Marcus Aemilius Lepidus (triumvir)

Reading notes

• Ad Atticum 13.42 §3 Lepidus is begging me to come

  M. Aemilius Lepidus, Caesar's master of the horse and an augur, who in late 45 BC needed Cicero present for an augural rite. He would later become the third member of the triumvirate of 43 BC.

• Ad Atticum 13.46 §2 the one he handed over to Lepidus

  M. Aemilius Lepidus, Caesar's master of the horse and the future triumvir, who had received from Balbus a property near Lanuvium. Balbus's largesse to such men is the backdrop to Cicero's own dealings with him.

• Ad Atticum 16.5 §4 O days under Lepidus's auspices

  M. Aemilius Lepidus, Caesar's master of horse and later triumvir, whose recently announced public thanksgivings or holidays Cicero alludes to here with a pun on the place-name Lepidus and the word lepide ("prettily").

• Ad Atticum 16.11 §8 About the Lepidian holidays

  Public thanksgiving days (feriae) decreed in honour of M. Aemilius Lepidus, Caesar's old lieutenant and a future triumvir, for a settlement he had made in Spain.

• Ad M. Brutum 1.10 §2 time was given to Lepidus

  M. Aemilius Lepidus, governor of Narbonese Gaul and Nearer Spain, had long been suspected of sympathy with Antony; the delay after Mutina allowed Antony to reach Lepidus, who joined him in May 43 BC, forming the nucleus of the future triumvirate.

• Ad M. Brutum 1.12 §1 crime and madness of M. Lepidus

  Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, one of Caesar's former officers and governor of Narbonese Gaul, had just joined Antony's forces in May 43 BC, reversing his earlier professed loyalty; the Senate declared him a public enemy (hostis).

• Ad M. Brutum 1.13 §1 If he should tear himself away from us

  Brutus fears that Lepidus, having just defected to Antony, might survive militarily, in which case his children (Brutus's nephews through his sister Iunia Tertia's marriage to Cassius — but here Lepidus's children via Iunia, Brutus's sister) would be hostages to the enemy's fury; the letter makes clear Brutus acknowledges Lepidus's defection but hopes the Senate will spare his kin.

• Ad M. Brutum 1.14 §2 the war has been reborn, and not slightly, through the crime of Lepidus

  After the battles of Forum Gallorum and Mutina in April 43 BC, Antony had appeared defeated; Lepidus's defection to him in late May revived the war and made a second round of fighting in Cisalpine Gaul or Narbonese Gaul likely.

• Ad M. Brutum 1.15 §4 the instrument of monarchy had been handed over to Lepidus and Antony

  Cicero's charge is that the conspirators killed Caesar but left his armies, provinces, and client networks in the hands of his lieutenants Lepidus and Antony, who could now use those resources to establish a successor autocracy.

• Ad M. Brutum 1.18 §6 your sister's sons

  Brutus's sister Iunia Tertia (wife of Cassius) is not meant here; rather these are the sons of Brutus's other sister, who married Marcus Aemilius Lepidus — making the boys Lepidus's children. After Lepidus defected to Antony in May 43 BC, Cicero worked in the Senate to shield the boys from the political consequences of their father's treachery.

• Ad M. Brutum 2.2 §1 Lepidus, your kinsman

  Marcus Aemilius Lepidus was a distant connection of Brutus through aristocratic family ties; Cicero sardonically notes that Lepidus ranks as nearest relation those he most hates (i.e., the Liberators).

• Ad Familiares 10.6 §1 whether Lepidus's or yours

  M. Aemilius Lepidus, governor of Narbonese Gaul and Nearer Spain, had also written to the Senate advocating peace with Antony; both letters were received with deep suspicion by Cicero and the Senate's Optimate majority.

• Ad Familiares 10.8 §4 from my colleague's case, how dangerous to a good citizen unprepared is the premature unveiling of his hand

  Plancus's consul-designate colleague was Lepidus, whose peace-advocacy letters to the Senate had already damaged his standing; Plancus implies he learned from Lepidus's exposed and ambiguous position that premature declaration was politically fatal.

• Ad Familiares 10.9 §3 if Lepidus does not obstruct me

  M. Aemilius Lepidus, governor of Narbonese Gaul and Nearer Spain, whose loyalty was already suspect; Plancus feared Lepidus might physically block his army's route or defect to Antony, which Lepidus did in May 43 BC.

• Ad Familiares 10.10 §2 stand by your colleague

  Plancus and Lepidus both held proconsular commands in Gaul and Spain respectively, making them formal colleagues (conlegae) in imperium; Cicero urges Plancus to keep Lepidus loyal to the Senate.

• Ad Familiares 10.14 §2 Lepidus, having been put in mind of the crisis of the state, would act with you and with the state

  Cicero hopes Lepidus, governor of Narbonese Gaul and Nearer Spain, will join Plancus against the retreating Antony rather than the reverse; within weeks Lepidus instead united his army with Antony's, dooming the senatorial cause in Gaul.

