The History of Rome, Book IV - Theodor Mommsen
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Siege of Cirta
This was bad; but matters soon became worse. In order to be able
under the semblance of self-defence to defraud Adherbal of his portion,
Jugurtha provoked him to war; but when the weak man, rendered wiser
by experience, allowed Jugurtha's horsemen to ravage his territory
unhindered and contented himself with lodging complaints at Rome,
Jugurtha, impatient of these ceremonies, began the war even without
pretext. Adherbal was totally defeated in the region of the modern
Philippeville, and threw himself into his capital of Cirta in the
immediate vicinity. While the siege was in progress, and Jugurtha's
troops were daily skirmishing with the numerous Italians who were
settled in Cirta and who took a more vigorous part in the defence of
the city than the Africans themselves, the commission despatched by
the Roman senate on Adherbal's first complaint made its appearance;
composed, of course, of young inexperienced men, such as the
government of those times regularly employed in the ordinary missions
of the state. The envoys demanded that Jugurtha should allow them
as deputed by the protecting power to Adherbal to enter the city,
and generally that he should suspend hostilities and accept their
mediation. Jugurtha summarily rejected both demands, and the envoys
hastily returned home--like boys, as they were--to report to the
fathers of the city. The fathers listened to the report, and
allowed their countrymen in Cirta just to fight on as long as they
pleased. It was not till, in the fifth month of the siege, a
messenger of Adherbal stole through the entrenchments of the enemy
and a letter of the king full of the most urgent entreaties reached
the senate, that the latter roused itself and actually adopted a
resolution--not to declare war as the minority demanded but to send a
new embassy--an embassy, however, headed by Marcus Scaurus, the great
conqueror of the Taurisci and the freedmen, the imposing hero of
the aristocracy, whose mere appearance would suffice to bring the
refractory king to a different mind. In fact Jugurtha appeared, as
he was bidden, at Utica to discuss the matter with Scaurus; endless
debates were held; when at length the conference was concluded, not
the slightest result had been obtained. The embassy returned to Rome
without having declared war, and the king went off again to the
siege of Cirta. Adherbal found himself reduced to extremities and
despaired of Roman support; the Italians in Cirta moreover, weary of
the siege and firmly relying for their own safety on the terror of the
Roman name, urged a surrender. So the town capitulated. Jugurtha
ordered his adopted brother to be executed amid cruel tortures, and
all the adult male population of the town, Africans as well as
Italians, to be put to the sword (642).
Roman Intervention
Treaty between Rome and Numidia
A cry of indignation rose throughout Italy. The minority in the
senate itself and every one out of the senate unanimously condemned
the government, with whom the honour and interest of the country
seemed mere commodities for sale; loudest of all was the outcry of
the mercantile class, which was most directly affected by the sacrifice
of the Roman and Italian merchants at Cirta. It is true that the
majority of the senate still even now struggled; they appealed to
the class-interests of the aristocracy, and set in motion all the
contrivances of collegiate procrastination, with a view to preserve
still longer the peace which they loved. But when Gaius Memmius,
designated as tribune of the people for next year, an active and
eloquent man, brought the matter publicly forward and threatened in
his capacity of tribune to call the worst offenders to judicial account,
the senate permitted war to be declared against Jugurtha (642-3).
The step seemed taken in earnest. The envoys of Jugurtha were dismissed
from Italy without being admitted to an audience; the new consul
Lucius Calpurnius Bestia, who was distinguished, among the members of
his order at least, by judgment and activity, prosecuted the warlike
preparations with energy; Marcus Scaurus himself took the post of a
commander in the African army. In a short time a Roman army was on
African ground, and marching upward along the Bagradas (Mejerdah)
advanced into the Numidian kingdom, where the towns most remote from
the seat of the royal power, such as Great Leptis, already voluntarily
sent in their submission, while Bocchus king of Mauretania, although
his daughter was married to Jugurtha, offered friendship and alliance
to the Romans. Jugurtha himself lost courage, and sent envoys to the
Roman headquarters to request an armistice. The end of the contest
seemed near, and came still more rapidly than was expected. The treaty
with Bocchus broke down, because the king, unacquainted with Roman
customs, had conceived that he should be able to conclude a treaty so
advantageous for the Romans without any gratuity, and therefore had
neglected to furnish his envoys with the usual market price of Roman
alliances. Jugurtha at all events knew Roman institutions better,
and had not omitted to support his proposals for an armistice by a
due accompaniment of money; but he too was deceived. After the first
negotiations it turned out that not an armistice merely but a peace
was purchaseable at the Roman head-quarters. The royal treasury
was still well filled with the savings of Massinissa; the transaction
was soon settled. The treaty was concluded, after it had been for the
sake of form submitted to a council of war whose consent was procured
after an irregular and extremely summary discussion. Jugurtha
submitted at discretion; but the victor was merciful and gave him back
his kingdom undiminished, in consideration of his paying a moderate
fine and delivering up the Roman deserters and the war elephants
(643); the greater part of the latter the king afterwards repurchased
by bargaining with the individual Roman commandants and officers.
