b.c., Agrippa and some 300 ships met Sextus Pompeius
with a navy of equal strength. Agrippa won a decisive
victory, and Pompeius fled after losing more than 380 of
his ships. That same year, in a second battle at Mylae (no
exact date), Agrippa again defeated Pompeius’s forces;
Sextus Pompeius was captured and, a year later, put to
death. These victories aided Octavian in taking power,
and he made peace with his enemies, most notably Mark
antony. Eventually, however, this peace broke down,
and the two parties went to war. Augustus put Agrippa
in charge of his fleet, and the defeat of Antony at Ac-
tium (2 September 31 b.c.) made Octavian ruler of the
entire Roman Empire. For this service Agrippa was again
made a consul, and when Octavian—now called Augus-
tus—consolidated his rule in Rome, Agrippa became the
emperor’s deputy in all but name. When Marcellus, Au-
gustus’s nephew, died, the emperor gave the hand of his
widow, Julia, to his friend and closest adviser, Agrippa.
In 19 b.c., Agrippa put down a rising in Spain. The
following year, he was named tribunicia potestas (tribune
of the plebs), an official who oversaw the workings of
the Roman Senate and had the power to veto senatorial
legislation. His two sons, Gaius and Lucius, were named
as possible successors to Emperor Augustus. Agrippa
was sent to the eastern part of the Roman Empire to
oversee the defense of the eastern provinces, and he
stayed there from 17 to 13 b.c. He returned to lead the
Roman armies in a bloodless suppression of a Pannonian
insurrection in Illyricum. However, he became ill and
returned to Rome, where he died sometime in 12 b.c.
Little known today, Agrippa helped to lay firm founda-
tions for the Roman Empire. His descendants included
the emperors Nero and Caligula.References: Reinhold, Meyer, Marcus Agrippa: A Biogra-
phy (Geneva: N.Y.: W. F. Humphrey Press, 1933); Wright,
Frederick Adam, Marcus Agrippa: Organizer of Victory
(London: G. Routledge & Sons, 1937); Lewis, Charles
Lee, Famous Old-World Sea Fighters (London: G. G.
Harrap, 1929); Shipley, Frederick W., Agrippa’s Building
Activities in Rome (St. Louis, Mo.: Washington University
Press, 1933); Bruce, George, “Mylex” and “Naulochus,”
in Collins Dictionary of Wars (Glasgow, Scotland: Harper-
Collins Publishers, 1995), 171, 174.Ahenobarbus, Cnaeus Domitius (?–31 b.c.)
Roman general
Little is known of Cnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus, in-
cluding his exact birth date. What is known is that he
was the scion of a family of distinguished Roman citi-
zens; historian William Smith outlined his genealogical
chart in his famed Dictionary of Greek and Roman My-
thology (1844). According to Smith, Ahenobarbus was
a direct descendant great-grandson of the first Cnaeus
Domitius Ahenobarbus (?–196 b.c.), a Roman consul
and legate to sciPio africanus in the war against
Antiochus the Great. His father, Lucius Domitius Ahe-
nobarbus, took his son to the battle at Pharsalia (better
known as the battle of Pharsalus, 48 b.c.), and it appears
that they sided with the forces of the Roman general
Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, better known as PomPey.
Pompey was defeated at Pharsalia by Julius caesar, and
Lucius Ahenobarbus was killed in flight after the battle.
Cnaeus Ahenobarbus survived, though he could not re-
turn to his native Italy until he was pardoned by Caesar
in 46 b.c.
Two years later, on 15 March 44 b.c., Caesar was
murdered by a group of conspirators, including his ownMarcus Agrippa
AhenobARbuS, cnAeuS DomitiuS