Agrippa Quotes

“It was the advice given a hundred years ago by Micipsa, the King of Numidia, to his sons, and I offer it here, on the unlikely chance that some statesman might one day chance across these pages in search of guidance: ‘Harmony makes even small things grow; discord makes even the greatest decay.”
― Robert Harris, Agrippa

“All power depends on force. All force depends on money.”
― Robert Harris, Agrippa

“It was F. A. Wright, professor of classics at London University, who in 1937 first floated the possibility that Agrippa might have been Caesar’s illegitimate son.”
― Robert Harris, Agrippa

“Agrippa left behind no speeches, few letters and only a couple of sentences of direct quotation. The greatest general of the period, he never triumphed. Though he was the effective co-ruler of the Roman world for many years, his family origins are almost entirely unknown, his inner life a blank.”
― Robert Harris, Agrippa

“To the modern eye, there is something totalitarian in the way the Great Leader all but effaced his closest comrade from the official record.”
― Robert Harris, Agrippa

“– It was a choice between the bear and the fox. And in politics there is no choice. It has to be the fox.”
― Robert Harris, Agrippa

“For the first time in all our years together, he was in better health than I was. He was full of energy. He said he did not intend to remain in the city for long. He had decided to go to Greece for the winter. He wanted me to stay in Rome and keep an eye on things in Italy.”
― Robert Harris, Agrippa

“No, I did not enjoy becoming fifty. I do not recommend it. I sensed the shadows closing in.”
― Robert Harris, Agrippa

“– What is the point of torturing myself? I can hardly divorce her. Our marriage is integral to the stability of the state.”
― Robert Harris, Agrippa

“I told myself it was at least as likely that the rumours were false, perhaps part of some plot by Maecenas to undermine me. I felt a great surge of hatred for him – that half-man, that eunuch, that feline and malicious purveyor of tittle-tattle! I have searched my heart before sending you this message … I sneered at the words. I did not trust for an instant his protestations of reluctance. I was sure he would have relished writing such a letter.”
― Robert Harris, Agrippa

“I realised too, even more clearly, how essential I had been to his ambitions – a friend at his side whom he trusted, who could act, as it were, as his muscle. He had supplied the cunning. I had supplied the body – even to the extent of fathering his sons. Neither of us would have got so far on his own. But together we had proved impossible to stop.”
― Robert Harris, Agrippa

“I should have smiled with her. Augustus was already being hailed as a god, especially in the east, and gods don’t share the credit for their wonders with us mere mortals. And in defence of Julia’s teasing, she was young and had no idea of the ghosts that haunted me on that windswept clifftop.”
― Robert Harris, Agrippa

“– Well then go to him, Agrippa, and tell him you refuse. But you and I both know you cannot do that. He would never forget such an insult. You might even risk a civil war, which you would lose, and the only people who would benefit would be Livia and Tiberius. Does it really matter so much if they are known as Gaius and Lucius Caesar? They will still be your flesh and blood.”
― Robert Harris, Agrippa

“I was the father of Augustus’s grandson, Gaius, who was widely expected one day to succeed him. I loved that boy and was bringing him up with a tenderness that had never been shown to me by my so-called father, to be brave and honourable and fitted for the life of service that lay ahead of him. Thus, I reasoned, whatever my current subservience, I would be victorious in the end.”
― Robert Harris, Agrippa

“I knew Augustus resented his dependency upon me, just as I resented mine upon him. But by now, not only was his daughter married to me; my daughter Agrippina was married to his stepson Tiberius. We were locked in a familial embrace of iron from which escape was unthinkable, and so, like siblings who bicker and irritate one another from time to time, we were obliged always to make up again.”
― Robert Harris, Agrippa

“– I have brought back no prisoners to parade through the streets – they are all dead. There is no treasure to display – they were too poor. Believe me, such a triumph would have made a meagre spectacle, unworthy of us both.”
― Robert Harris, Agrippa

“– What is this? Suddenly you think you are too grand for public honours, is that it? You think they are beneath you? This is false modesty, Agrippa, the very worst kind of pride!”
― Robert Harris, Agrippa

“The Spanish campaign was not one of which I was proud. It was hardly a war of equals. It was the annihilation of a fierce but primitive people by a vastly superior military machine, which I should never have had to undertake if Augustus had settled matters properly in the first place.”
― Robert Harris, Agrippa

“If Rome is to prevail, it will not be by force of arms alone, but by the superiority of our engineering, which will spread across the world and carry our civilisation in its wake. Harmony makes even small things grow”
― Robert Harris, Agrippa

“The moment when the doctor appeared on the threshold to announce she had given birth to a healthy boy is as vivid in my mind as I lie here now as it was on the day it happened. When I held him for the first time, I felt I had broken a curse, and that here was an achievement of which even Julius Caesar could not boast.”
― Robert Harris, Agrippa

“If I had to nominate the period of my life when I was happiest, I would say it was those first two years with Julia.”
― Robert Harris, Agrippa

“Besides, Tiberius was still engaged to my Agrippina, with whom, to my secret astonishment – for I had not believed him capable of any emotion except anger – he appeared very much in love.”
― Robert Harris, Agrippa

“– I believe our marriage can be a success if we allow one another a certain degree of freedom. In any case, I can’t refuse to do what my father wishes – and let’s face it, Agrippa, neither can you, so we had better make the best of it. And now you may kiss me if you wish.”
― Robert Harris, Agrippa

“She was seventeen. I was forty-one. Such a gulf in age is not, of course, uncommon, especially in marriages in which matters of state are involved. There, it is often the case that the bride and groom are complete strangers to one another.”
― Robert Harris, Agrippa

“And so, without my asking for it, or him offering it, we arrived at the only logical solution – for Augustus, for me and for the stability of the state – which was that I should marry Julia.”
― Robert Harris, Agrippa

“Although there were to be occasional plots and frequent grumbles against him in the future – for such is politics – he never again faced a serious challenge.”
― Robert Harris, Agrippa

“I looked around my comfortable room, in my comfortable house, on my comfortable island, and realised I was living a comfortable death.”
― Robert Harris, Agrippa

“This much I have learned at the end of a long life. Our past will always find us, no matter how hard we try to hide from it.”
― Robert Harris, Agrippa

“I had not set foot on a warship since my return from Actium eight years earlier. Immediately I felt my spirits start to revive. Now that I look back, I can see that water was the element in which I was always most at home – aqueducts, bathhouses, fountains, but most of all the sea.”
― Robert Harris, Agrippa

“And so we parted, civilly enough at the end, after more than a quarter of a century of intimate friendship, torn apart by the ineluctable dictates of power.”
― Robert Harris, Agrippa