According to the Liberian catalogue, Marcellinus became bishop on the 30th of June, 296, and held office for eight years three months and twenty-five days, i.e. until the 25th of October, 304, and these dates Lipsius accepts as correct, although there is considerable uncertainty as to the exact date of his death. Jerome’s version of the Chron. puts his accession in the twelfth year of Diocletian, which is not far out of the way, but does not give the duration of his episcopate, nor does Eusebius in his History. The Armenian Chron. does not mention Marcellinus at all. Tradition, although denied by many of the Fathers, says that he proved wanting in the Diocletian persecution, and this seems to have been a fact. It is also said that he afterward repented and suffered martyrdom, but that is only an invention. The expression of Eusebius in this connection is ambiguous; he simply says he was “overtaken by the persecution,” which might mean martyrdom, or might mean simply arrest. The eleven bishops that preceded him from Pontianus to Caius were buried in the Catacombs of St. Calixtus, but he was buried in those of Priscilla.