Marcus Agrippa: Right-hand Man of Caesar Augustus (32 page)

Agrippa’s attention turned to the
Campus Martius
, the area of open ground dedicated to Mars in the northwest outside Rome’s
pomerium
and city walls.
¹⁰⁴
There had been an altar to Mars (
Ara Martis
) at the southwestern end of the
Campus
as early as the time of legendary King Numa.
¹⁰⁵
It was actually a plain formed by a meander in the Tiber River on the western side, the Pincius Hill on the east, the Capitolinus Hill on the south and Quirinalis Hill on the southeast. The unforgivingly straight line of the
Via Flaminia
sliced through the park on the east side. The area was prone to flooding when the river burst its banks – as it frequently did – and almost at its centre there was a swamp, the
Palus Caprae
, where the water did not entirely drain away.
¹⁰⁶
Iulius Caesar had considered plans to use civil engineering to change the course of the Tiber River, not to prevent flooding but rather to enlarge the ‘Field of Mars’ for other uses.
¹⁰⁷
Indeed, a single solitary source states that Agrippa did succeed in altering the course of the Tiber River.
¹⁰⁸
If indeed he did, he may have used plans originally created for Iulius Caesar, or he may have commissioned his own.

In Agrippa’s day the
Campus
was still regularly used as a public pasture, but its extensive and largely undeveloped area provided natural ground to gather together the citizens in the public act of voting in their
comitia centuriata
or to be counted in the census, to assemble them to perform drills in their designated military units, as well as for them to indulge in private leisure activities such as athletics and swimming.
¹⁰⁹
The
Campus
was one of the last public spaces left where vast new edifices with spectacular vistas could be erected without having to demolish existing buildings.
¹¹⁰
Recognizing its appeal, in 55 BCE Pompeius Magnus had picked a spot on the south side to build Rome’s first stone theatre, a large hemicycular structure (
Theatrum Pompeii
) modelled after the one at Mytilene, which still dominated its featureless landscape twenty-eight years later.
¹¹¹
In 28 BCE Augustus had broken ground on a plot in the far north corner of the plain beside the
Via Flaminia
to erect his mausoleum, a tiered tumulusstyle grave which would be the resting place for himself, his family and a few select friends.
¹¹²
Agrippa himself had grand designs on taming the unkempt area between these great structures with a complex of monumental buildings, cultivated parks and walkways decorated with sculptures and paintings for the enjoyment of all Romans (
map 11
). He personally owned a large tract of land, the
Campus Agrippae
, along the east bank of the river with a private road and it was probably at this time that he ordered work to begin on erecting a bridge over the river at his own expense.
¹¹³
The
Pons Agrippae
– probably owned by Agrippa during his lifetime, but made accessible by the public in accordance with Roman law – provided the first direct link between the central area of the
Campus Martius
and the
Trans Tiberim
(Trastevere) on the west bank of the Tiber, which, likely because of the proximity of the bridge, would soon grow into a large warehousing and residential district.
¹¹⁴
Excavations by Luigi Borsari in the 1880s revealed that the bridge spanned three arches mounted on four boat-shaped piers fixed in the river.
¹¹⁵
The date of the bridge’s completion is not known for certain, but as it would have provided a convenient way to transport the vast quantities of construction materials delivered by ship and unloaded on the west bank of the Tiber over to the
Campus
, a date of 28/27 BCE seems likely. The plain would be a busy construction site for most of 28 through 25 BCE.

Map 11. The Buildings of Agrippa in the Campus Martius.

‘Meanwhile’, writes Dio, ‘Agrippa beautified the city at his own expense.’
¹¹⁶
He states that in the year 26 BCE, rather than undertaking to repair a road, instead Agrippa ‘dedicated the structure called the
Saepta
’.
¹¹⁷
In so doing he was completing a dream of Iulius Caesar who had envisioned a new building as early as 54 BCE to replace the aging ‘
Ovile
’ – or ‘sheep pen’, as it was affectionately known – where Romans gathered in their
comitia tributa
to vote at election time.
¹¹⁸
The
triumvir
Lepidus had begun work on the building, but now that he was disgraced, it took Agrippa to finish it.
¹¹⁹
The prioritization of this building project over others is revealing. In the wake of the constitutional arrangement, choosing to rebuild the
Saepta
clearly demonstrated the régime’s full commitment to free elections within Rome’s republican democracy. Its official name, the
Saepta Iulia
, acknowledged Iulius Caesar’s original plans but, by dint of his family connection, it emphasized Augustus’ support of the institution for which it was built. It was a large rectangular enclosure, measuring 310m (1,017ft) long by 120m (393ft) wide, surrounded by a covered colonnade to protect voters from rain or rays of the sun.
¹²⁰
Rather than leaving its walls plain, Agrippa adorned the new structure with marble tablets and paintings to provide a pleasant space for voters to enjoy while they cast their ballots and to encourage people to visit and linger at other times of the year.
¹²¹
Some of the finest, and costliest, sculptures decorated its interior space:

Adjoining the
Saepta
on the south side was the vote counting office (
Diribitorium
) built anew by Agrippa for the officials (
diribitores
) and returning officer, which Pliny the Elder included on his list of ‘our magnificent constructions’ of Rome in his day.
¹²³
Dio remarks that the
Diribitorium
was the largest building under a single roof ever constructed.
¹²⁴
It was supported by beams of larch of a maximum length of 30.5m (100ft) and 0.5m (1.5ft) thickness – Pliny knew because one of the logs deemed ‘too large to be used in the building’ was still kept in the
Saepta
as a curiosity when he saw it.
¹²⁵
The ambitious size of the roof would push first century Roman building technology to its limits and Agrippa would never see it finished in his lifetime.
¹²⁶

