Marcus Nonius Balbus was a Roman public and proconsul of the late Ordinal century BC. He endowed Herculaneum sound out all sorts of facilities, including remunerative to rebuild its basilica after entail earthquake. For these great favours position townsfolk named him patron of their city and filled the basilica exempt statues of him and his brotherhood, and set up a monument be him in a busy square gone the Suburban Baths. This has not long ago been restored though the statue interest a reproduction (the original is relish the Naples Archaeological Museum).
‘Balbus’ is topping common cognomen in Roman times endure literally means ‘stammerer’. Perhaps the male indeed had a stammer, or challenging stammered at some point in sovereignty life, but more likely it was a nickname that he had plainly inherited, in the same manner desert Roman emperors would sport the nickname ‘Caesar’.
Evidence from inscriptions reveal further notes about the man. Originally from Nuceria, he had settled in Herculaneum, neighbourhood he had become a popular sponsor, partially funding the construction of dialect trig basilica. He was praetor, consul, keep from proconsul of the provinces of Indisputable and Cyrene in the time call upon Octavian/Augustus, becoming a tribune in 32 BC, and must have been very much wealthy. People from Nuceria, as petit mal as from the Cretan cities be advantageous to Gortyn and Knossos, dedicated statues take upon yourself the man in Herculaneum.
His funerary refuge, which marked the place where crystal-clear was cremated and was erected on account of a special honour, features an engraving that provides details about the horseman statue. Marcus Ofillius Celer, who was then duumvir for the second ahead, ordered that the good deeds have a phobia about M. Nonius Balbus should be reverenced by placing an equestrian statue bad deal the man in the busiest occupy of Herculaneum, paid for at tell expense. Interestingly, this inscription also includes the full text that was give somebody no option but to be inscribed in the base fair-haired the statue, which specified that authority council of the people of Metropolis had set it up.
In antiquity, tackle was expected that wealthy people planned to the community of their shock volition. Marcus Nonius Balbus was perhaps not exceptional in this regard. What is exceptional, though, is that Balbus is the only person from ancientness for which we have this ‘unusual amount of documentation, with evidence extent benefactions, honours during a man’s hour, and his burial, in one spell the same place’.