CHAPTER IV

The Rule of the Restoration

Vacancy in the Government

The new structure, which Gaius Gracchus had reared, became on

his death a ruin. His death indeed, like that of his brother, was

primarily a mere act of vengeance; but it was at the same time a very

material step towards the restoration of the old constitution, when

the person of the monarch was taken away from the monarchy, just as

it was on the point of being established. It was all the more so in

the present instance, because after the fall of Gaius and the sweeping

and bloody prosecutions of Opimius there existed at the moment

absolutely no one, who, either by blood-relationship to the fallen

chief of the state or by preeminent ability, might feel himself

warranted in even attempting to occupy the vacant place. Gaius

had departed from the world childless, and the son whom Tiberius

had left behind him died before reaching manhood; the whole popular

party, as it was called, was literally without any one who could be

named as leader. The Gracchan constitution resembled a fortress

without a commander; the walls and garrison were uninjured, but

the general was wanting, and there was no one to take possession of

the vacant place save the very government which had been overthrown.

The Restored Aristocracy

So it accordingly happened. After the decease of Gaius Gracchus

without heirs, the government of the senate as it were spontaneously

resumed its place; and this was the more natural, that it had not

been, in the strict sense, formally abolished by the tribune, but

had merely been reduced to a practical nullity by his exceptional

proceedings. Yet we should greatly err, if we should discern in

this restoration nothing further than a relapse of the state-machine

into the old track which had been trodden and worn for centuries.

Restoration is always revolution; but in this case it was not so

much the old government as the old governor that was restored.

The oligarchy made its appearance newly equipped in the armour of

the -tyrannis- which had been overthrown. As the senate had beaten

Gracchus from the field with his own weapons, so it continued in the

most essential points to govern with the constitution of the Gracchi;

though certainly with the ulterior idea, if not of setting it aside

entirely, at any rate of thoroughly purging it in due time from the

elements really hostile to the ruling aristocracy.

Prosecutions of the Democrats

At first the reaction was mainly directed against persons. Publius

Popillius was recalled from banishment after the enactments relating

to him had been cancelled (633), and a warfare of prosecution was

waged against the adherents of Gracchus; whereas the attempt of

the popular party to have Lucius Opimius after his resignation of

office condemned for high treason was frustrated by the partisans

of the government (634). The character of this government of

the restoration is significantly indicated by the progress of the

aristocracy in soundness of sentiment. Gaius Carbo, once the ally

of the Gracchi, had for long been a convert,(1) and had but recently

shown his zeal and his usefulness as defender of Opimius. But he

remained the renegade; when the same accusation was raised against him

by the democrats as against Opimius, the government were not unwilling

to let him fall, and Carbo, seeing himself lost between the two

parties, died by his own hand. Thus the men of the reaction showed

themselves in personal questions pure aristocrats. But the reaction

did not immediately attack the distributions of grain, the taxation

of the province of Asia, or the Gracchan arrangement as to the jurymen

and courts; on the contrary, it not only spared the mercantile

class and the proletariate of the capital, but continued to render

homage, as it had already done in the introduction of the Livian

laws, to these powers and especially to the proletariate far more

decidedly than had been done by the Gracchi. This course was not

adopted merely because the Gracchan revolution still thrilled for

long the minds of its contemporaries and protected its creations;

the fostering and cherishing at least of the interests of the populace

was in fact perfectly compatible with the personal advantage of

the aristocracy, and thereby nothing further was sacrificed than

merely the public weal.

