A member of the patrician Aemilia clan, Lepidus was proquaestor in an eastern province between 84 BC and 78,^[1] and was the father of Quintus Aemilius Lepidus. By 69 he was elected to the post of praetor^[2] and in 66 he was elected consul together with Lucius Volcatius Tullus.^[3]

Lepidus is mentioned several times by Cicero, but never attained much political importance. In 65, he is spoken of as one of the witnesses against Gaius Cornelius, whom Cicero defended.^[4] In 63, Catiline offered to place himself in Lepidus's custody after Catiline was notified of an impending prosecution.^[5]

Lepidus belonged to the aristocratic party, but on the breaking out of the civil war in 49, he retired to his Formian villa to watch the progress of events. Here he was in almost daily intercourse with Cicero, from whose letters we learn that Lepidus was resolved not to cross the sea with Gnaeus Pompeius, but to yield to Julius Caesar if the latter was likely to be victorious. He eventually returned to Rome in March.^[6]

• T. Robert S. Broughton, The Magistrates of the Roman Republic, Vol II (1952).
• Holmes, T. Rice, The Roman Republic and the Founder of the Empire, Vol. I (1923)
• Anthon, Charles & Smith, William, A New Classical Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography, Mythology and Geography (1860).

• Sallust, Bellum Catilinae, 18
• Cicero, In Catilinam, 1.6; Pro Sulla, 4; Ad Atticum, 7.12, 7.23, 8.1, 8.6, 8.9, 8.15, 9.1
• Dio Cassius, Roman History, 36.42
• Asconius, in Cornel. p. 66, ed. Orelli