son of C. Marcellus, and of Octavia, sister to Augustus, seems to have been endowed by nature with all those qualities which unite to form a great character. Capable of the closest application to study, gentle in his manners, and temperate in his habits, he was regarded by the Romans with feelings of the strongest affection. He was first betrothed to Pompeia, the daughter of Sextus Pompey, so early as b.c.37, when she was only six years of age (Dion Cass. xlviii.38); but he subsequently married Julia, the daughter of Augustus, when he had reached his seventeenth year, b.c.26 (iii.27, Suet. Aug. 63). He was raised to the curule edilship by the senate; but he died very suddenly, b.c.23, owing, it is said, to the injudicious use of the cold bath prescribed by Antonius Musa, the physician of Augustus. (Dion Cass. liii.30.) The Romans were overwhelmed with grief at his death, and suspected the Empress Livia of having poisoned him, that her own son Tiberius might be the successor of Augustus. His mother Octavia is said to have shut herself up in her room for many months, and to have refused all consolation. (Sen. ad Marc. ii.) In the life of Virgil, commonly ascribed to Donatus, we are told that the poet recited to her part of the Æneid, and when he came to the words

Heu! miserande puer, si quid fata aspera rumpas, Tu Marcellus eris,

alluding to his ancestor the great Marcellus, she fainted away. When she recovered, she ordered the poet to be rewarded with a large sum of money. Marcellus was buried in the Campus Martius, in the mausoleum of Augustus, and the emperor built a theatre, calling it after his name, Theatrum Marcelli. (Tacit. Ann. iii.64.)