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. The young 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 nephew his daughter Julia in marriage and arranged his swift advancement in the cursus honorum. As curule aedile in 23, the year of his death, Marcellus arranged lavish games that won him great popularity.
His death in the Roman summer resort at Baiae in Campania before his 20th year was mourned by his family and the Roman people. His memory is preserved both in stone and in verse. An equestrian statue of an aristocratic youth who bears a resemblance to Augustus' descendents is thought to be Marcellus. 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. Augustus had his grandson buried in the family mausoleum, where the names of his parents, Marcellus (GENER) and Octavia (SOROR), survive in an inscription (photo credit: J. Higginbotham). Augustus built and dedicated this graceful theater to him posthumously, while his sister Octavia named a library 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 Suetonius reports in his Vita Vergili was so moving that Octavia fainted as she and her brother listened to the poet read aloud this section of his work (here is one of several later paintings of this scene). The elegiac love poet Propertius laments Rome's terrible loss in Elegy III.18.