Marcus Annius Verus ( 50 – 138 AD) was the paternal grandfather and adoptive father of the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, and father-in-law of the emperor Antoninus Pius. Biography Verus was the son of an elder Marcus Annius Verus, who gained the rank of senator and praetor. The Annia gens was ancient. Its first known member is mentioned by Livy as praetor of Setia, in central Italy, for the year 340 BC; the branch of the Annii Veri settled in the colony of Ucubi (modern Espejo) near Corduba (modern Córdoba) in the Roman province of Hispania Baetica. The family came to prominence and became wealthy through olive oil production in Spain.Anthony Birley, Marcus Aurelius, a Biography (London: Routledge, 1987), p. 28 He was close friends with the emperor Hadrian.
He was urban prefect of Rome and was enrolled as a patrician when Vespasian and Titus were censors. Verus was three times consul, the first time as a suffect in 97,Fausto Zevi "I consoli del 97 d. Cr. in due framenti gia' editi dei Fasti Ostienses", Listy filologické / Folia philologica, 96 (1973), pp. 125-137 then as ordinary consul in both 121 and 126. This is apparently the cause for a "very strange inscription, found on a large marble tablet excavated in the sixteenth century at St. Peter's in Rome" which alludes to this achievement while celebrating his skill "playing with a glass ball". Edward Champlin notes it was likely the creation of a friendly rival, Lucius Julius Ursus Servianus, who also held the consulate three times the last after Verus.Champlin, "The Glass Ball Game", Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik, 60 (1985), pp. 159-163
He died in 138, aged nearly ninety. Marcus Aurelius says in his "Meditations": "From my grandfather Verus, [I learned] a kindly disposition and sweetness of temper".Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, i.1 In his elder years, he had a mistress, of whom he expresses gratitude that "I wasn’t raised by my grandfather's mistress for longer than I was".Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, i.17
Family Verus married Rupilia Faustina (fl. 90 AD), a daughter of the consul Libo Rupilius Frugi and probably Vitellia Galeria Fundania, daughter of emperor Vitellius.Rupilius. Strachan stemma. Frugi also had another daughter named Rupilia who was the grandniece of emperor Trajan. Verus had at least three children by Faustina:Birley, Marcus Aurelius, pp. 28f Annia Galeria Faustina or Faustina the Elder, a future empress, who married the future emperor Antoninus Pius Marcus Annius Libo, consul in 128 Marcus Annius Verus, father to future emperor Marcus Aurelius
Ronald Syme suggests, based on onomastic evidence, that they had a fourth child, a daughter Annia, who married Gaius Ummidius Quadratus Sertorius Severus.Syme, "Ummidius Quadratus, Capax Imperii", Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, 83 (1979), p. 308
After Verus the son died in 124, the elder Verus adopted, and, together with his daughter-in-law Domitia, raised their children.Birley, Marcus Aurelius, p. 31
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