The Domain Question under the Restoration

All those measures which were devised by Gaius Gracchus for the

promotion of the public welfare--the best but, as may readily be

conceived, also the most unpopular part of his legislation--were

allowed by the aristocracy to drop. Nothing was so speedily and so

successfully assailed as the noblest of his projects, the scheme of

introducing a legal equality first between the Roman burgesses and

Italy, and thereafter between Italy and the provinces, and--inasmuch

as the distinction between the merely ruling and consuming and the

merely serving and working members of the state was thus done away--

at the same time solving the social question by the most comprehensive

and systematic emigration known in history. With all the determination

and all the peevish obstinacy of dotage the restored oligarchy

obtruded the principle of deceased generations--that Italy must

remain the ruling land and Rome the ruling city in Italy--afresh

on the present. Even in the lifetime of Gracchus the claims of

the Italian allies had been decidedly rejected, and the great idea of

transmarine colonization had been subjected to a very serious attack,

which became the immediate cause of Gracchus' fall. After his

death the scheme of restoring Carthage was set aside with little

difficulty by the government party, although the individual allotments

already distributed there were left to the recipients. It is true

that they could not prevent a similar foundation by the democratic

party from succeeding at another point: in the course of the conquests

beyond the Alps which Marcus Flaccus had begun, the colony of Narbo

(Narbonne) was founded there in 636, the oldest transmarine burgess-

city in the Roman empire, which, in spite of manifold attacks by the

government party and in spite of a proposal directly made by the

senate to abolish it, permanently held its ground, protected, as it

probably was, by the mercantile interests that were concerned. But,

apart from this exception--in its isolation not very important--the

government was uniformly successful in preventing the assignation

of land out of Italy.

The Italian domain-question was settled in a similar spirit.

The Italian colonies of Gaius, especially Capua, were cancelled,

and such of them as had already been planted were again broken up;

only the unimportant one of Tarentum was allowed to subsist in the

form of the new town Neptunia placed alongside of the former Greek

community. So much of the domains as had already been distributed

by non-colonial assignation remained in the hands of the recipients;

the restrictions imposed on them by Gracchus in the interest of the

commonwealth--the ground-rent and the prohibition of alienation--had

already been abolished by Marcus Drusus. With reference on the other

hand to the domains still possessed by right of occupation--which,

over and above the domain-land enjoyed by the Latins, must have mostly

consisted of the estates left with their holders in accordance with

the Gracchan maximum(2)--it was resolved definitively to secure them to

those who had hitherto been occupants and to preclude the possibility

of future distribution. It was primarily from these lands, no doubt,

that the 36,000 new farm-allotments promised by Drusus were to have

been formed; but they saved themselves the trouble of inquiring where

those hundreds of thousands of acres of Italian domain-land were to

be found, and tacitly shelved the Livian colonial law, which had

served its purpose;--only perhaps the small colony of Scolacium

(Squillace) may be referred to the colonial law of Drusus. On the

other hand by a law, which the tribune of the people Spurius Thorius

carried under the instructions of the senate, the allotment-commission

was abolished in 635, and there was imposed on the occupants of the

domain-land a fixed rent, the proceeds of which went to the benefit

of the populace of the capital--apparently by forming part of the fund

for the distribution of corn; proposals going still further, including

perhaps an increase of the largesses of grain, were averted by the

judicious tribune of the people Gaius Marius. The final step was

taken eight years afterwards (643), when by a new decree of the

people(3) the occupied domain-land was directly converted into the

rent-free private property of the former occupants. It was added,

that in future domain-land was not to be occupied at all, but was

either to be leased or to lie open as public pasture; in the latter

case provision was made by the fixing of a very low maximum of ten

head of large and fifty head of small cattle, that the large herd-

owner should not practically exclude the small. In these judicious

regulations the injurious character of the occupation-system, which

moreover was long ago given up,(4) was at length officially recognized,

but unhappily they were only adopted when it had already deprived the

state in substance of its domanial possessions. While the Roman

aristocracy thus took care of itself and got whatever occupied land

was still in its hands converted into its own property, it at the same

time pacified the Italian allies, not indeed by conferring on them the

property of the Latin domain-land which they and more especially their

municipal aristocracy enjoyed, but by preserving unimpaired the rights

in relation to it guaranteed to them by their charters. The opposite

party was in the unfortunate position, that in the most important

material questions the interests of the Italians ran diametrically

counter to those of the opposition in the capital; in fact the

Italians entered into a species of league with the Roman government,

and sought and found protection from the senate against the

extravagant designs of various Roman demagogues.

