MARCELLUS, MARCUS CLAUDIUS

born c. 268 BC died 208, near Venusia, Apulia Roman general who captured Syracuse during the Second Punic War (218201). Although his successes have been exaggerated by the historian Livy, Marcellus deserved his sobriquet, the sword of Rome. In his first consulship (222) Marcellus fought the Insubres and won the spolia opima (spoils of honour; the arms taken by a general who killed an enemy chief in single combat) for the third and last time in Roman history. After the Roman defeat at Cannae (216), he commanded the remnant of the army at Canusium and saved Nola and southern Campania from Hannibal. From 214, when he was consul for the third time, to 211 he served in Sicily, where he stormed Leontini and, after a two-year siege, took Syracuse. His troops sacked the city and carried its art treasures to Rome. Marcellus was consul again in 210, and took Salapia in Apulia, which had revolted and joined forces with Hannibal. In 209 he fought Hannibal inconclusively near Venusia. In his fifth consulship (208) he was killed while reconnoitering enemy positions. died May 45 BC leading member of the Optimate (conservative senatorial aristocracy) and an uncompromising opponent of Julius Caesar. As consul in 51, Marcellus attempted to remove Caesar from his army command but was outmanoeuvred by the pro-Caesarian tribune Gaius Scribonius Curio. During the Civil War (Caesar against Pompey the Great and the Optimates, 4945) Marcellus followed Pompey to Greece; after Pompey's death in 48 he retired to Mytilene, where he practiced rhetoric and studied philosophy. In 46 the Senate successfully appealed to Caesar to pardon Marcellus. It was on this occasion that Cicero delivered his speech Pro Marcello. Marcellus left for Italy but was murdered in Piraeus, Achaea, by one of his own attendants. born 42 BC died 23 BC, Baiae, Campania nephew of the emperor Augustus (reigned 27 BCAD 14) and presumably chosen by him as heir, though Augustus himself denied it. Marcellus was the son of Gaius Claudius Marcellus and Augustus' sister Octavia. In 25 he was married to the emperor's daughter Julia, an event that seemed to mark him as heir. His ambitions brought him into conflict with Agrippa. Marcellus served under Augustus in Spain in 25, but he died two years later, when he was a curule aedile. Great hopes had been built on him, and he was celebrated by many writers, especially by Virgil in a famous passage in the Aeneid. He was buried in the mausoleum of Augustus, and Augustus himself pronounced the funeral oration.