The Historians' History of the World 05

Metellus only granted Marius leave of absence twelve days before the election to the consulship took place; but Marius travelled the whole way from the camp to Utica in two days and one night, and from Utica he arrived in Rome within four days. On his application for the consulship he did not scruple to disparage Metellus’ conduct of the war, and hinted that he was purposely protracting the struggle so as to remain longer in command; and he promised that with even half the troops he would in a short time deliver Jugurtha, dead or alive, into the hands of the Romans. The people treated the election as a party question, and Marius as one of themselves was chosen consul by unanimous acclamation, and the conduct of the African War transferred into his hands. This was, after a long interval, another case in which a homo novus attained to the consulate—naturally to the great annoyance of the nobility, who however could do nothing against the will of the people, excited as they were at the idea that after long oppression they had found in Marius a chief and a leader of their own.

[107-104 B.C.]

Marius made use of the time before his departure for the seat of war to irritate the people in every way against the rule of the nobility. “The haughty nobles,” said he, “passed their youth in luxury and revelling; then, when elected to the post of general, they would hasten to glean from Greek books some information on the subject of the art of war. Let the people leave them to their revels, and choose their generals from men who are inured to heat and cold, and every hardship, who, instead of pictures of ancestors, have honourable wounds and marks of conflict to display.”

When levying the troops he was to lead to Africa, he chose his men contrary to the prevailing system—from the lowest orders of the people, the so-called proletariat. Through this innovation he gained at any rate a number of devoted adherents; but he degraded the tone of the army by putting swords into the hands of people without homes or property, who would seek profit in warfare and be more eager to serve their general than their country.

When Marius came to Africa, he received his army from the hands of the legate Rufus; Metellus, infuriated, had already left, in order to avoid the rival who was to supplant him. He continued the war and was favoured by fortune, though he did not end it immediately, as he had pledged himself to do.

He plundered and devastated the whole Numidian country, and those towns not yet garrisoned he forced to submission; he overshadowed the expedition Metellus had led against Thala by a still bolder and more skilfully conducted campaign against Capsa, a fortified town further south; took a rocky fortress on the river, Mulucha on the borders of Numidia and Mauretania and conquered the two kings opposed to him one after the other in sanguinary battles. But the end of the war was not to be thought of till the person of Jugurtha should be in the hands of the Romans. That was at last compassed in the early part of the year 106.

Roman General

King Bocchus, discouraged by the defeats he had suffered, had visions of peace and friendship with Rome, and in secret negotiations he treacherously promised to deliver his son-in-law Jugurtha to Marius. He desired that L. Sulla, the quæstor of Marius, and a favourite with him, should be deputed to work with him and capture Jugurtha; and Sulla had courage and determination enough to trust himself with this unknown person, whose intentions were not yet understood.

Accompanied by a son of Bocchus, he undertook the dangerous journey and rode boldly right through the camp of Jugurtha. He had to persuade Bocchus by definite and detailed proposals to decide upon a treaty with Rome. Jugurtha was enticed by Bocchus into ambush and taken prisoner, under the pretext of taking him out of the way of Sulla. “So fell the great traitor by the treachery of those nearest to him.” He was carried with his children to the camp of Marius; and thus the war came to an end.

Marius remained till the following year in Africa, to inaugurate the new order of things there. Numidia was still reckoned a kingdom; but the new king Gauda, a half brother of Jugurtha, and the last descendant of Masinissa, was compelled to relinquish the western portion to Bocchus. Numidia was not converted into a Roman province, because the protection of the border against the hordes of the deserts would always have required a considerable standing army of Roman soldiers.c

Ihnee says that the Romans were “as ungenerous and as unjust to him as to Hannibal and Perseus and all their great foes. On the whole he inspires less abhorrence than Metellus or Marius or Sulla, or the wretches who took his bribes.”

Plutarch describes the last days of Jugurtha with terrible vigour.

PLUTARCH ON JUGURTHA’S DEATH