Virgil published "Aeneid", his great epic of the foundation of Rome, four of five years after the death of Marcellus. In book six, the protagonist Aeneas is taken to the Underworld in one of the prophecy scenes where he encounters the spirit of Marcellus. It includes a narrative of the funeral of Marcellus on the Campus Martius. Virgil writes he was to have been the greatest of Romans, but even the gods were jealous and took Marcellus from the Roman people.