Lucius Cornelius Balbus (minor)
Lucius Cornelius Balbus (called
Minor to distinguish from
his uncle), received the Roman citizenship at the same time as his uncle.
During the
civil war, he served under
Caesar, by whom he was entrusted with several important missions. He also took part in the
Alexandrian and
Spanish wars. He was rewarded for his services by being admitted into the college of pontiffs. In
43 BC he was
quaestor to
Asinius Pollio in Further Spain, where he amassed a large fortune by plundering the inhabitants. Also, while there added to his native town,
Gades, a suburb.
In the same year he crossed over to Bogud, king of Mauretania, and is not heard of again until
21 BC, when he appears as proconsul of
Africa.
Mommsen thinks that he had incurred the displeasure of
Augustus by his conduct as
praetor, and that his African appointment after so many years was due to his exceptional fitness for the post.
In
19 BC Balbus defeated the
Garamantes, and on
March 27 in that year received the honor of a triumph, which was then for the first time granted to one who was not a Roman citizen by birth, and for the last time to a private individual. He built a
magnificient theatre at Rome, which was dedicated on the return of Augustus from
Gaul in
13 BC (
Dio Cassius liv. 25;
Pliny,
Nat. Hist. xxxvi. 12. 60).
Balbus appears to have given some attention to literature. He wrote a play of which the subject was his visit to
Lentulus in the camp of
Pompey at
Dyrrhachium, and, according to
Macrobius (
Saturnalia, iii. 6), was the author of a work called
Εξηγητκα dealing with the gods and their worship.
This article incorporates text from William Smith,
A New Classical Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography, Mythology and Geography, 1851,
a publication now in the public domain.
*See Velleius Paterculus ii. 51; Cicero, ad Att.
viii. 9; and on both the above the exhaustive articles in Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyclopadie'', iv. pt. i. (1900).
