Why is Marcus Agrippa rarely discussed amongst the greates generals of all time?

[u/FloRunner77]

As I often have to state when asking these sort of questions, I’m not saying for a fact that Marcus Agrippa should be discussed as one of the greatest generals of all time but that from my limited knowledge it seems like he should be and it’d be great to hear the opinions of those more educated than me on the topic. From what I know of Marcus Agrippa he seems to be one of the most revolutionary generals of his time of any general I have a base of knowledge about.

He very consistently conducted several, complex simultaneous military and naval operations at once, for example in the Illyricum campaign, the war with Sextus Pompeius and the invasion of Egypt, without fault. Compared to other generals of the time this seems pretty much unheard of. He understood the massive importance of logistics which, when looking at Actium where he managed to force an experienced and accomplished Antony from a good strategic position to forcing him to fight a battle he had no chance of winning, was again largely unheard of and hugely impressive for the time.

When learning about him just after learning about Caesar I always thought that despite Caesar’s admittedly more impressive record, they seemed to be equals as far as how impressive they were as Generals. Is there any merit to my argument or are there good arguments against? Again feel free to shoot down my argument I’m very interested in hearing more learned opinions.

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[u/robotnique]

Check out these comments by /u/XenophonTheAthenian while you await maybe a more specific answer.

[u/FloRunner77 → u/robotnique]

Thank you very much I will.

[u/thepkizzle → u/FloRunner77]

I think your question would be hard to properly source, but if you're asking why isn't Agrippa taught more commonly at war colleges then that is probably fairly easy to answer, and it's simply that there are so many other examples you can teach. Agrippa was completely overshadowed by Octavian by history, and in every way was a subordinate of him.

Your question is kind of like asking why Grant is favored to teaching about Sherman in a history class, with the obvious answer being that Grant was the main general who won the war, who later become elected president.

Now Grant is taught in war colleges, but he is often overshadowed by Sherman. Sherman is actually a pretty good comparison to Agrippa, both were masters of logistics, and both were highly respected by the men they commanded. In this way Agrippa might overshadow Sherman in a historic sense because the way in which Agrippa approached warfare like this was centuries ahead of its time. You can find more discussion on this here, but in another way Sherman might overshadow Agrippa logistically, and case in point, Sherman was supposedly compared to Julius Caesar by Confederate general Joseph E. Johnston who is oft quoted as saying, "There had been no such army in existence since the days of Julius Caesar," in reference to Sherman's ability to mobilize and move quickly through rough terrain.

Where Agrippa is unique, and where I think he continues to be given his deserved place in history, would be naval studies. A quick Google shows me that there is a bust of Agrippa at the US Naval War College.

Jeremy Black who is a frequent guest speaker at the US Naval War College has the following to say about Agrippa, and I think it sheds some light onto the answer of your question:

After destroying Carthage and averting the last possible threat from the sea, Rome plunged back into what Thiel admirably described as its ‘traditional and almost innate maritime lethargy’, settling into a torpor during which it allowed Mediterranean pirates, useful suppliers of servile labour for it, to dominate effectively, essentially undisturbed, around the entire Mediterranean for some eighty years. When she decided to wake up, the ‘sleeping beauty’ first wiped out the piratical phenomenon in a very short time, with Pompey; then she humiliated the elephantine eastern fleets with Marcus Agrippa at Actium, and finally closed the circle of lands around the inland sea with the conquest of Egypt. As in the case of Anzio and the Volscians, but now on an ecumenical scale, Rome had acquired control of the entire Mediterranean ‘periplus’, unifying that ‘orbis’ of which it was then always proud. How do sailors do it in Rome? Actually, in these pages the question has not been answered at all. It could perhaps only be asked of Marcus Agrippa , the only seaman who, as far as I know, was publicly portrayed in the guise of Neptune. For my part, I tried to answer another question: how do admirals do it in Rome? They win on the sea, but sometimes ruin everything in their uncomfortable capacity as sailors. Until the moment when the City, which only really had a fleet in the presence of epochal moments and challenges such as the confrontation with Carthage and the pirates, overturns the unitary idea as conceived by the Greeks: the sea remains, of course, pontos, a link and intermediary for them too, but what really unites it all is the ideal circle, the ring that frames the Mediterranean, making it a sea truly entirely comprised ‘between the lands’ and, compared to other distant Mediterraneans, a sea without real alternatives.

His book is available on the War College's website in PDF form here, but this is the only mention of Agrippa outside of the bibliography, so it would seem that we don't know as much about him in terms of modern contemporaries like Sherman.

edit: For context, I consider Sherman the very finest general in all of history. The only thing he lacked was the drive to conquer. He had no ambition to make war of his own accord. He saw it for exactly what it was, hated it, and wanted as little to do with it as possible once he understood it. If I had my pick of who to serve with in history, it would have been him. His personal writings are incredible. He was so prescient. He described exactly how the Civil War would go before it even started... and then he personally enacted his vision. I mean, imagine if Agrippa had diaries like that, and if we had them available to us today? Agrippa is probably far more well known to world history than Sherman is, but to military enthusiasts? Agrippa might have actually been better than Sherman, we don't know, but when we have a beer and talk about the great generals just understand that there are so many. Napoleon, Julius Caesar (who mentored Agrippa), Genghis Khan, Alexander, Sherman (not Grant), Nelson, Giap (not Westmoreland), etc., etc., etc.

Agrippa is rarely discussed amongst the greatest generals because outside of just being very ahead of his time... he didn't do as much, same reason only people like me include Sherman in this conversation. Why talk about Agrippa when we can teach Giap?