Marcus Annius Verus Caesar
Caesar of the Roman Empire (c.162-169)
Marcus Annius Verus Caesar (162 or 163 – 10 September 169) was a son of Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius and Empress Faustina the Younger. Annius was made caesar on 12 October 166 AD, alongside his brother Commodus, designating them co-heirs of the Roman Empire. Annius died on 10 September 169, at age seven, due to complications from a surgery to remove a tumor from under his ear. His death left Commodus as the sole heir.
Life
Marcus Annius Verus was born in late 162 or 163 AD, the son of Marcus Aurelius and Faustina the Younger. He was given the name of Marcus Annius Verus because it was the original name of his father, Marcus Aurelius.
On 12 October 166 AD, during a triumph celebrating the victory of the Romans in the Parthian War of Lucius Verus, Annius and his elder brother Commodus were both made caesars, designating them as co-heirs to the Roman Empire. At the time, Annius was three, and Commodus was five. This was the first time such an explicit declaration of heirship had been made at such a young age, and showed a marked shift from the traditional cursus honorum, in which a presumed heir would be gradually raised through offices of increasing importance, in order to learn the skills of all positions, to a new system of imperial succession, wherein dynastic hereditary descent was the path to the throne, with heirs being instructed in how to be an emperor.
Annius died on 10 September 169 AD, at seven years of age, due to complications in removing a tumor from under his ear.
“Marcus Annius Verus Caesar” enters the record as caesar of the Roman Empire (c.162-169). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Marcus, Annius and Verus can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q567222. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Marcus Annius Verus Caesar” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.