Gnaeus Julius Agricola

Roman administrator and general

• Born: June 13, 1940
• Birthplace: Forum Julii, Gallia Narbonensis (now Fréjus, France)
• Died: August 23, 93 c.e.
• Place of death: Rome (now in Italy)

The governor of Britain and conqueror of Scotland was the subject of a famous biography by Roman historian Cornelius Tacitus. Agricola represented a new ideal of dutiful and modest service to Rome.

Early Life

Gnaeus Julius Agricola (uh-GRIHK-uh-luh) was the son of Lucius Julius Graecinus, a senator from Forum Julii, who was executed by Emperor Caligula (r. 37-41 c.e.). Agricola was brought up by his mother, Julia Procilla, and studied at Massilia (Marseilles). Agricola’s early adulthood was marked by rapid progress through various military and administrative ranks. He was tribunus laticlavius in Britain around 60-61, the lowest officer rank for men of senatorial birth and a prerequisite for senate membership. Around this time Agricola married Domitia Decidiana (no relation to the emperor Domitian); of their children, only a daughter survived to marry historian Cornelius Tacitus in 77.

Agricola in 64 was quaestor (a financial official) for the governor of Asia, Salvius Titianus; next he was tribune of the plebs, a largely honorary office, and praetor (legal official) in 68. In the civil war of 69, in which his mother was killed, Agricola supported Vespasian (r. 69-79 c.e.) and recruited troops in Italy. As a reward for this support, he was appointed commander of Legio XX in Britain and successfully disciplined it.

Agricola held military commands in Britain in the early 70’s under governors Vettius Bolanus and Petilius Cerialis. Tacitus in De vita Julii Agricolae (c. 98 c.e.; The Life of Agricola, 1591), the only major source on his life, claims that Bolanus was sluggish but that Cerialis assigned serious responsibilities to Agricola, who pursued them energetically. As a result, Agricola was made a patrician and governor of Aquitania in 74-77. He attained suffect consulship c. 77 at the age of about thirty-seven, some years below the official minimum age of forty-two.

Life’s Work

Agricola was governor (legatus pro praetore) of Britain in 77 or 78 to 83 or 84, the precise dates being subject to dispute. Tacitus refers to his governorship in terms of successive summers, not absolute dates. As befits a Roman literary historian, he does not use many specific names of peoples or places, which has made the precise location of Agricola’s campaigns a matter of archaeological speculation.

In his first season (77 or 78) as governor of Britain, Agricola defeated the Ordovices, a people of north Wales, almost exterminating them. He conquered the island of Mona (Anglesey). In the second season (78 or 79), Agricola consolidated the Brigantian territory in north Britain and, as governor, enforced military and administrative discipline and repressed corruption. According to Tacitus, Agricola promoted the cultural assimilation of the Britons to Roman ways. He encouraged the building of Roman-style towns and promoted Roman education for the sons of native leaders. Tacitus claims that the Britons acquired Roman dress (the toga) and Latin and even Roman vices such as baths and banquets.

In his third season (79 or 80), Agricola reached the Tay River in modern Scotland and halted to build forts. Scholars have been eager to identify all first century c.e. forts in this region as his, but this is unlikely. In his fourth season (80 or 81), Agricola reached the Forth-Clyde isthmus and consolidated the region south of it. In his fifth season (81 or 82), Agricola crossed a body of water (probably the Firth of Clyde) and conquered peoples previously unknown to the Romans, probably in southwestern Scotland. Tacitus claims that Agricola wanted to and could easily have conquered Ireland.

In his sixth season as governor (82 or 83), Agricola advanced beyond the Forth-Clyde isthmus and into the Scottish Highlands. Camps that probably were those of Agricola have been found in northeast Scotland. In the autumn of his seventh year, Agricola defeated the Scottish Britons in a pitched battle at Mons Graupius, the site of which, probably in northeast Scotland, is a matter of archaeological speculation. Details of the battle are also uncertain: Agricola fought with some twenty thousand to thirty thousand men, probably four legions and various Tungrian and Batavian auxiliaries. The Britons numbered some thirty thousand. The Romans surrounded and defeated the Britons, with some 10,000 Briton to 360 Roman losses.

