Background
Agrippa,
a close friend, political advisor and son-in-law of the emperor, Augustus, was renowned as the emperor’s most competent and loyal advisor. However, due to the jealousy of Livia, (Augustus’s wife) and Marcellus, (the emperor’s nephew), Agrippa eventually decided to leave Rome and go into exile. On Marcellus’s death and following the political unrest both in Rome itself and in Spain, Augustus tried many times to recall Agrippa, but he refused. Maecenas, another advisor of the emperor, was sent to persuade Agrippa to return. The populous in Rome were in rebellion, demanding the return of popular liberties and the restoration of the Republic under the control of the Senate. Robert Graves, author and classical scholar, gives us his fictitious account of the conversation:
Maecenas:
Now, old friend what is it that you want? I realize that you think you have been badly treated, but I assure you that Augustus has a right to think himself equally injured by you. If you had explained that Marcellus’s faction put you in a very uncomfortable position and that Marcellus himself had insulted you – I swear to you that Augustus never knew about this until just the other day – he would have done all in his power to right matters. My frank opinion is that you have behaved like a sulky child – and he has treated you like a father who won’t be bullied by that sort of behavior. You say he wrote you very cold letters? Were your own, then, written in such affectionate language? And what sort of a good-bye had you given him? I want to mediate between the two of you now, because if this breech continues it will be the ruin of us all. You both love each other dearly, as it is only right that the two greatest living Romans should. Augustus has told me that he is ready, as soon as you show your openness to him, to renew the friendship on the same basis as before, or even a more intimate one.
Agrippa He said that?
Maecenas
His very words. May I tell him how grieved you are that you offended him, and may I explain that it was a misunderstanding – that you left Rome, thinking that he was aware of Marcellus’s insult to you at the banquet? And that now you are anxious, on your side, to make up for past failures and that you rely on him to meet you half-way?
Agrippa
Maecenas, you are a fine fellow and a true friend. Tell Augustus that I am his to command as always.
Ref. Robert Graves,“I, Claudius”, Penguin, 2007