Lepida

1. The daughter of Paullus Aemilius Lepidus, consul B. C. 34 [Lepidus, No. 19] and Cornelia, was born in the censorship of her father, B. C. 22. (Propert. 4.11, 67.) Of her future history nothing is known.

2. The sister of M'. Aemilius Lepidus, who was consul A. D. 11. [Lepidus, No. 25.] She was descended from L. Sulla and Cn. Pompey, and was at one time destined for the wife of L. Caesar, the grandson of Augustus. She was, however, subsequently married to P. Quirinus, who divorced her, and who, twenty years after the divorce, in A. D. 20, accused her of having falsely pretended to have had a son by him: at the same time she was charged with adultery, poisoning, and having consulted the Chaldaeans for the purpose of injuring the imperial family. Though she was a woman of abandoned character, her prosecution by her former husband excited much compassion among the people; but as Tiberius, notwithstanding his dissimulation, was evidently in favour of the prosecution, Lepida was condemned by the senate, and interdicted from fire and water. (Tac. Ann. 3.22, 23; Suet. Tib. 49.)

3. The great grand-daughter of Augustus, being the daughter of L. Aemilius Paullus, consul in A. D. 1 [Lepidus, No. 22], and Julia, the granddaughter of Augustus. She was married to the emperor Claudius long before his accession to the throne, when he was quite young, but was either divorced or died soon after the marriage. (Suet. Cl. 26.)

4. The daughter of M. Aemilius Lepidus, consul A. D. 6 [Lepidus, No. 23], was married to Drusus, the son of Germanicus and Agrippina. [Drusus, No. 18.] She was a woman of abandoned character, and frequently made charges against her husband, doubtless with the view of pleasing Tiberius, who hated Drusus. During the lifetime of her father, who was always highly esteemed by Tiberius, she could do much as she pleased; but after she had lost this powerful protection, by his death, in A. D. 33, she was accused in A. D. 36 of having had adulterous intercourse with a slave; and as she could not deny the charge, she put an end to her life. (Tac. Ann. 6.40.)

(1) Aemilia, daughter of Manius Lepidus and wife of Drusus Caesar. She was engaged in an adulterous intercourse with Seianus, and was suborned by that ambitious and profligate minister to become the accuser of her own husband to Tiberius. Notwithstanding her crimes, she was protected during her father's life; but, being afterwards made a subject of attack by the informers of the day, she put an end to her own existence (Tac. Ann. iv. 20; vi. 40).

(2) Domitia, daughter of Drusus and Antonia. She was grandniece of Augustus and aunt of Nero, who destroyed her by poison (Tac. Ann. xiii. 19).

(3) Domitia, daughter of Antonia the younger, by Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus. She was the wife of Valerius Messala and mother of Messalina, and is described as having been a woman of debauched character and of a violent temper. In point of beauty and vice, she was the rival of Agrippina, Nero's mother. She was condemned to death through the influence of the same Agrippina (Tac. Ann. xi. 37, xii. 64; Suet. Claud. 26; Ner. 7).