History Shorts Robert Harris on Agrippa: Friendship, Power & the Making of the Roman Empire
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Aug 28, 2026 
Robert Harris, bestselling historical novelist behind works like the Cicero trilogy and Agrippa, talks Marcus Agrippa and Roman life. He discusses writing from Agrippa's perspective. He explores the fraught friendship with Augustus, how scarce sources become creative freedom, cinematic battle scenes, and imagining character and casting.
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Writing As Time Travel
- Robert Harris sees writing as time travel, moving between eras instead of geographic travel.
- He treats each historical setting as a foreign shore to learn and turn into a book, a practice across 34 years and 17 novels.
How An Aqueduct Revealed Agrippa
- Agrippa first caught Harris's attention while researching the 60-mile aqueduct that served Pompeii, built in 18 months by Agrippa using 30,000 demobilized legionaries.
- That engineering feat and Agrippa's later role beside Octavius made him a compelling novel subject.
Scarcity As Creative Opportunity
- Scarcity of Agrippa's personal writings became an advantage: historians know deeds and dates but nothing of his inner life.
- Harris uses that blank page to plausibly reconstruct Agrippa's friendship with Octavius and interior life.