On the news of this peace the storm once more broke forth in Rome.
Everybody knew how the peace had been brought about; even Scaurus was
evidently open to bribery, only at a price higher than the ordinary
senatorial average. The legal validity of the peace was seriously
assailed in the senate; Gaius Memmius declared that the king, if he
had really submitted unconditionally, could not refuse to appear in
Rome, and that he should accordingly be summoned before them, with
the view of ascertaining how the matter actually stood as to the
thoroughly irregular negotiations for peace by hearing both the
contracting parties. They yielded to the inconvenient demand: but
at the same time granted a safe-conduct to the king inconsistently
with the law, for he came not as an enemy, but as one who had made
his submission. Thereupon the king actually appeared at Rome and
presented himself to be heard before the assembled people, which was
with difficulty induced to respect the safe-conduct and to refrain
from tearing in pieces on the spot the murderer of the Italians at
Cirta. But scarcely had Gaius Memmius addressed his first question
to the king, when one of his colleagues interfered in virtue of his
veto and enjoined the king to be silent. Here too African gold was
more powerful than the will of the sovereign people and of its
supreme magistrates. Meanwhile the discussions respecting the
validity of the peace so concluded went on in the senate, and the
new consul Spurius Postumius Albinus zealously supported the proposal
to cancel it, in the expectation that in that case the chief command
in Africa would devolve on him. This induced Massiva, a grandson of
Massinissa living in Rome, to assert before the senate his claims
to the vacant Numidian kingdom; upon which Bomilcar, one of the
confidants of king Jugurtha, doubtless under his instructions made
away with the rival of his master by assassination, and, when he was
prosecuted on account of it, escaped with Jugurtha's aid from Rome.
Cancelling of the Treaty
Declaration of War
Capitulation of the Romans
Second Peace
This new outrage perpetrated under the eyes of the Roman government
was at least so far effectual, that the senate now cancelled the
peace and dismissed the king from the city (winter of 643-644).
The war was accordingly resumed, and the consul Spurius Albinus was
invested with the command (644). But the African army down to its
lowest ranks was in a state of disorganization corresponding to such
a political and military superintendence. Not only had discipline
ceased and the spoliation of Numidian townships and even of the
Roman provincial territory become during the suspension of hostilities
the chief business of the Roman soldiery, but not a few officers
and soldiers had as well as their generals entered into secret
understanding with the enemy. It is easy to see that such an army
could do nothing in the field; and if Jugurtha on this occasion
bribed the Roman general into inaction, as was afterwards judicially
asserted against the latter, he did in truth what was superfluous.
Spurius Albinus therefore contented himself with doing nothing.
On the other hand his brother who after his departure assumed the
interim command--the equally foolhardy and incapable Aulus Postumius--
in the middle of winter fell on the idea of seizing by a bold coup de
main the treasures of the king, which were kept in the town of Suthul
(afterwards Calama, now Guelma) difficult of access and still more
difficult of conquest. The army set out thither and reached the
town; but the siege was unsuccessful and without prospect of result,
and, when the king who had remained for a time with his troops in
front of the town went into the desert, the Roman general preferred
to pursue him. This was precisely what Jugurtha intended in a
nocturnal assault, which was favoured by the difficulties of the
ground and the secret understanding which Jugurtha had with some in
the Roman army, the Numidians captured the Roman camp, and drove
the Romans, many of whom were unarmed, before them in the most
complete and disgraceful rout. The consequence was a capitulation,
the terms of which--the marching off of the Roman army under the yoke,
the immediate evacuation of the whole Numidian territory, and the
renewal of the treaty cancelled by the senate--were dictated by
Jugurtha and accepted by the Romans (in the beginning of 645).
