Marcellus, M. CLAUDIUS, a famous Roman general, of one of the most eminent plebeian families. In his first consulship (222 B.C.) he defeated the Insubrian Gauls, and slew with his own hand their king, Britomartus or Viridomarus, whose spoils he dedicated as spolia opima to Jupiter—the third and last occasion in Roman history. In the second Punic war Marcellus took command after the disaster of Cannæ, and put a check upon the victorious Hannibal at Nola, in Campania (216 B.C.). Again consul in 214 B.C., he gave a fresh impulse to the war in Sicily, but all his efforts to take Syracuse were rendered unavailing by the skill of Archimedes, and he was compelled to regularly blockade the city. Famine, pestilence, and ultimately treachery on the part of the Spanish auxiliaries of the Syracusans, opened its gates (212 B.C.), after which the remainder of Sicily was soon brought under the dominion of the Romans.
In his fifth consulship, 208 B.C., he fell in a skirmish against Hannibal.