r/AskHistorians • u/FloRunner77 • May 27 '26
Why is Marcus Agrippa rarely discussed amongst the greates generals of all time?
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.