Regarding Agricola’s retirement and death, Tacitus is highly tendentious, representing the emperor Domitian (r. 81-96 c.e.) as a jealous tyrant and Agricola as a selfless victim. In his Agricola, the subject’s governorship of Britain ends, and he returns to Rome. Though Agricola presents his victory in modest terms, Domitian was struck with fear and jealousy: “the qualities of a good general should be the monopoly of the emperor.” The civil war of 69 had shown that great generals could make themselves emperors. Domitian appointed triumphal ornaments for Agricola, the highest military honors short of the triumph, which was reserved for the emperors. However, when Domitian offered him the governorship of Asia, which Tacitus insinuates is merely a trap set by the jealous ruler, Agricola turned it down and retired from political life.

After nine years of quiet retirement, Agricola died in 93. Tacitus reports a rumor that Agricola was poisoned by Domitian; Dio Cassius claims that he was murdered by Domitian. However, poisoning was a stock allegation in the deaths of prominent individuals when death from disease was the likely cause.

Historians have sought reasons for Agricola’s retirement that do not require accepting the portrayal of Domitian as a jealous tyrant. In fact, Domitian had supported the last two or three years of Agricola’s conquests. Agricola had had an unusually long tenure of office, and room had to be made for others. It is possible that Agricola’s military ability was exaggerated by Tacitus; the poor fighting qualities of the Britons were remarked on even by Roman soldiers, and the wars in Dacia may have required better generals.

In general, the achievements of Agricola have been downplayed by later scholarship, which suggests that neither his military ability nor his administration was outstanding; he continued policies of Romanization that are attested to elsewhere. His conquest of Scotland was not lasting; Tacitus exaggerates when he says, perdomita Britannia et statim omissa (“Britain was all but conquered and immediately left aside”). Archaeology suggests that the Romans evacuated forts in northeast Scotland in 86-88 (dated by coin evidence) and retreated to the Tyne-Solway line, where Hadrian’s Wall was later built. In the reign of Antoninus Pius (r. 138-161), the frontier was moved up to the Clyde-Forth line with the building of the Antonine Wall, shortly afterward abandoned.

Significance

The significance of Agricola’s achievements requires discussion of the nature and themes of Tacitus’s The Life of Agricola, the famous source on his life as well as many other aspects of Roman society of the time. (A few inscriptions do survive from Roman Britain with his name and title.) The Life of Agricola resembles more the Greek tradition of encomiastic biography and most of all the Roman funeral elogium (eulogy), rather than the type of Latin biography represented by Suetonius’s De vita Caesarum (c.120 c.e.; History of the Twelve Caesars, 1606). Tacitus omits the anecdotal, often scurrilous, detail of Suetonius. However, The Life of Agricola is too long and contains too much historical narrative for the traditional elogium. Agricola’s personality is idealized, as Tacitus’s goal was to eulogize. The Life of Agricola is a classic (though lacking in specific detail) depiction of the ideal Roman general and administrator. The careers of his predecessors in Britain are probably distorted to present him more favorably.

Tacitus’s The Life of Agricola is an essay on the ideal role of the Roman administrator and general under autocracy. This political problem was also explored by Tacitus in the Ab excessu divi Augusti (c. 116 c.e., also known as Annales; Annals, 1598). The traditional Roman aristocrat (in the Republic, before the last century b.c.e.) was expected to win honor and gloria through military conquest, displaying virtus (courage, manliness, virtue) and earning triumphs. Winning this reputation enabled him to compete for political office. To choose not to compete, but to prefer private life (otium), was at best ambiguous, at worst ignavia (idleness, cowardice, baseness).

