Marcellus
M. CLAUDIUS, a Roman general and member 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. In the second Punic war Marcellus took command after the disaster of Cannæ, and checked Hannibal at Nola, in Campania (216 B. c.) Again consul in 214 B. C., he gave a fresh impulse to the war in Sicily. The skill of Archimedes compelled him to regularly blockade the city of Syracuse. Famine, pestilence, and ultimately treachery on the part of the Spanish auxiliaries of the Syracusans, opened its gates (212 в. 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.