Death of Marcellus.
A sudden disaster, however, put an end to any intention that may have been formed in regard to Marcellus. In the summer of B.C. 23, he was attacked by fever, and Antonius Musa, who had successfully treated Augustus by a régime of cold baths, tried a similar treatment on the young man with fatal effect. His death was a great grief to Augustus and so severe a blow to Octavia, that she lived afterwards in complete retirement. It produced a sensation in Rome such as has been witnessed more than once among us at the death of an heir to the throne; and has been immortalised by a celebrated passage inserted by Vergil in the sixth book of the Æneid, a work in which Augustus was specially interested as a consecration of the greatness of Rome and the hereditary dignity of the Iulian gens. It is skilfully placed at the end of the catalogue of Roman heroes whose souls are being reviewed by Anchises in the Elysian realms, where they are waiting their time for entering the bodies of men destined to make Roman history. The Marcellus of the Punic war naturally introduces the younger shade, whose brief tenure of life is even now foreshadowed by the cloud that hangs about his brow. When Vergil recited the lines to the Emperor and his sorrowing sister, Octavia fainted from emotion, and Augustus bestowed a splendid reward upon the poet. It may help us to realise the scene if we once more read the familiar lines. Æneas notices the mysterious and melancholy shade and eagerly questions his father:—
“‘What youth is this of glorious mien
The noblest and the best between,
Cheered to the echo? See, a cloud
(The darkening shadow of the shroud)
Hovers about him even now,
And black night broods upon his brow.
Is he some scion of the race,
Destined our mighty line to grace?’