The Memoirs of Herod Agrippa II

Chapter FIVE - The Childhood of Herod Agrippa I

I was an orphan to my father's troubles. A king, especially a king of Judea balancing between the foibles of his Roman masters and his rebellious people, must forever be active and alert. Foresight is the key as I know to my own cost. The need to be at two places at once means leaving your family to be where power resides or is needed. My father, Herod Agrippa I, juggled with the sticks of the Imperium and rose and fell as they rose and fell. His life was shadowed by augurs as if a wanton spirit was flitting alongside him playing with his hopes and despairs. It took pity on his sadness and envied his joys, first lifting him out of despair, then tripping up his successes and finally killing him.

My father (I shall call him Agrippa even though he should not be confused with Augustus' great general whose patronymic he took or indeed that general's son and the friend of his youth, Agrippa Postumus who I shall call simply Postumus). He was the son of Aristobulus, the son of Marriamne, Herod's favourite wife, who was in turn granddaughter to Salome, sister to that same Herod. Thus the turmoil and genius of the family was planted in the very core of his soul.

His birth was auspicious. He came into the world in the seventeenth year of the reign of the Emperor Augustus during the consulships of Africanus Maximus and Julius Antonius. This was on the very same day as the future Emperor Claudius. It was also the day that his grandfather King Herod dedicated the great temple he had built above Jerusalem. Like me later, he grew up in the halcyon days of peace and plenty. Augustus still had another twenty-four years to reign. As his grandfather, Herod, had been a trusted prince and friend of Rome, it was quite natural that his family should be friends of the Roman princes and that he should grow up close to the Imperial family. It is said that he stood out among them like an eastern star in a cold northern sky. He had the mischievous energy and dark good looks of so many of our family against which the Roman Caesars looked pale and stern and even a little lost in their big empty rooms. I only knew Augustus in his old age and what I saw was not as handsome as the reputation he had built so assiduously and was on view on statues scattered across the lands he ruled, his strength lying rather in a strong sense of duty than in any personal charisma but by then, I suppose, his greatness was in decline. In public no one got near enough to see him properly and, in any case, he knew very well how to play to the crowds. But, in the privacy of his own apartments, he never really seemed as great as his famous reputation.

Agrippa went to school in Rome being taught at first in the boys' college along with the sons and grandsons of Augustus and of some of the Senatorial families in the city. There was also a sprinkling of the sons of hostages held as guarantors of good behaviour. Their fathers were allies of Rome on distant frontiers who needed to be kept on long but secure reins. Agrippa, who was in all likelihood viewed by them as one of these, soon got a reputation for being a bit of a scallywag, a reputation which he had certainly earned. Even among the boys in the college, many of who were hardly scions of Roman learning and some of who, unlike him, resented living in Rome, he stood out. However, his escapades were usually harmless and done in good humour so he was admired by his schoolmates and tolerated by his elders.

Claudius and Agrippa, having been born on the same day, should have been schooled together, but Claudius, being of a rather studious turn of mind, was hopeless at the gymnastic training that was a crucial part of Roman education and far cleverer than his companions at book learning. He was thought of as a bit of an oddity and it was clear pretty early on that he was not made to fight in armour on horseback or do other manly training such as javelin throwing or gymnastics. Because of this he was separated from the others and tutored at home where he progressed quickly. He had inherited Augustus' limp in the right leg only in a much more extreme form and he found it difficult to write because the wrist and index finger of his right hand were also weak. This was a problem for a boy like Claudius who loved his books and insisted that his only aim in life was to be a writer. He soon learned to write with his left hand and, although this was considered evil by his tutors, his position in the first family meant he was allowed to persist with it. In moments of tension he would stammer badly and even rock his head back and forth twitching his right eyelid. It looked for all the world as if he was winking at you conspiratorially which was never remotely the case. He was the butt of some laughter but his easy nature made it difficult to dislike him. No one at that time dreamt that would become emperor and that it would be to him that my father would owe his crown. One of his constant companions was the now rather ageing Nicolaus who has been Herod's chancellor and was now living in Rome. I was asked for an introduction which I gave happily. Nicolaus was by then a grumpy old villain who had more secrets than was safe and was busily engaged on a biography of Augustus. My father had asked me to keep an eye on him and to try and discover whether he had put in anything which might be embarrassing so I was often around him, questioning about the current state of the great task he was intending to dedicate to the emperor. Claudius was an avid reader of histories and later wrote some of his own so it was quite natural that he should want to listen to an actual historian of some experience. So I became a companion of this studious youth trying to keep abreast of Nicolaus history. Luckily he seemed to know rather less than his reputation suggested and all was well. However, Claudius certainly got to know a lot about the history of our family and of eastern politics and had a good idea of what it was that made Agrippa tick, all knowledge that would be useful to him later.

