There is no excuse I can imagine for what Bennett has done here: he's made Trajan BORING. He's taken a life that's so sparsely documented and yet so temptingly exotic and grand, and he's shot it, stuffed it, and mounted it on a dusty back shelf in some dim-lit basement. This may be fine scholarship (in fact, to give the book its due, it IS fine scholarship), but it does no good service either to the non-specialist reader or to Trajan himself, who still awaits the biography he deserves.