Oir rating 4.5⭐s
384 pages. First published 2026
You can buy Agrippa...here
You can find out more about Robert Harris...here
- The Blurb...
Julius Caesar is dead, and the lives of two teenaged boys are about to be changed forever. One is Caesar’s 17-year-old nephew, Octavius, whom he has made his heir.
The other is Octavius’s closest friend, Agrippa.
To claim Octavius’s inheritance, they must fight the giant figures of the Roman Empire – and, against all odds, they win. Octavius becomes the Emperor Augustus. For twenty years, they rule the world together.
Now Agrippa is fifty. Ailing and alone, betrayed by his wife’s infidelity, he takes refuge in his house on the Bay of Naples and begins to write his memoirs. Yet to stir up the past can be dangerous. From his earliest meetings with Julius Caesar, through the epic conflict with Mark Antony and Cleopatra, the great naval battle of Actium and the endless wars to expand the empire, he describes how one man has dominated his life: the cunning, ruthless, unknowable Octavius.
When it comes to power, does friendship exist at all?
- Our Review...
I like Robert Harris as an author, probably in my top three. I can think of only one book of his that was mediocre in my opinion, (The Second Sleep.) It was a clever premise but the story didn't match up to the big idea. My two favourites are Fatherland (great premise, great story) and Enigma (didn't need a premise as it was all true but again great story.) So where does Agrippa sit in the cannon of Robert Harris work.. Short answer, along with the rest of his Roman histories It's right up there. When Harris writes historical fiction he is very good, when writes Roman historical fiction he is very, very good. His past Roman novels, Pompeii together with his Cicero Trilogy (Imperium, Lustrum and Dictator) all set a very high bar which he matches with Agrippa.
Having read his Roman books I think that Robert Harris is very much influenced by my favourite book. I, Claudius by Robert Graves (click link for review.) Which I think is a good thing
The story is a first person narrative of Agrippa, the best friend of Octavius, who happens to be Julius Ceaser's nephew. As they grow it becomes obvious together they are better than the sum of their parts. The cunning Octavius is not physically strong and while he can command military it is definitely not his strong point. While Agrippa is his mirror opposite. Together they are ying and yang that make a perfect circle, much like Brian Clough and Peter Taylor at Nottingham Forest in the 1980s, or the dwarf and the muscle bound brute that made up Master Blaster in Mad Max3.
When Cesear is murdered, a teenage Octavius is unexpectedly named heir to the Empire. However the great gift will not just be given. He will have to fight the great General Mark Anthony and navigate the even more dangerous enemies in the Senate. At least he can see Mark Anthony coming. Octavius is forced to rely on Agrippa, his Louka Brazi as they fight their to the top in the Roman game of thrones. But just as Clough and Taylor and Master Blaster eventually ended in entropy so might the same happen to the boyhood friends?
The pressure on the two of them is immense and jealousy is a crow bar to even the strongest friendship. More so when Agrippa learns more of his own history.
Harris has a wonderful gift of pacing and depth. His one liners about history, politics and life in general just capture the zeitgeist of Rome (and of today also) just perfectly. Hence why I have included so many in the Selected Quotes section. His gift is enough history and facts so as to be accurate and interesting but not getting bogged down in detail. Reading Harris's history novels is a good way to learn about history. They give a real sense of immersion, while not losing the scale of times. And at the end it's all little clearer and infinitely interesting.
- Selected Quotes..
The first rule in battle is to hold the line, whatever the cost. A fleeing army is defenceless.
All power depends on force. All force depends on money.
To lose a father to whom one has been close must be a terrible sadness for any son. And yet to lose a father from whom one has been estranged may perhaps be even worse.
power is like a muscle. It must be exercised constantly, otherwise it will turn flabby and weak.
Ignore the historians of warfare, with their neat blocks and arrows set down carefully on maps years afterwards. All battles are chaotic.
I was a soldier not a politician. He cut me off with a wave of his hand. – These days you cannot be one and not the other. Politics is warfare in civilian clothes.
Hypocrisy is the essence of diplomacy.
Yet the truth was, I trusted no one, not even my wife. Thus does power warp us.
Power makes monsters of us all.
Like many young men, he did not allow his iAuggnorance to curb his eloquence.
I looked around my comfortable room, in my comfortable house, on my comfortable island, and realised I was living a comfortable death.
It was a choice between the bear and the fox. And in politics there is no choice. It has to be the fox.
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The First Man in Rome by Colleen McCollough