• Ad Familiares 10.15 §1 by means of continual messengers I urged on Lepidus

  Plancus describes his diplomatic effort to win the wavering Lepidus, governor of the neighbouring province of Narbonese Gaul, to the senatorial side against the retreating Antony; the alliance Plancus reports here proved illusory.

• Ad Familiares 10.16 §1 a letter from Lepidus that was decidedly chilly and irresolute

  Lepidus's lukewarm dispatch, read just before Plancus's, betrayed his drift toward Antony; the contrast Cicero draws here is between Plancus's resolute loyalty and Lepidus's evasiveness on the eve of his defection.

• Ad Familiares 10.17 §3 he sent Apella to me, so that I should hold him as a hostage

  Apella, an agent (probably a freedman) of Lepidus, was handed over as a personal guarantee (obses) of Lepidus's good faith in the alliance Plancus believed he had secured; Lepidus's defection to Antony soon nullified the pledge.

• Ad Familiares 10.18 §2 the inconstancy and unreliability of Lepidus's army

  Lepidus's troops were riddled with Caesarian sympathy for Antony; Plancus rightly fears they will go over, as they soon did, dragging Lepidus into open alliance with Antony at the end of May 43 BC.

• Ad Familiares 10.23 §2 joined himself to Antony on 29 May

  Lepidus's army went over to Antony at the Argenteus on 29 May 43 BC (Latin a.d. iiii K. Iun.), a decisive defection that united the two against the Senate and forced Plancus to withdraw across the Isère.

• Ad Familiares 10.27 §1 you did not render thanks to the Senate

  After the victory at Mutina the Senate had voted Lepidus honours (including a gilded equestrian statue); Cicero reproaches him for failing to send the customary formal letter of thanks (gratiarum actio) for them.

• Ad Familiares 10.31 §2 the talk of the man whom, though no one wants to look at him, men nonetheless do not hate as he deserves

  Pollio leaves the man pointedly unnamed, but he is Lepidus, the neighbouring governor of Narbonese Gaul and Nearer Spain whose couriers Pollio names openly in section 4; the circumlocution guards against the letter being intercepted.

• Ad Familiares 10.33 §2 the speeches he is said to have made before the troops at Narbo

  Pollio implies that Lepidus's letters to him were as two-faced and inflammatory as the harangues (contiones) Lepidus reportedly delivered to his army at Narbo, then leaning toward Antony.

• Ad Familiares 10.34 §2 we shall not fail the Senate or the commonwealth

  A protestation of loyalty that proved hollow within days: by 29 May Lepidus had joined his army to Antony's, an act for which the Senate declared him a public enemy.

• Ad Familiares 10.35 §1 had not fortune wrung from my hands a policy of my own

  Lepidus's euphemism for his junction with Antony on 29 May 43 BC, which he presents as forced upon him; the Senate was unconvinced and on 30 June declared him a public enemy.

• Ad Familiares 11.9 §1 that most weathercock of men, Lepidus

  Latin ventosissimum, literally "most full of wind"; Decimus brands Lepidus as the man most likely to shift with the political breeze, as he soon did in joining Antony.

• Ad Familiares 11.13 §3 he had, he said, an understanding with M. Lepidus

  Lepidus, governing Narbonese Gaul and Nearer Spain with a large army, was the prize both sides courted; Antony's claim of an understanding with him foreshadows their actual junction at the end of May 43 BC.

• Ad Familiares 12.8 §1 the criminality of your kinsman Lepidus

  M. Aemilius Lepidus, governor of Narbonese Gaul and Nearer Spain, joined his army to Antony's in late May 43 BC and was branded a public enemy. He is Cassius's adfinis (kinsman by marriage) through his wife Junia, half-sister of M. Brutus.

• Ad Familiares 12.10 §1 declared a public enemy by the Senate on 30 June by unanimous vote

  Renders hostis iudicatus: a formal Senate decree branding a citizen an enemy of the state, stripping his legal protections. Lepidus was so declared on 30 June 43 BC (Latin pridie Kalendas Quintilis) for joining Antony.

• Ad Familiares 13.26 §3 we have procured letters to you from M. Lepidus the consul

  M. Aemilius Lepidus was consul in 46 BC (suffect from approximately May), just before his role as master of horse under Caesar. Cicero obtained supporting letters from the consul not as a directive but as a moral endorsement --- letters commendaticiae, a standard instrument of Roman patronage.

• Thirteenth Philippic §7 But Marcus Lepidus, it is urged --- twice hailed imperator, pontifex maximus

  M. Aemilius Lepidus, governor of Narbonese Gaul and Nearer Spain, pontifex maximus after Caesar, who in 43 BC pressed the Senate to reconcile with Antony. Cicero answers him with elaborate, wary courtesy, conscious of Lepidus's army.