Marcus Nonius Balbus at Herculaneum

Marcus Nonius Balbus was a Roman senator and proconsul of the late 1st century BC. He endowed Herculaneum with all sorts of facilities, including paying to rebuild its basilica after an earthquake. For these great favours the townsfolk named him patron of their city and filled the basilica with statues of him and his family, and set up a monument to him in a busy square outside the Suburban Baths. This has recently been restored though the statue is a reproduction (the original is in the Naples Archaeological Museum). Balbus is prescribed content for the UK-based OCR examination board's A-level paper Cities of Roman Italy (CC6).