I was re-reading Demetrius' comment that Brutus is peculiarly hard to understand because he's hard to FIND - a see-through man whose motivations can only be guessed at. Now, I've re-read (or rather, heard) Plutarch's biography of Brutus.

And I'm doing a mildly slow burn! lol

I had never before realized, probably because I hadn't sat down and listened to all of Plutarch's Roman bios one after the other, how Brutus can do no wrong. No wonder Shakespeare, using the North translation of Plutarch, wrote about a wonderful, strong, tough, generous, noble, kind, disciplined, etc. etc. character - it's all there in Plutarch. There is LITERALLY nothing at all in the entire biography which is even mildly critical except for one brief remark that agreeing to let his soldiers pillage and rape a couple of Greek cities if they won Philippi, might be considered 'ignoble.' Immediately countered by how much nastier both Octavian and Antony were on that subject.

This has got to be one of the great whitewash jobs ever done on any ancient character! So the question immediately occurs - why Brutus? Even Plutarch gets a tad nauseous at the idea of stabbing one's proto-father to death (in the groin!) - but he so overall urges how noble and philosophical Brutus is that he's a marble man, there's hardly anything real about him whatsoever.

I must go back to read Arrian to see if there is any of this type of panagyric going on there as well.

My point being - I wonder how quickly after the rise of Augustus the Roman intelligentsia had to find a suitable noble martyr to represent the dying Republic, and how quickly Brutus was picked to fill the bill. I will agree that he probably WAS the only one of the conspirators who acted from any more deep-seated conviction that personal jealousy or greed, but that he was the greatest Roman of them all? I can't accept it. If nothing else, the sheer inanity of how they handled the post-assassination period, plus Brutus' ruthlessness when he illegally took charge in the east and raised all those armies, makes one feel that portraying him as a saint is pretty unfair, as well as inaccurate, to the man who once lived.

As for Plutarch specifically, he is infinitely more balanced discussing, say, Alexander - who is allowed both good and bad qualities - than Brutus. Was there some political reason why, among the Romans of his time, he went to 2-dimensional only?