Lucius Cornelius Balbus the Younger
Lucius Cornelius Balbus (* 1st century BC in the Iberian Peninsula), called Minor (Latin the younger) to distinguish him from his uncle Lucius Cornelius Balbus Maior, a politician and military commander in the late Roman Republic and was de early imperial period.
Life
Balbus Minor came from the Phoenician city of Gades (now Cadiz ) and received by 70 BC, at the same time with his uncle Roman citizenship. During the Civil War he served under Gaius Julius Caesar, who entrusted him with several important missions. He took part in the war in Egypt and Hispania and was rewarded for his services with admission to the college of pontiffs. 43 BC he was quaestor in Hispania, where he gathered a large fortune by plundering the inhabitants.
In the same year he moved to King Bogudes of Mauritania, and you hear nothing more of him until he emerges BC 21 as proconsul of Africa. Theodor Mommsen thinks that his administration had excited as Praetor the displeasure of Augustus, and that his appointment in Africa was due after so many years of his extraordinary aptitude for this task. 19 BC beat Balbus resident in the Fezzan Garamantes and destroyed their capital Garama. For this was on 27 March of the year honored with a triumphal procession - the first triumph, which was granted to someone who was not Roman by birth, and also the last for a man who was not a member of the imperial family.
His great wealth enabled him to build a theater in the capital in the Campus Martius, which was dedicated to the return of Augustus from Gaul in 13 BC. This theater, which was luxuriously equipped than the older theater of Pompey and the resultant about the same time Marcellus, burned down in 80 AD. The new building was probably used for other purposes and has hosted workshops and stores. The remains of the theater are now known as the crypt Balbi one of the sites of the Museo Nazionale Romano.
Balbus appears to have devoted some attention to the literature. He wrote a play whose theme was his visit to Publius Cornelius Lentulus Spinther in its encampment in Dyrrachium, and was - according to Macrobius - the author of Εξηγετικά ( Exegetika ), a work that deals with the gods and their worship.