of the same family as the conqueror of Syracuse, first appears in history as curule aedile, along with P. Clodius, in 56 B.C. He was named consul (B.C. 51), along with Sulpicius Rufus; and he proposed that Caesar should be deprived of the command of the armies of Gaul; but this advice was not followed. (Cic. Att. vii. 1.) The civil war broke out (B.C. 49), and Marcellus joined the party of Pompey; but on the death of the latter (B.C. 48), he ceased to take part in the political affairs of his country, and retired to Mitylene, that he might not witness the overthrow of the republic. Here he was found by Brutus as he was returning from Asia. (Senee. ad Hele. c. 9.) His friends at Rome, however, were anxious that he should return, and they did not find it difficult to prevail on Caesar to forget the part he had taken against him. His pardon, indeed, was more readily granted by Caesar than accepted by Marcellus. If we may judge from the letters addressed to him by Cicero, and now known as the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth of the fourth book of Epistulae ad Familiares, Marcellus was unwilling to leave his retreat at Mitylene. He, however, yielded, and had reached Athens on his way homewards, when one of his companions in exile, P. Magnus Chilo, actuated by private resentment, murdered him, B.C. 46. His old colleague, Sulpicius, happened to be at Athens at this time, and superintended the celebration of his funeral rites. (Cic. ad Div. iv. 12.) Marcellus is the subject of the eloquent speech Pro M. Marcelllo, often erroneously ascribed to Cicero.

Marcellus, M. Claudius, son of C. Marcellus and of Octavia, the sister of Augustus, was born about 43 B.C. He was educated by his mother with the utmost care, and gave early indications of all those qualities that unite in forming a great and good character. In 39 B.C. he was betrothed to Pompeia, the daughter of Sextus Pompey, then a girl of six years of age. (Dion Cass. xlviii. 38.) Released, however, from this engagement by the death of Pompey in 35 B.C., he married Julia, the daughter of Augustus, in 25 B.C., and at the same time became the adopted son of his father-in-law. (Dion Cass. liii. 27; Suet. Aug. 63.) Marcellus was also admitted into the senate, and received the privilege of sucing for the consulship ten years before the legal period. He became curule aedile in 23 B.C., but he died in the autumn of the same year, owing, it is said, to the imprudent use of a cold bath, prescribed by Antonius Musa, the celebrated physician of Augustus. (Dion Cass. liii. 30.) Fond of study, gentle in his disposition, and temperate in his habits, Marcellus was the idol of his countrymen, and his death was mourned as a public calamity. As it had been generally understood that Augustus intended him for his successor, a rumour became current that the Empress Livia had poisoned him, to secure the succession to her own son, Tiberius. The death of Marcellus was the cause of the most intense sorrow to his mother, Octavia, and to Augustus. The latter interred him, with the greatest pomp, in the Julian mausoleum, pronounced his funeral oration, and afterwards dedicated to his memory the magnificent theatre known as the Theatrum Marcelli. (Tacit. Ann. iii. 64.) But Marcellus is now best remembered by the touching description of him in the Æneid, which is said to have affected his mother even to fainting:

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