Before the completion of the Bath of Agrippa, during the Republic, water brought into the city via one of its many aqueducts was not used for baths. Owners of private bathing complexes were forced to purchase water which had run off from publicly accessible troughs. Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa innovated here as well, servicing his baths with water fed directly from his freshly built aqueduct, the Aqua Virgo. However, the Baths of Agrippa also began as a private bathing complex, paid for personally by Agrippa himself, who was, by this time, one of the most wealthy men in the Roman world. However, upon his death in 12 BCE, the baths were bequeathed to the Roman people in Agrippa's will, making it the first public bathing complex in the city of Rome (although not the first in the Empire). This action caused a change in attitudes within the Senate towards bathing complexes, removing their construction from the grey area and placing them into the realm of virtuous structures, although Agrippa's example was not repeated until Nero constructed his baths in the early to mid 60s AD.