Caesar's feet to implore the pardon of his kinsman, and his example was followed by the whole body of the assembly. Caesar yielded to this demonstration of opinion, and Marcellus was declared to be forgiven, and restored to all his former honours. Cicero wrote to announce to him this favourable result, in a letter now lost; but the answer of Marcellus is preserved, and is marked by a singular coldness, which would lead us to the conclusion that his indifference in this matter was real, and not assumed. He, however, set out immediately on his return; but having touched at the Peiraeeus, where he had an interview with his former colleague, Sulpicius, then proconsul in Greece, he was assassinated immediately afterwards by one of his own attendants, P. Magius Chilo. There seems no doubt that the deed was prompted by private resentment, though suspected at the time to have been committed at the instigation of Caesar. Sulpicius paid him all due funeral honours, and caused him to be buried in the Academy, where a monument was erected to him by the Athenians, at the public expense. (Cic. ad Fam. iv. 4, 7—11, 12, vi. 6, ad Att. xiii. 10—22, pro M. Marcello, passim, Brut. 71.)
Marcellus had been, as already observed, a friend of Cicero's from his earliest youth; their views on political affairs had generally coincided, and they continued to act in concert until the breaking out of the civil war. Hence we cannot wonder at the very high praises bestowed by the latter upon the wisdom and prudence of Marcellus, of whom he speaks on several occasions in terms which would lead us to suppose him a perfect model of a philosophic statesman. Caelius, on the contrary, calls him slow and inefficient; but while his conduct in his consulship was certainly not such as to give us a high opinion of his political sagacity or prudence, it would rather seem to have deserved censure for defects the very opposite of these. Of his merits as an orator, we are wholly incompetent to judge, but they are said to have been of a high order, and inferior to few except Cicero himself. (Cic. Brut. 71. All the passages in Cicero relating to M. Marcellus will be found collected or referred to by Orelli, Onomasticon Tullian. pp. 157, 158. See also Drumann, Gesch. Roms, vol. ii. p. 393, &c., and Passow in Zimmermann's Zeitschrift für Alterthumswissenschaft, 1835.)
12. C. Claudius, M. f. M. n. Marcellus, a brother of the preceding, of whom very little is known previous to his election in b. c. 50, to be consul for the ensuing year (49), a distinction which he obtained, it is said, in consequence of his declared enmity to Caesar. (Caes. B. G. viii. 50.) He is constantly confounded with his cousin, C. Marcellus [No. 14] who was consul in the year 50 with L. Aemilius Paullus, a confusion little to be wondered at: indeed it is sometimes impossible to determine which of the two is meant. Matters were fast approaching to a crisis when he and his colleague, L. Cornelius Lentulus, entered upon their office. While yet only consuls elect, they had lent their countenance to the violent and illegal act of the consul C. Marcellus in investing Pompey with the command of the army without authority from the senate (Dion Cass. xl. 66); and on the very first day of their consulship (1 Jan. b.c. 49) they brought under the consideration of the senate the measures to be taken in regard to Caesar, who was then at Ravenna, and from whom letters had been presented by Curio. It does not appear that Marcellus took any prominent part in the debates that ensued, and the violent proceedings which led to the flight of the tribunes and the actual breaking out of the war; but neither do we learn that he attempted to check the intemperate zeal of his colleague, and the other leaders of the war party. He appears indeed, so far as we can judge, to have been a man of small abilities, who was put forward as a tool by the more violent partisans of Pompey. On the breaking out of the war he accompanied his colleague, Lentulus, in his hasty flight from Rome, took part in the subsequent proceedings at Capua, and eventually crossed over to Dyrrhachium with a part of the army of Pompey. In the following year (b. c. 48) we find him mentioned as commanding a part of Pompey's fleet (Caes. B. C. iii. 5); but this is the last we hear of him, and it therefore seems probable, as suggested by Drumann, that he perished in the civil war. (Dion Cass. xli. 1—3; Caes. B. C. i. 1—5, 14, 25; Appian, B. C. ii. 33, 37—39; Plut. Caes. 35, Pomp. 62; Cic. ad Att. vii. 18, 20, 21, ix. 1.) Cicero certainly alludes to him some years afterwards as then dead. (Phil. xiii. 14.)
13. C. Claudius, M. f. M. n. Marcellus, uncle of the two preceding, and father of the consul in b. c. 50. He is called by the Pseudo-Asconius (ad Verr. p. 206) great-grandson (pronepos) of the conqueror of Syracuse [No. 4]; but as has been pointed out by Wesseling and Drumann, this is impossible on chronological grounds, and he must have been a grandson of No. 8, and therefore abnepos of No. 4. He was praetor apparently in b. c. 80, and afterwards succeeded M. Aemilius Lepidus in the government of Sicily. He found that province in a state of great distress and confusion from the exactions and oppressions of his predecessor; but by the mildness and justice of his administration, he restored it to such a flourishing state, that Cicero tells us he was looked upon by the Sicilians as the second saviour of their country. Statues were erected to him in almost every city of the island; and the festival of the Marcellea already instituted in honour of his progenitor [see No. 4] was now renewed in his favour. Throughout the speeches against Verres, Cicero dwells frequently upon the administration of Marcellus, as affording the most striking contrast to that of the accused. By a singular accident, Marcellus himself was present on that occasion, as one of the judges of Verres. (Cic. Verr. ii. 3, 21, iii. 16, 91, iv. 40, 42, &c., Div. in Caecil. 4.) He held the office of augur, in which Cicero was one of his colleagues, and is cited by him as one of those who regarded the whole science of augury as a merely political institution. (Cic. de Divin. ii. 35, de Leg. ii. 13.) He lived to see his son elected consul for the year b. c. 50; and on that occasion Cicero wrote him a letter of congratulation (ad Fam. xv. 8), expressed in the most friendly terms. Elsewhere also the latter dwells in the strongest manner upon the respect and affection with which he had always regarded Marcellus (pro Sull. 6).
14. C. Claudius, C. f. M. n. Marcellus, son of the preceding, and first cousin of M. Marcellus [No. 11], whom he succeeded in the consulship, b. c. 50. He enjoyed the friendship of Cicero from an early age, and attached himself to the party of Pompey in the state, notwithstanding his connection with Caesar by his marriage with