Close by the
Saepta
, Agrippa erected a large covered hall called the Basilica of Neptunus (
Basilica Neputini
), measuring approximately 45m×19m (147ft×62ft).
¹²⁷
Dio explains that it was dedicated ‘in honour of the naval victories’ and for ‘added brilliance’ it was decorated with paintings of the adventures of the Argonauts.
¹²⁸
When its doors opened to the public in 25 BCE it soon became better known by its popular name of the
Argonautarum
. Neither the exact plan of the complex nor its function is well understood. The building may have adjoined a colonnaded portico which acquired the name
Porticus Argonautarum
– and became one of the city’s most popular meeting places – but a fourth century document describes a
porticum Argonautarum et Meleagri
which might indicate that one wing of the building was decorated with depictions of Jason and his crew, and the opposite with paintings of Meleager’s life and adventures.
¹²⁹

Next to the Basilica Agrippa erected a gymnasium – an exercise hall with a colonnaded courtyard providing fitness enthusiasts with a covered place in which to work out all year round – called the ‘Spartan Sweatbath’ (
sudatorium Laconicum
). Dio explains that he ‘gave the name “Laconian” to the gymnasium because the Lacedaemonians [Spartans] had a greater reputation at that time than anybody else for stripping and exercising after anointing themselves with oil’.
¹³⁰
This style of bathing was similar to the modern Finnish sauna. Heat was transmitted from furnaces under the suspended floors and through flues in the walls. The floors of the building were made of concrete and tile and raised on brick pillars (
pilae
). The walls were built with columns of hollow brick pipes at intervals from below the floor to the roof. Outside, furnaces created a flow of hot hair which circulated under the floor and up the flues. Slaves toiled to keep the fires burning to maintain the heat at a constant level. Above ground, bathers rubbed their skin with olive oil, sat in the heat and perspired, then removed the sweat off their skin using a curved bronze scraper (
strigil
) and finally dived into a cold plunge pool to close the pores.
¹³¹

This was to be the first phase of a much larger bathing, rest and relaxation complex. To provide it with fresh water, a source had to be found outside the city. Agrippa’s surveyors were despatched to find one. They found it on the east side of the city on land owned by Licinius Lucullus.
¹³²
The story is preserved by Frontinus who writes,

In honour of the girl the aqueduct was named
Aqua Virgo
, the ‘Aqueduct of the Virgin’. The sixth to bring water directly into Rome, the aqueduct would take several years to construct. Its route began at the eighth milestone outside Rome and followed the
Via Collatina
.
¹³⁴
Apparently to avoid residential areas it would course over public land through the north of the city, but the decision to do so would add substantially to the length of the structure, the construction time and its expense, which Agrippa personally bore.
¹³⁵

Agrippa’s last building to be dedicated during this period, and his most dramatic, was a monument which he intended would have special significance for the new régime:

Had Augustus not been so politically sensitive, the building might have been called the
Augusteum
rather the
Pantheum
or Pantheon as we know it today. The name derives from the Greek word
Πάνθειον
: first attested in 59 CE, the name indicates it was a sacred space for ‘all gods’, not just the best known twelve of the Roman state.
¹³⁷
Dio specifically states ‘it has this name, perhaps because it received among the images which decorated it the statues of many gods, including Mars and Venus’ but adds that when Augustus refused to allow a statue of himself to be erected inside, Agrippa ‘placed in the temple itself a statue of the former [Iulius] Caesar’.
¹³⁸
For Augustus it was too early in his principate to imply his own divinity. It was not that he was averse to worship of his own living person, for he had already permitted non-Romans to do so at sacred precincts in Pergamum and in Nikomedia, but there was potential for real scandal in implying that it was an obligation on all Roman citizens, especially ones in politically sensitive Rome.
¹³⁹
Worship of Roma and Caesar as divinities among Roman citizens, however, he both permitted and encouraged, such as at the new Temple of Caesar in the
Forum Romanum
he had consecrated in 29 BCE, and at dedicated shrines in Ephesus and Nikaia (Nicaea).
¹⁴⁰
The statues of Augustus – holding a spear – and Agrippa intentionally stood
outside
in the
pronaos
or porch, presumably flanking great bronze doors to the
cella
, the sacred space enclosed within.
¹⁴¹

The Pantheon Agrippa built is a conundrum – one of antiquity’s greatest mysteries, in fact. The building which stands in Rome today is not Agrippa’s. It is the third version, rebuilt by Hadrian in 120 CE.
¹⁴²
The original appearance of the Pantheon is still a matter of conjecture. Excavations conducted during the late-1800s revealed that the foundations laid down by Agrippa – huge blocks of travertine and covered with marble – were 2.5m (8.2ft) below the present Hadrianic structure (
fig. 4
).
¹⁴³
One theory proposes that the building faced south and was T-shaped in plan, like the Temple of Concord in the
Forum Romanum
, its porch (
pronaos
) measuring 21.3m (69.9ft) wide, the main platform being 43.8m (143.7ft) wide and 19.8m (65ft) deep.
¹⁴⁴
The other, more recent, theory suggests the Pantheon of Agrippa and that of Hadrian were actually closely aligned – both facing north – perhaps differing only in that the original was fully open to the sky like a precinct, as several Greek and Seleucid models are known to have been, or it was covered with a tiled roof, rather than the concrete dome which crowns it today.
¹⁴⁵
This alignment would also imply that the architect fully intended anyone standing in the building, turning around and looking out from Agrippa’s Pantheon would have had an unobstructed view across the
Campus Martius
to the Mausoleum of Augustus located 700m (2,296ft) directly to the north.
¹⁴⁶