Dissatisfaction in the Capital
This was too much to be borne. While the Africans were exulting and
the prospect--thus suddenly opened up--of such an overthrow of the
alien domination as had been reckoned scarcely possible was bringing
numerous tribes of the free and half-free inhabitants of the desert
to the standards of the victorious king, public opinion in Italy was
vehemently aroused against the equally corrupt and pernicious governing
aristocracy, and broke out in a storm of prosecutions which, fostered
by the exasperation of the mercantile class, swept away a succession
of victims from the highest circles of the nobility. On the proposal
of the tribune of the people Gaius Mamilius Limetanus, in spite of the
timid attempts of the senate to avert the threatened punishment, an
extraordinary jury-commission was appointed to investigate the high
treason that had occurred in connection with the question of the
Numidian succession; and its sentences sent the two former commanders-
in-chief Gaius Bestia and Spurius Albinus as well as Lucius Opimius,
the head of the first African commission and the executioner withal
of Gaius Gracchus, along with numerous other less notable men of the
government party, guilty and innocent, into exile. That these
prosecutions, however, were only intended to appease the excitement
of public opinion, in the capitalist circles more especially, by the
sacrifice of some of the persons most compromised, and that there was
in them not the slightest trace of a rising of popular indignation
against the government itself, void as it was of right and honour,
is shown very clearly by the fact that no one ventured to attack
the guiltiest of the guilty, the prudent and powerful Scaurus; on
the contrary he was about this very time elected censor and also,
incredible as it may seem, chosen as one of the presidents of the
extraordinary commission of treason. Still less was any attempt even
made to interfere with the functions of the government, and it was
left solely to the senate to put an end to the Numidian scandal in a
manner as gentle as possible for the aristocracy; for that it was
time to do so, even the most aristocratic aristocrat probably began
to perceive.
Cancelling of the Second Treaty
Metellus Appointed to the Command
Renewal of the War
The senate in the first place cancelled the second treaty of peace--
to surrender to the enemy the commander who had concluded it, as was
done some thirty years before, seemed according to the new ideas of
the sanctity of treaties no longer necessary--and determined, this
time in all earnest, to renew the war. The supreme command in Africa
was entrusted, as was natural, to an aristocrat, but yet to one of
the few men of quality who in a military and moral point of view were
equal to the task. The choice fell on Quintus Metellus. He was,
like the whole powerful family to which he belonged, in principle a
rigid and unscrupulous aristocrat; as a magistrate, he, no doubt,
reckoned it honourable to hire assassins for the good of the state and
would presumably have ridiculed the act of Fabricius towards Pyrrhus
as unpractical knight errantry, but he was an inflexible administrator
accessible neither to fear nor to corruption, and a judicious and
experienced warrior. In this respect he was so far free from the
prejudices of his order that he selected as his lieutenants not men
of rank, but the excellent officer Publius Rutilius Rufus, who was
esteemed in military circles for his exemplary discipline and as the
author of an altered and improved system of drill, and the brave Latin
farmer's son Gaius Marius, who had risen from the pike. Attended by
these and other able officers, Metellus presented himself in the course
of 645 as consul and commander-in-chief to the African army, which he
found in such disorder that the generals had not hitherto ventured
to lead it into the enemy's territory and it was formidable to none
save the unhappy inhabitants of the Roman province. It was
sternly and speedily reorganized, and in the spring of 646.(12)
Metellus led it over the Numidian frontier. When Jugurtha
perceived the altered state of things, he gave himself up as lost,
and, before the struggle began, made earnest proposals for an
accommodation, requesting ultimately nothing more than a guarantee for
his life. Metellus, however, was resolved and perhaps even instructed
not to terminate the war except with the unconditional subjugation and
execution of the daring client-prince; which was in fact the only
issue that could satisfy the Romans. Jugurtha since the victory over
Albinus was regarded as the deliverer of Libya from the rule of the
hated foreigners; unscrupulous and cunning as he was, and unwieldy
as was the Roman government, he might at any time even after a peace
rekindle the war in his native country; tranquillity would not be
secured, and the removal of the African army would not be possible,
until king Jugurtha should cease to exist. Officially Metellus gave
evasive answers to the proposals of the king; secretly he instigated
the envoys to deliver their master living or dead to the Romans. But,
when the Roman general undertook to compete with the African in the
field of assassination, he there met his master; Jugurtha saw
through the plan, and, when he could not do otherwise, prepared
for a desperate resistance.
Battle on the Muthul
Beyond the utterly barren mountain-range, over which lay the route of
the Romans into the interior, a plain of eighteen miles in breadth
extended as far as the river Muthul, which ran parallel to the
mountain-chain. The plain was destitute of water and of trees except
in the immediate vicinity of the river, and was only intersected by
a hill-ridge covered with low brushwood. On this ridge Jugurtha
awaited the Roman army. His troops were arranged in two masses;
the one, including a part of the infantry and the elephants, under
Bomilcar at the point where the ridge abutted on the river, the
other, embracing the flower of the infantry and all the cavalry,
higher up towards the mountain-range, concealed by the bushes.