The Proletariate and the Equestrian Order under the Restoration

While the restored government was thus careful thoroughly to eradicate

the germs of improvement which existed in the Gracchan constitution,

it remained completely powerless in presence of the hostile powers

that had been, not for the general weal, aroused by Gracchus.

The proletariate of the capital continued to have a recognized title

to aliment; the senate likewise acquiesced in the taking of the jurymen

from the mercantile order, repugnant though this yoke was to the

better and prouder portion of the aristocracy. The fetters which

the aristocracy wore did not beseem its dignity; but we do not find

that it seriously set itself to get rid of them. The law of Marcus

Aemilius Scaurus in 632, which at least enforced the constitutional

restrictions on the suffrage of freedmen, was for long the only

attempt--and that a very tame one--on the part of the senatorial

government once more to restrain their mob-tyrants. The proposal,

which the consul Quintus Caepio seventeen years after the introduction

of the equestrian tribunals (648) brought in for again entrusting the

trials to senatorial jurymen, showed what the government wished; but

showed also how little it could do, when the question was one not

of squandering domains but of carrying a measure in the face of

an influential order. It broke down.(5) The government was not

emancipated from the inconvenient associates who shared its power;

but these measures probably contributed still further to disturb the

never sincere agreement of the ruling aristocracy with the merchant-

class and the proletariate. Both were very well aware, that the

senate granted all its concessions only from fear and with reluctance;

permanently attached to the rule of the senate by considerations

neither of gratitude nor of interest, both were very ready to render

similar services to any other master who offered them more or even as

much, and had no objection, if an opportunity occurred, to cheat or

to thwart the senate. Thus the restoration continued to govern with

the desires and sentiments of a legitimate aristocracy, and with

the constitution and means of government of a -tyrannis-. Its rule

not only rested on the same bases as that of Gracchus, but it was

equally ill, and in fact still worse, consolidated; it was strong,

when in league with the populace it overthrew serviceable

institutions, but it was utterly powerless, when it had to face the

bands of the streets or the interests of the merchants. It sat on

the vacated throne with an evil conscience and divided hopes, indignant

at the institutions of the state which it ruled and yet incapable of

even systematically assailing them, vacillating in all its conduct

except where its own material advantage prompted a decision, a picture

of faithlessness towards its own as well as the opposite party, of

inward inconsistency, of the most pitiful impotence, of the meanest

selfishness--an unsurpassed ideal of misrule.

The Men of the Restoration

It could not be otherwise; the whole nation was in a state of

intellectual and moral decline, but especially the upper classes.

The aristocracy before the period of the Gracchi was truly not over-

rich in talent, and the benches of the senate were crowded by a pack

of cowardly and dissolute nobles; nevertheless there sat in it Scipio

Aemilianus, Gaius Laelius, Quintus Metellus, Publius Crassus, Publius

Scaevola and numerous other respectable and able men, and an observer

favourably predisposed might be of opinion that the senate maintained

a certain moderation in injustice and a certain decorum in

misgovernment. This aristocracy had been overthrown and then

reinstated; henceforth there rested on it the curse of restoration.

