Mausoleum of Augustus

This guide to the Mausoleum of Augustus in Rome opens with a twist: the first person buried inside, five years after construction began in 28 BCE, was not Augustus himself but his young nephew Marcellus, the heir he had chosen. It follows how Augustus kept losing the heirs he designated, one after another, before he was finally laid to rest here himself in the year 14. Rome's poet Virgil commemorated Marcellus in the Aeneid, in lines that would be read aloud for centuries after.