On debouching from the mountains, the Romans saw the enemy in a
position completely commanding their right flank; and, as they could
not possibly remain on the bare and arid crest of the chain and were
under the necessity of reaching the river, they had to solve the
difficult problem of gaining the stream through the entirely open plain
of eighteen miles in breadth, under the eyes of the enemy's horsemen and
without light cavalry of their own. Metellus despatched a detachment
under Rufus straight towards the river, to pitch a camp there;
the main body marched from the defiles of the mountain-chain in an
oblique direction through the plain towards the hill-ridge, with a
view to dislodge the enemy from the latter. But this march in the
plain threatened to become the destruction of the army; for, while
Numidian infantry occupied the mountain defiles in the rear of the
Romans as the latter evacuated them, the Roman attacking column found
itself assailed on all sides by swarms of the enemy's horse, who
charged down on it from the ridge. The constant onset of the
hostile swarms hindered the advance, and the battle threatened to
resolve itself into a number of confused and detached conflicts;
while at the same time Bomilcar with his division detained the corps
under Rufus, to prevent it from hastening to the help of the hard-
pressed Roman main army. Nevertheless Metellus and Marius with a
couple of thousand soldiers succeeded in reaching the foot of the
ridge; and the Numidian infantry which defended the heights, in
spite of their superior numbers and favourable position, fled almost
without resistance when the legionaries charged at a rapid pace
up the hill. The Numidian infantry held its ground equally ill
against Rufus; it was scattered at the first charge, and the
elephants were all killed or captured on the broken ground. Late
in the evening the two Roman divisions, each victorious on its
own part and each anxious as to the fate of the other, met between
the two fields of battle. It was a battle attesting alike the
uncommon military talent of Jugurtha and the indestructible solidity
of the Roman infantry, which alone had converted their strategical
defeat into a victory. Jugurtha sent home a great part of his troops
after the battle, and restricted himself to a guerilla warfare, which
he likewise managed with skill.
Numidia Occupied by the Romans
The two Roman columns, the one led by Metellus, the other by Marius--
who, although by birth and rank the humblest, occupied since the
battle on the Muthul the first place among the chiefs of the staff--
traversed the Numidian territory, occupied the towns, and, when any
place did not readily open its gates, put to death the adult male
population. But the most considerable among the eastern inland
towns, Zama, opposed to the Romans a serious resistance, which the
king energetically supported. He was even successful in surprising
the Roman camp; and the Romans found themselves at last compelled to
abandon the siege and to go into winter quarters. For the sake of
more easily provisioning his army Metellus, leaving behind garrisons
in the conquered towns, transferred it into the Roman province, and
employed the opportunity of suspended hostilities to institute fresh
negotiations, showing a disposition to grant to the king a peace on
tolerable terms. Jugurtha readily entered into them; he had at
once bound himself to pay 200,000 pounds of silver, and had even
delivered up his elephants and 300 hostages, as well as 3000 Roman
deserters, who were immediately put to death. At the same time,
however, the king's most confidential counsellor, Bomilcar--who not
unreasonably apprehended that, if peace should ensue, Jugurtha would
deliver him up as the murderer of Massiva to the Roman courts--was
gained by Metellus and induced, in consideration of an assurance of
impunity as respected that murder and of great rewards, to promise
that he would deliver the king alive or dead into the hands of the
Romans. But neither that official negotiation nor this intrigue
led to the desired result. When Metellus brought forward the
suggestion that the king should give himself up in person as a
prisoner, the latter broke off the negotiations; Bomilcar's
intercourse with the enemy was discovered, and he was arrested and
executed. These diplomatic cabals of the meanest kind admit of no
apology; but the Romans had every reason to aim at the possession of
the person of their antagonist. The war had reached a point, at which
it could neither be carried farther nor abandoned. The state of
feeling in Numidia was evinced by the revolt of Vaga,(13) the most
considerable of the cities occupied by the Romans, in the winter of
646-7; on which occasion the whole Roman garrison, officers and men,
were put to death with the exception of the commandant Titus Turpilius
Silanus, who was afterwards--whether rightly or wrongly, we cannot
tell--condemned to death by a Roman court-martial and executed for
having an understanding with the enemy. The town was surprised
by Metellus on the second day after its revolt, and given over to
all the rigour of martial law; but if such was the temper of the
easy to be reached and comparatively submissive dwellers on the
banks of the Bagradas, what might be looked for farther inland and
among the roving tribes of the desert? Jugurtha was the idol of
the Africans, who readily overlooked the double fratricide in the
liberator and avenger of their nation. Twenty years afterwards a
Numidian corps which was fighting in Italy for the Romans had to
be sent back in all haste to Africa, when the son of Jugurtha
appeared in the enemy's ranks; we may infer from this, how great
was the influence which he himself exercised over his people.
