light as cardboard, really, or paper, but strong. And 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 don't, I'm guessing Augustus is there as well, but a bit. No, no. Well, Augustus's name

is not there at all, just a bit. No, just a bit. 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.

For any less, no, viewers, we'll remember. It says, 'N Agrepa LF-Cost Turtium-Fecquet', Marcus Agrepa, son of Lucius, in his third console ship, did it. I mean, that sort of, that Turt's language in a way is a clue to the man. For someone who had to, you know, who appreciated that he had to play second fiddle to, you know, who's 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? He found Rome a city of brick, left it in a city of marble, which would be a gripper, founded the brick, and left it marble, or maybe a bit of both for that? Well, he certainly was encouraged by Augustus to do it, but he put a lot of his own money into it, and everything was called Julie, Aquadurio, you know, Aquagustus, everything he was careful to make

sure it was all the boss got all the credit. That's the story of his life. I guess she'll be also had like there. I mean, that kind of economic side of a 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 too. Oh, yeah, no, let's not be an any doubt, that he became vastly wealthy, and 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 Cessera, and Mary and niece of Augustus. And then, later he married Augustus, his only child, his daughter, Julia, 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

at one point he left around completely and went to live on Lesbos, 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 another, you've got to try and find the human man, and I just tried to imagine how he must have felt a proud man who nevertheless had subsumed himself, and indeed he lost control of his own children.

And do we see him as well, like being a patron, like, to particular artists or particular figures, like Augustus says, you know, you think of like Virgil and the Enniad, and my scene is, and they're like, like, can you explore the figure of a gripper as well? Like, what he would do in his spare time was he could be the scholar, did he have people around him who, 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 achievements, he was interested in physical things, certainly in

and I did have fun writing a scene at which my scene is produces two pet poets, and a gripper

listens to them, and one is sort of like, recite a poem, there's nothing but agriculture, and the other one recite something, so it's filthy, other than anything he's ever heard in the army camp, and these, of course, a Virgil and Horace. Did you have fun? Yeah, do you have fun kind of creating the relationship between a gripper, not between a gripper and a gripper, but between a gripper,

“and those other key figures in Augustus's in the circle? Yeah, very much. It was, it's fast, you know,”

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 Olivia, a gripper's relationship with Olivia, the most formidable woman of the ancient world, and I would think, his 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 what it was, gown arthritis, or something, but anyway,

“it seems to have killed him in the end. And the relationship with my seeness, the power behind”

the scenes, you know, the wily kind of schema, patron of the arts, who's 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 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 seem to have been particularly attractive. I don't think, no, he was

cruel, vengeful. There were a few too many stories of him gouging out people's eyes and having people put the death sons in front of their father and this sort of thing. For it, for they're not

“to be some kind of truth in all this. There were no such stories about a gripper who I think was”

an altogether cleaner, straighter kind of kind. I don't want to explore their latest life together. Right after this. , but a dream. 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 ritual 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. [Music] So Robert, we're now way past the Battle of Actium at this point. A gripper has shown how he is capable in so many different theatres 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 may be tensions, there might be tensions starting to emerge. 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 his air, at least until a member of the family can come of age. So there's no doubt that a gripper is effectively the co-roll of the world. He has the same powers as a tribune that Augustus has. He is a tool in tense in purposes, co-ruler,

contract that the facade of the Republic is kept in place. There are still elections, debates in the

“Senate and so on. Provinces are handed out, but the key provinces all belong to Augustus,”

the ones that have the big armies in them, Goal, Spain, 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 airs, and indeed both of them just had one daughter, both called Julius obviously. And a lot of the book, the novel by the end, is about succession planning. I mean, I felt like I was revisiting the TV series. It's who is going to get control of the Emperor, who is going to, if we're not going to go back to a system of consoles and elections, 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 some aristocrat. And that is becomes very tricky. And in the end, in the distant future Augustus's succession planning does result in a member of the family becoming the Emperor and he is in fact the grandson of a gripper.

