Marcus Annius Verus (the elder) was a patrician of Italo-Hispanic descent. The Annii came from Uccubi in the province of Baetica (the south of modern Andalusia) and belonged to that same Hispanic aristocracy which produced the emperors Trajan and Hadrian. Verus's uncle, a senator of Trajan's generation, was close to the imperial circle; through this line the Verii were linked to Hadrian's house.

Career. Verus passed through the standard cursus honorum and reached an exceptional distinction — he was thrice consul: suffect in 97 CE under Nerva, ordinary consul in 121 under Hadrian, and again ordinary consul in 126 (a rare honour — across the first two centuries CE only three or four men hold the consulship three times, normally elderly senators in the innermost imperial circle). He also served as prefect of the city (praefectus urbi) — the highest urban magistracy, presiding over the senatorial court and effectively head of the Roman police. In 138, shortly before his death, he took part in the deliberations attending Hadrian's adoption of Antoninus Pius and Antoninus's subsequent adoption of Marcus and Lucius Verus; his role in these negotiations is reported by SHA Marcus 5.3.

The upbringing of Marcus. When Marcus's father, M. Annius Verus the younger (a praetor), died c. 124 CE, the three-year-old Marcus passed into the guardianship of his grandfather. He was formally adopted by him — so that Marcus bore the full name M. Annius Verus, like his father and grandfather, and became legally the son of his own grandfather. He lived in the latter's house on the Caelian until, in 138, Hadrian ordered Antoninus Pius to adopt Marcus, who passed into the imperial familia (from that moment M. Aelius Aurelius Verus Caesar). Up to his seventeenth year, then, Marcus grew up directly in the household of a thrice-consular senator, the contemporary and intimate of emperors.

Death. He died in 138 CE in extreme old age (around 90), having outlived everyone of his own generation and most of the next. Hadrian died in the same year.

• 01-01 — the principal (and only direct) mention. The grandfather as source of τὸ καλόηθες καὶ ἀόργητον.
• 01-17 — in the closing paragraph of thanks to the gods, when Marcus enumerates the gifts of his family, he repeats «καλοί ... πάντες» ("all good"), without singling out anyone by name; the grandfather is implicitly included.

• SHA Marcus 1.4–9 — the principal biographical source on Marcus's early years and his grandfather (Julius Capitolinus; the source is late, c. end of the 4th century, with the well-known problems of reliability, but in matters of family context is generally accepted).
• PIR² A 695 — the standard prosopographical entry (Prosopographia Imperii Romani).
• A. Birley, Marcus Aurelius: A Biography, rev. ed., Routledge, 2000 — ch. 2 ("The Family"), pp. 28–46; the standard modern biography.
• P. Brunt, "Marcus Aurelius in his Meditations", JRS 64 (1974), 1–20 — a critical reading of Book I as a historical source.
• F. Millar, The Emperor in the Roman World, Duckworth, 1977 — for the context of the praefectus urbi and the threefold consulship as an imperial honour.
• R. Syme, "Hadrian and Italica", JRS 54 (1964) — the Hispanic background of the gens Annia and its links to the house of Trajan and Hadrian.