What prospect was there of a termination of the struggle in regions
where the combined peculiarities of the population and of the soil
allowed a leader, who had once secured the sympathies of the
nation, to protract the war in endless guerilla conflicts, or even
to let it sleep for a time in order to revive it at the right moment
with renewed vigour?
War in the Desert
Mauretanian Complications
When Metellus again took the field in 647, Jugurtha nowhere held
his ground against him; he appeared now at one point, now at another
far distant; it seemed as if they would as easily get the better of
the lions as of these horsemen of the desert. A battle was fought,
a victory was won; but it was difficult to say what had been
gained by the victory. The king had vanished out of sight in
the distance. In the interior of the modern beylik of Tunis,
close on the edge of the great desert, there lay on an oasis
provided with springs the strong place Thala;(14) thither Jugurtha
had retired with his children, his treasures, and the flower of his
troops, there to await better times. Metellus ventured to follow the
king through a desert, in which his troops had to carry water along
with them in skins forty-five miles; Thala was reached and fell after
a forty days' siege; but the Roman deserters destroyed the most
valuable part of the booty along with the building in which they
burnt themselves after the capture of the town, and--what was of more
consequence--king Jugurtha escaped with his children and his chest.
Numidia was no doubt virtually in the hands of the Romans; but,
instead of their object being thereby gained, the war seemed only
to extend over a field wider and wider. In the south the free
Gaetulian tribes of the desert began at the call of Jugurtha a
national war against the Romans. In the west Bocchus king of
Mauretania, whose friendship the Romans had in earlier times
despised, seemed now not indisposed to make common cause with his
son-in-law against them; he not only received him in his court, but,
uniting to Jugurtha's followers his own numberless swarms of horsemen,
he marched into the region of Cirta, where Metellus was in winter
quarters. They began to negotiate: it was clear that in the
person of Jugurtha he held in his hands the real prize of the
struggle for Rome. But what were his intentions--whether to sell
his son-in-law dear to the Romans, or to take up the national war
in concert with that son-in-law--neither the Romans nor Jugurtha
nor perhaps even the king himself knew; and he was in no hurry
to abandon his ambiguous position.
Marius Commander-in-Chief
Thereupon Metellus left the province, which he had been compelled by
decree of the people to give up to his former lieutenant Marius who
was now consul; and the latter assumed the supreme command for the
next campaign in 648. He was indebted for it in some degree to a
revolution. Relying on the services which he had rendered and at
the same time on oracles which had been communicated to him, he had
resolved to come forward as a candidate for the consulship. If the
aristocracy had supported the constitutional, and in other respects
quite justifiable, candidature of this able man, who was not at all
inclined to take part with the opposition, nothing would have come
of the matter but the enrolment of a new family in the consular
Fasti. Instead of this the man of non-noble birth, who aspired to
the highest public dignity, was reviled by the whole governing caste
as a daring innovator and revolutionist; just as the plebeian
candidate had been formerly treated by the patricians, but now
without any formal ground in law. The brave officer was sneered at
in sharp language by Metellus--Marius was told that he might wait with
his candidature till Metellus' son, a beardless boy, could be his
colleague--and he was with the worst grace suffered to leave almost
at the last moment, that he might appear in the capital as a candidate
for the consulship of 647. There he amply retaliated on his
general the wrong which he had suffered, by criticising before the
gaping multitude the conduct of the war and the administration of
Metellus in Africa in a manner as unmilitary as it was disgracefully
unfair; and he did not even disdain to serve up to the darling
populace--always whispering about secret conspiracies equally
unprecedented and indubitable on the part of their noble masters--
the silly story, that Metellus was designedly protracting the war
in order to remain as long as possible commander-in-chief. To the
idlers of the streets this was quite clear: numerous persons
unfriendly for reasons good or bad to the government, and especially
the justly-indignant mercantile order, desired nothing better than such
an opportunity of annoying the aristocracy in its most sensitive point:
he was elected to the consulship by an enormous majority, and not only
so, but, while in other cases by the law of Gaius Gracchus the
decision as to the respective functions to be assigned to the consuls
lay with the senate (p. 355), the arrangement made by the senate
which left Metellus at his post was overthrown, and by decree of
the sovereign comitia the supreme command in the African war
was committed to Marius.