Equal parts fascinating and maddening book which readily admits it is weaving a whole cloth out of not much thread. It asks an interesting question: Brutus is given a certain amount of respect, relative to his co-conspirators in the assassination of Julius Caesar, but why?

He is typically depicted as being rather more high minded than the ‘lean and hungry’ looking Cassius.

What does Ms. Tempest conclude? That he had a bit of a reputation as being a high minded person while alive and that he also actively sought to promote that image, even if it wasn’t always warranted (because there is, apparently, evidence that he was also greedy, rapacious, and rather petulant).

The primary sources appear limited and she relies heavily on the letter of Cicero, including his letters to Brutus (also, Plutarch’s biography of him).

It was a maddening read, the lack of certainty (which sometimes felt compensated for by a bit of padding). But also because he seemed like such a bright fellow. He was a well known orator (even if Cicero didn’t like his rhetorical style) and writer of philosophical texts, though no copies of his orations nor his treatises appear to have survived.

What I hadn’t really known was how long Brutus and the other conspirators were allowed to basically continue on after the assassination and how long it took for things to devolve into a(nother) civil war.

So having finished it, I picked up some Cicero I’d started but never completed, so that’s an accomplishment that book achieved.