Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Lepidus: Unfairly Treated? II

Finished it, then.

Not bad, not bad. I wonder now, having finished, whether the sole aim of the work (as the title utterly gives away) has in some way coloured the worth of the text? It really is a work of history that primarily aims to defend a character and then sets about it.

It's done quite well, for the most part. The Bryn Mawr review (here) has the same misgiving as I had when reading the text - there are just too much usage of "might/must have been" and "it seems quite possible that", which is most certainly a result of the evidence for removing Lepidus' tarnish being not as convincing as it's made out to be.

Like I said in my previous post, I've always thought Lepidus was hard done by, and I always feel for him, in a sense, when I watch HBO's Rome and he's usually ignored or sidelined. That, of course, perhaps puts me at a disadvantage because I want to believe Weigel's book, even if it's slightly lacking in force.

In the end, the overwhelming impression I got of Lepidus after reading the work was that he was an able man, used well by "greater" men and while he's perhaps unfairly treated, there is no hidden Lepidus that is waiting in the shadows that can be used by a modern historian to redeem the tarnished triumvir.

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