A thought on Roman history… During the time of the Second Triumvirate the consensus I see in older sources on Lepidus is that he something of a flop, but seemingly the real nail in his coffin was when his legions decided to defect to Octavian after they crushed the revolt in Sicily. He seemed capable enough in politics military. Do you think this is a sort of similar treatment that Titus Labenius got? Focusing on the the supposedly bigger figures while belittling and vilifying others?

The tricky thing with evaluating Lepidus is that pretty much everyone at the time who was creating primary sources had their own reasons to bag on Lepidus, which means that later historians have a harder time trying to re-evaluate.

But I think Lepidus’ biggest problem is something he couldn’t really do anything about – the second Triumvirate was all about who was going to claim the mantle of Julius Caesar, whether that would be his military and political protege or his adopted son. Lepidus never quite had anything to match that connection, which meant that his political base didn’t go further than his army…and then he gave up his army in favor of being Consul and Pontifex Maximus. 

 And that’s what sealed his fate.