Marcus Claudius Marcellus (42-23 BCE): The only son of Gaius Claudius Marcellus and Octavia, the sister of Augustus, the younger Marcellus was more noted for his relationship to the Emperor Augustus and his early death than for any accomplishments of his own.
Marcellus was named after an ancestor who was consul in 222 BCE (memorialized on a coin of 50 BCE) and highly acclaimed for his military victories against the Gauls and the Carthaginians. After the younger Marcellus fought bravely in Spain in 25 BCE under Augustus' command, the princeps gave his daughter Julia in marriage to his nephew and arranged for his swift advancement in the cursus honorum (for some, this was a sign that Augustus would name him as his heir). As curule aedile in 23 BCE, the year of his death, Marcellus arranged lavish games that won him great popularity. His sudden and unexpected death in the Roman summer resort at Baiae in Campania before his 20th year was greatly mourned by his family and the Roman people.
Marcellus' memory has been preserved both in stone and in verse. An equestrian statue of an aristocratic youth who bears a resemblance to the Julian family represents the type of statues honoring Marcellus during his lifetime. A larger-than-life size marble statue of Marcellus, sculpted by Cleomenes the Athenian in the heroic Greek style, was commissioned by Augustus in 20 BCE. Marcellus was the first to be buried in Augustus' mausoleum, where an inscription (photo credit: J. Higginbotham) was found containing his name and his mother's name, with their relationship to the emperor: Marcellus GENER, Octavia SOROR. In addition, Augustus built and dedicated this graceful theater to him posthumously and Octavia named the library within the nearby Porticus Octaviae after her son.
Two poets of the Augustan age commemorated the loss of this promising young hero. Most famously, the epic poet Vergil memorialized him in Aeneid VI. 868-886, in verse that Suetonius reports in his Vita Vergili was so moving that Octavia fainted as she and her brother listened to the poet read aloud Marcellus' name (the scene is popular in later painting). In moving verse the elegiac love poet Propertius captures the mood of Rome's sad loss in Elegy III.18.