And that is colligula. So the succession planning didn't work out terribly well. But I mean, was it also fun if once again putting yourself in a gripper's shoes? To imagine,

yes, we get this idea that a gripper, you know, he very much always portrayed himself as being

Augustus's aid as not wanting the Emperor ship himself. Can you imagine personally that maybe at times he was tempted very much to put himself forward? Yes, yes, I definitely, I don't think this ended out about that. And he bitterly resented some of the people that were being promoted ahead of him. I mean, he didn't have any time for tie-beerious, 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”

be if he was a named a 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 this is a question of who is named in his will as his air is all important. And he did name the, you did say a gripper would take over an 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 outlive Augustus, because he seemed much stronger and bitter. 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 could imagine some senators of some powerful figures, almost kind of leaning towards a gripper, whenever they saw Augustus being ill, thinking I want to side with this person, because he's most likely to be equally a successor. Yes, I mean, there was a lot of power inherent in his position. And he wasn't, also, he wasn't much of a speaker. I don't

think or write or anything like that. But he was a powerful brooding presence. I mean, I don't know whether you've seen pictures or statues of a gripper. But he looks like a bruiser. It's my bloody face. Yeah, he's a heavy, you know, you wouldn't want to get into a fight with 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

as well surrounding this figure of Marcellus. Yes. So what is this? Well, Marcellus was, 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, where as he did share a blood bond with Marcellus, and Marcellus seems to have been 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 men in charge of the fabric of the city, in which Rowley clashed with a gripper who had 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 Rowley and disappeared for the best part of a year. And during the time he was away, Marcellus suddenly died. A young man, you know, I'm 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 Rowley, or constantly. At any rate, this was the reason that a gripper had to be summoned back by Augustus, because suddenly his succession planning is collapsed. And he saw with deep gloom that Tiberius was heading into the position. And it said this point that he and a gripper hatched the scheme, that a gripper should divorce Augustus's niece and Mary is daughter. Therefore, any sons that are produced are the grandson's, 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 showman, he feels that he's like the stud for the Pupulio Claudian dynasty. He's been brought in

“to sire the offspring. And I think to a large degree that was true. He was, you know, a very”

aisle, strong figure. And could and was an ideal person to father the imperial line. And then Augustus takes them away to very. And then he took them away. I don't know if he actually took them out of the household, but he sent the expected to have a say in their education. And you know, they should have become the emperor's succession to him, but have both died young. Again, the finger 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 there as you mentioning that it seems that a gripper says at one stage, you know, to Augustus, I've had enough up and out. So 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. 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 political journalist. And one thing I did notice had is that the top man, the prime minister, whoever, the aides or advisors they like, are the ones that give them the unvarnished truth. There's obviously there's lots of sugar fans saying the things that 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 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's getting fed up and had enough from 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 it ultimately ends with a gripper's death.

Do we know anything about how he dies? Well, we know that we know that he died either somewhere

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. 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 cremated and his ashes were put in the great

more salium of Augustus. So even in death he was just given his little niche 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 honours his old friend in death, but at the same time, honours him, but only to an extent where Augustus is still with the main focus. And then his place. Yes. I think the scene 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. Oh, good. And that's the last time that they're together. Fantastic. Robert, this is 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 we've covered lots of the big ones. 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”

but you should be remembered with great respects. I mean, 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 phountains. And he built bathhouses, which could be used both by men and women, and one day a 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 Vassuvius, which fed a quarter of a million people. I mean, I say in the book that he

“feels that these are his greatest victories in many ways. And I feel that they were. I think that he”

would have felt that. I think he probably was one of those soldiers, which actually were rid 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 to ancient Egypt. But if he was strangely similar in a weird kind of way to ramacies the great, who does all this fighting in his early years and then the great building projects have later

Ron and Abbey symbol 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 a gripper with a stroke of imaginative genius. Yes, and it's his memoirs really. Yes, it is, it is put purports to be, his memoirs, written on the Bay of Naples, looking back over his life, right back to his 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 within you release every week, plus early access and add free podcasts. You can sign up at historyhit.com/subscribe. See you in the next episode.