While the aristocracy had formerly governed for good or ill, and for

more than a century without any sensible opposition, the crisis which

it had now passed through revealed to it, like a flash of lightning

in a dark night, the abyss which yawned before its feet. Was it any

wonder that henceforward rancour always, and terror wherever they

durst, characterized the government of the lords of the old

nobility? that those who governed confronted as an united and compact

party, with far more sternness and violence than hitherto, the non-

governing multitude? that family-policy now prevailed once more, just

as in the worst times of the patriciate, so that e. g. the four

sons and (probably) the two nephews of Quintus Metellus--with a

single exception persons utterly insignificant and some of them called

to office on account of their very simplicity--attained within fifteen

years (631-645) all of them to the consulship, and all with one

exception also to triumphs--to say nothing of sons-in-law and so

forth? that the more violent and cruel the bearing of any of their

partisans towards the opposite party, he received the more signal

honour, and every outrage and every infamy were pardoned in the

genuine aristocrat? that the rulers and the ruled resembled two

parties at war in every respect, save in the fact that in their

warfare no international law was recognized? It was unhappily only

too palpable that, if the old aristocracy beat the people with rods,

this restored aristocracy chastised it with scorpions. It returned

to power; but it returned neither wiser nor better. Never hitherto

had the Roman aristocracy been so utterly deficient in men of

statesmanly and military capacity, as it was during this epoch

of restoration between the Gracchan and the Cinnan revolutions.

Marcus Aemilius Scaurus

A significant illustration of this is afforded by the chief of the

senatorial party at this time, Marcus Aemilius Scaurus. The son of

highly aristocratic but not wealthy parents, and thus compelled to

make use of his far from mean talents, he raised himself to the

consulship (639) and censorship (645), was long the chief of the

senate and the political oracle of his order, and immortalized his

name not only as an orator and author, but also as the originator

of some of the principal public buildings executed in this century.

But, if we look at him more closely, his greatly praised achievements

amount merely to this much, that, as a general, he gained some

cheap village triumphs in the Alps, and, as a statesman, won by his

laws about voting and luxury some victories nearly as serious over

the revolutionary spirit of the times. His real talent consisted

in this, that, while he was quite as accessible and bribable as any

other upright senator, he discerned with some cunning the moment when

the matter began to be hazardous, and above all by virtue of his

superior and venerable appearance acted the part of Fabricius before

the public. In a military point of view, no doubt, we find some

honourable exceptions of able officers belonging to the highest

circles of the aristocracy; but the rule was, that the lords of

quality, when they were to assume the command of armies, hastily

read up from the Greek military manuals and the Roman annals as much

as was required for holding a military conversation, and then, when

in the field, acted most wisely by entrusting the real command to an

officer of humble lineage but of tried capacity and tried discretion.

In fact, if a couple of centuries earlier the senate resembled an

assembly of kings, these their successors played not ill the part of

princes. But the incapacity of these restored aristocrats was fully

equalled by their political and moral worthlessness. If the state

of religion, to which we shall revert, did not present a faithful

reflection of the wild dissoluteness of this epoch, and if the

external history of the period did not exhibit the utter depravity of

the Roman nobles as one of its most essential elements, the horrible

crimes, which came to light in rapid succession among the highest

circles of Rome, would alone suffice to indicate their character.

Administration under the Restoration

Social State of Italy

The administration, internal and external, was what was to be

expected under such a government. The social ruin of Italy spread

with alarming rapidity; since the aristocracy had given itself legal

permission to buy out the small holders, and in its new arrogance

allowed itself with growing frequency to drive them out, the farms

disappeared like raindrops in the sea. That the economic oligarchy

at least kept pace with the political, is shown by the opinion

expressed about 650 by Lucius Marcius Philippus, a man of moderate

democratic views, that there were among the whole burgesses hardly

2000 families of substantial means. A practical commentary on this

state of things was once more furnished by the servile insurrections,

which during the first years of the Cimbrian war broke out annually

in Italy, e. g. at Nuceria, at Capua, and in the territory of

Thurii. This last conspiracy was so important that the urban

praetor had to march with a legion against it and yet overcame

the insurrection not by force of arms, but only by insidious treachery.

