Marcus Claudius Marcellus

Born in 42 BC to Octavia the Younger, he was Augustus' closest male relative and raised alongside his cousin Tiberius. The two served together under Augustus in the Cantabrian Wars in Hispania. When he returned to Rome in 25 BC, he married his cousin Julia, the emperor's daughter, in a union that marked him as heir apparent. The other candidate was Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, Augustus' general, and according to Suetonius the tension drove Agrippa to leave Rome for Mytilene in 23 BC. That same year an illness swept through the city. Augustus recovered; Marcellus, who caught it later, did not. He…