These formulas of conduct were redefined in the Imperial period, when one man ruled and aristocratic political competition was limited and formalized; aristocratic military glory was curtailed, triumphs reserved for the emperors; the prudent aristocrat sought a life of otium. However, the aristocracy revered senatorial “martyrs” who supposedly upheld ancestral libertas and were condemned to death by tyrannical emperors such as Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, and Domitian. In The Life of Agricola, Tacitus’s presentation of the prudent aristocrat’s inaction under autocracy is tinged with guilt and anxiety; he laments the “martyrs” and apologizes for the appearance of idleness or servility in the survivors, though he condemns those who endangered themselves by lack of prudence or modesty.

Tacitus’s Agricola represents a new ideal of how to live under the autocracy. Not individual glory but dutiful service of the state is redefined as honorable. Agricola desires military glory, militaris gloriae cupido. However, he always shows moderation and modesty (verecundia) in bearing and respects his superiors. Agricola’s attainment of gloria through conquest is limited by the alleged jealousy of Domitian, which Agricola escapes by retreating from public life (choosing otium), a decision that Tacitus represents as honorable. His emphasized modesty of bearing presents him almost entirely as a victim of Domitian’s paranoia.

The Life of Agricola is also an important source on Roman imperialism. Besides recording conquests, it depicts the policy of “Romanization,” the imposition of Roman culture on non-Roman peoples. Tacitus depicts Agricola as imposing Roman urban civilization on the Britons (temples, public squares, Roman-style houses) and promoting Roman education for sons of native leaders. Tacitus claims that Roman amenities (arcades, baths, banquets) accustomed the Britons to “servitude.” This was hardly a criticism of Romanization as modern cultural imperialism; it represents the elite Roman ambivalence about luxury. Archaeological studies of Romanization suggest that acculturation also was initiated by provincials themselves (in emulation of social superiors) and that it did not usually reach the lower or rural social groups. Roman promotion of urbanization was not necessarily a mission to acculturate all provincials in the manner of the modern European civilizing mission.

The Life of Agricola, with Tacitus’s De origine et situ Germanorum (c. 98 c.e., also known as Germania; The Description of Germanie, 1598), an ethnography of the ancient Germans, is also a key source of Roman attitudes to the “barbarian” enemy. The Life of Agricola contains an extended geographical and ethnographical excursus on the landscape, resources, and peoples of Britain. Tacitus depicts the Britons as “noble savages” fighting in defense of their liberty; they have not been “enervated by long peace.” In a speech before Mons Graupius, Calgacus the Scottish leader rouses his men in defense of “liberty,” painting a picture of Roman misrule: “they make a desert and call it peace.” This speech, of course, is a rhetorical composition by Tacitus, not literal evidence. Tacitus’s representations of barbarians may be veiled political statements, projecting traditional republican ideals of liberty onto the barbarians, while still depicting them as lacking self-control and moderation in “barbarian” fashion. Tacitus’s representations of the Britons were not intended to be sympathetic, but to give his Roman hero an “honorable” enemy.

Bibliography

Braund, David. Ruling Roman Britain: Kings, Queens, Governors, and Emperors from Julius Caesar to Agricola. New York: Routledge, 1996. Emphasizes the cultural and literary aims of Tacitus’s The Life of Agricola.

Hanson, W. S. Agricola and the Conquest of the North. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1987. Hanson takes a cautious, minimalist view of Agricola.

Jones, Brian W. Domitian and the Senatorial Order. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1979. This study of Domitian’s relationship with the senate includes an index and a bibliography.

Mellor, Ronald. Tacitus. New York: Routledge, 1993. A general introduction to Tacitus’s works.

Salway, Peter. A History of Roman Britain. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. A more traditional view than that of Braund.

Southern, Pat. Domitian: The Tragic Tyrant. New York: Routledge, 1997. A traditional view of Domitian.

Tacitus. Tacitus: “The Agricola” and “The Germania.” Edited and translated by H. Mattingly. New York: Penguin Books, 1970. Tacitus’s terse, allusive Latin is expanded somewhat in translation.