Agrippa went to the Boys' College along with Agrippa Postumus, the son of Agrippa and Julia and thus Augustus' grandson by his first wife Scribonia. He was called Postumus because he was born just after the funeral of his father Agrippa, victor of the great battle of Actium which ended the civil wars and the only man who had stood by Augustus throughout his life. Postumus was a bit of a bull even as a boy, taking his looks from his father, having the same fair hair and bulbous nose and keen blue eyes. But he had none of his father's genius for holding back, none of his reserve which made his father such a crucial first lieutenant to an emperor. However, he was in his own way brave in little things. Although he was not the most pleasant of schoolfellows he was adventurous and always prepared to take risks. Never quick to learn, he was certainly quick to find entertainment.

This continued until the boys were twelve at which point Postumus and Agrippa, along with a couple of their brighter companions, joined Claudius who had gone ahead of them a year before to be tutored by Athenadorus at the palace. Another of the group was Publius Petronius, a young man who was inclined to study but whose father had engineered him a place in the army. He did as his father bid him and his natural intelligence resulted in his rising quickly and becoming known for his abilities. He was sent to Egypt and later met up with my father again when he became legate in Syria. The fact that they had been schooled together saved a great many lives. He was of a sturdy and bullish appearance but my father always said that he had quick eyes which indicated a quick brain behind them.

These few, then, were tutored together by the kindly old Greek agrammaticus who was the personification of the idea of tutor. He had calm green eyes, a hooked nose and a splendid head of white hair which flowed into a beard which grew down below his waist and which he would stroke slowly and regularly with long, thin fingers as he talked. He must have been unique in Rome for using persuasion and encouragement rather than the stick. He had worked in a small suite of rooms set aside for him in the palace and which never quite got rid of their slightly bookish scent of dust and old sweat which mingled with the smell of cooking that wafted up from the kitchens below. The study room was bare of everything other than rolls which lay higgledy- piggledy all over the place, the last consulted being left at the top of the pile. He knew where to lay his hands on a text in all this muddle but had little need of it as his memory was prodigious and belied his rather feeble body. He had been well chosen indeed and I think was not forgotten by any of us even though it was Claudius who made most use of his leaning. As his pupils were all destined to be leaders of society, he took the line that education was a preparation for power and that responsibility could only be built on the firm foundation of knowledge. On Agrippa in particular he pressed this idea, feeling that he was destined to become a ruler. In Claudius, like the rest of them, he saw few such prospects yet appreciated his keen mind.

At fifteen they went on to the syllabus of rhetoric, still with Athenadorus. This crucial skill was steadily woven into the other elements of their schooling. They got whole chunks of Greek by heart along with the Latins. They studied the basic art of the rhetor, then persuasion and finally the complications of legal speech-making. Even Postumus realized the potential in these studies and did his best, although, once away from his books, all thought of study was forgotten. Of course this worked well for Claudius who was naturally of a scholarly bent. Agrippa excelled as he found languages easy and had a fabulous memory. Athenadorus used to advise them that schooling was necessary for future rulers who needed the examples of history and philosophy to guide them and the skills of the rhetor to put them into practice but, except for Claudius who always had his nose in a book, the others made as if they found it boring and less relevant than proving themselves in the face of danger. Knowing what was later to happen I cannot help thinking that Claudius took a safer path than my father and his young school-friends.