|
Dromo's Den
|
|
[Up] [Dromo's Den] Marcellus Biography MARCELLUS, MARCUS CLAUDIUS (c.268-208 B.C.). A famous Roman general. He belonged to a distinguished plebeian family. He was consul for the first time in 222 B.C., and obtained a decisive victory over the Insubrians in Cisalpine Gaul, slaying with his own hand their King, Britomartus or Viridomarus, whose spoils he dedicated to Jupiter; for this he was honored with a triumph. This was the third and last occasion in Roman history on which spolia opima were offered to Jupiter Feretrius. In the Second Punic War, after the defeat of the Romans at Cannae, Marcellus fought as praetor, in 216 B.C., against Hannibal at Nola in Campania; and the victory which he gained there was the more important as it showed that Hannibal was not invincible, and that the Romans had not been irreparably overthrown at Cannae. In the course of two years he thrice repulsed the Carthaginian general at this place. Being consul again in 214 B.C., he was intrusted with the command of the war in Sicily. He took Leontini, massacring in cold blood 2000 Roman deserters whom he found there, and then advanced against Syracuse, which he tried to storm. All his efforts were rendered unavailing by the skill of Archimedes, and he was compelled to blockade the city. Famine, pestilence, and ultimately treachery on the part of the Spanish auxiliaries of the Syracusans enabled Marcellus to make himself master of the place (212 B.C.), after which the remainder of Sicily was soon brought under the dominion of the Romans. In 210 B.C. he was again consul and was again opposed to Hannibal, with whom he fought an indecisive battle at Numistro in Lucania, and by whom he was defeated at Canusium in Apulia in 209 B.C. On the following day, however, he retrieved the defeat. In 208 B.C. he was for the fifth time elected to the consulate, and assumed once more. the command of the Roman army against Hannibal. When out reconnoitring one day he fell into an ambuscade near Venusia and was slain. Consult Livy, books xxiii-xxvii, passim, and the article "Claudius 45," in Friedrich Lübker, Reallexikon des klassischen Altertums (8th ed., Leipzig, 1914). The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. XV (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 66. |