2. M. Claudius Marcellus, an inveterate opponent of Julius Caesar. During his consulship (51 B.C.) he proposed to remove Caesar from his army in March 49, but this decision was delayed by Pompey’s irresolution and the skilful opposition of the tribune C. Curio (see [Caesar, Julius]). In January 49 he tried to put off declaring war against Caesar till an army could be got ready, but his advice was not taken. When Pompey left Italy, Marcus and his brother Gaius followed, while his cousin withdrew to Liternum. After Pharsalus M. Marcellus retired to Mytilene, where he practised rhetoric and studied philosophy. In 46 his cousin and the senate successfully appealed to Caesar to pardon him, and Marcellus reluctantly consented to return. On this occasion Cicero’s[1] speech Pro Marcello was delivered. Marcellus left for Italy, but was murdered in May by one of his own attendants, P. Magius Chilo, in the Peiraeus. Marcellus was a thorough aristocrat. He was an eloquent speaker (Cicero, Brutus, 71), and a man of firm character, although not free from avarice.
See Cicero, Ad fam. iv. 4, 7, 10, and Ad Att. v. 11 (ed. Tyrrell and Purser); Caesar, B. C. i. 2; Suetonius, Caesar, 29; G. Boissier, Cicero and his Friends (Eng. trans., 1897).
3. M. Claudius Marcellus (c. 43-23 B.C.), son of C. Marcellus and Octavia, sister of Augustus. In 25 he was adopted by the emperor and married to his daughter Julia. This seemed to mark him out as the heir to the throne, but Augustus, when attacked by a serious illness, gave his signet to M. Vipsanius Agrippa. In 23 Marcellus, then curule aedile, died at Baiae. Livia was suspected of having poisoned him to get the empire for her son Tiberius. Great hopes had been built on the youth, and he was celebrated by many writers, especially by Virgil in a famous passage (Aeneid, vi. 860). He was buried in the Campus Martius, and Augustus himself pronounced the funeral oration. The Theatrum Marcelli (remains of which can still be seen) was afterwards dedicated in his honour.
Horace, Odes, i. 12; Propertius iii. 18; Dio Cassius liii. 28, 30; Tacitus, Annals, ii. 41; Suetonius, Augustus, 63; Vell. Pat. ii. 93.
[1] The authorship of this speech has been disputed.
MARCESCENT (Lat. marcescens, withering), a botanical term for withering without falling off.
MARCH, EARLS OF, title derived from the “marches” or boundaries (1) between England and Wales, and (2) England and Scotland, and held severally by great feudal families possessed of lands in those border districts. The earls of March on the Welsh borders were descended from Roger de Mortemer (so called from his castle of Mortemer in Normandy), who was connected by marriage with the dukes of Normandy. His son Ralph (d. c. 1104) figures in Domesday as the holder of vast estates in Shropshire, Herefordshire and other parts of England, especially in the west; and his grandson Hugh de Mortimer, founder of the priory of Wigmore in Herefordshire, was one of the most powerful of the barons reduced to submission by Henry II., who compelled him to surrender his castles of Cleobury and Wigmore. The Mortimers, however, continued to exercise almost undisputed sway, as lords of Wigmore, over the western counties and the Welsh marches.