Marcus Annius Verus (c. 50 – 138 AD) was the paternal grandfather and adoptive father of the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, and father-in-law of emperor Antoninus Pius.

Verus was the son of an elder Marcus Annius Verus, who gained the rank of senator and praetor. The Annia gens was ancient and 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.^[1] 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,^[2] 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.^[3]

One explanation is that the whole thing is a joke, based on the connection between Verus' known passion for playing ball and the notion of the ball game as political juggling: an elegant, self-deprecating and rather bitter joke, one not wholly complimentary to Verus. The aged L. Iulius Servianus wrote the piece himself, had it engraved on a marble slab - perhaps accompanying it with the statue of a toga-clad bear playing ball? - and had it delivered to M. Annius Verus on the Kalends of January, 126. When next they met, the two old men affected to laugh heartily at the joke. Fantasy perhaps, but this is a very strange inscription.

He died in 138, nearly aged ninety. Marcus Aurelius says in his "Meditations": "From my grandfather Verus, [I learned] a kindly disposition and sweetness of temper".^[4] 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".^[5]

Verus married Rupilia Faustina (fl. 90 AD), a daughter of the consul Libo Rupilius Frugi and probably Vitellia Galeria Fundania, daughter of emperor Vitellius.^[6][7] Frugi also had another daughter named Rupilia who was the grandniece of emperor Trajan. Verus had at least three children by Faustina:^[8]

• 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.^[9]

After Verus the son died in 124, the elder Verus adopted, and, together with his daughter-in-law Domitia, raised their children.^[10]

• Aurelius, Marcus (167). Meditations.
• Birley, Anthony Richard (2000). Marcus Aurelius: A Biography (2nd revised ed.). Routledge. ISBN 0-415-17125-3.
• "Matidia the Elder". Livius.org. Retrieved 24 March 2020.
• "Faustina, Annia Galeria (1)". Fofweb.com. Archived from the original on 30 September 2007. Retrieved 26 January 2007.
• Rodgers, N. (2005). The History and Conquests of Ancient Rome. Hermes House. ISBN 1844773337.
• "The Life of Marcus Aurelius: Part 1". Historia Augusta. Loeb Classical Library. 1921. Retrieved 27 June 2015.