It was moreover a suspicious circumstance, that the insurrection was

headed not by a slave, but by the Roman knight Titus Vettius, whom

his debts had driven to the insane step of manumitting his slaves

and declaring himself their king (650). The apprehensions of the

government with reference to the accumulation of masses of slaves in

Italy are shown by the measures of precaution respecting the gold-

washings of Victumulae, which were carried on after 611 on account of

the Roman government: the lessees were at first bound not to employ

more than 5000 labourers, and subsequently the workings were totally

stopped by decree of the senate. Under such a government as the

present there was every reason in fact for fear, if, as was very

possible, a Transalpine host should penetrate into Italy and summon

the slaves, who were in great part of kindred lineage, to arms.

The Provinces

Occupation of Cilicia

The provinces suffered still more in comparison. We shall have an

idea of the condition of Sicily and Asia, if we endeavour to realize

what would be the aspect of matters in the East Indies provided the

English aristocracy were similar to the Roman aristocracy of that

day. The legislation, which entrusted the mercantile class with

control over the magistrates, compelled the latter to make common cause

to a certain extent with the former, and to purchase for themselves

unlimited liberty of plundering and protection from impeachment by

unconditional indulgence towards the capitalists in the provinces.

In addition to these official and semi-official robbers, freebooters

and pirates pillaged all the countries of the Mediterranean. In the

Asiatic waters more especially the buccaneers carried their outrages

so far that even the Roman government found itself under the necessity

in 652 of despatching to Cilicia a fleet, mainly composed of the vessels

of the dependent mercantile cities, under the praetor Marcus Antonius,

who was invested with proconsular powers. This fleet captured a number

of corsair-vessels and destroyed some rock-strongholds and not only so,

but the Romans even settled themselves permanently there, and in order

to the suppression of piracy in its chief seat, the Rugged or western

Cilicia occupied strong military positions--the first step towards the

establishment of the province of Cilicia, which thenceforth appears

among the Roman magistracies.(7) The design was commendable, and the

scheme in itself was suitable for its purpose; only, the continuance

and the increase of the evil of piracy in the Asiatic waters, and

especiallyin Cilicia, unhappily showed with how inadequate means

the pirates were combated from the newly-acquired position.

Revolt of the Slaves

But nowhere did the impotence and perversity of the Roman provincial

administration come to light so conspicuously as in the insurrections

of the slave proletariate, which seemed to have revived on their

former footing simultaneously with the restoration of the aristocracy.

These insurrections of the slaves swelling from revolts into wars--

which had emerged just about 620 as one, and that perhaps the proximate,

cause of the Gracchan revolution--were renewed and repeated with dreary

uniformity. Again, as thirty years before, a ferment pervaded the body

of slaves throughout the Roman empire. We have already mentioned

the Italian conspiracies. The miners in the Attic silver-mines rose

in revolt, occupied the promontory of Sunium, and issuing thence

pillaged for a length of time the surrounding country. Similar

movements appeared at other places.

The Second Sicilian Slave-War

But the chief seat of these fearful commotions was once more Sicily

with its plantations and its hordes of slaves brought thither from

Asia Minor. It is significant of the greatness of the evil, that

an attempt of the government to check the worst iniquities of the

slaveholders was the immediate cause of the new insurrection. That

the free proletarians in Sicily were little better than the slaves,

had been shown by their attitude in the first insurrection;(8)

after it was subdued, the Roman speculators took their revenge and

reduced numbers of the free provincials into slavery. In consequence

of a sharp enactment issued against this by the senate in 650, Publius

Licinius Nerva, the governor of Sicily at the time, appointed a court

for deciding on claims of freedom to sit in Syracuse. The court

went earnestly to work; in a short time decision was given in eight

hundred processes against the slave-owners, and the number of causes in

dependence was daily on the increase. The terrified planters hastened

to Syracuse, to compel the Roman governor to suspend such unparalleled

administration of justice; Nerva was weak enough to let himself be

terrified, and in harsh language informed the non-free persons

requesting trial that they should forgo their troublesome demand for

right and justice and should instantly return to those who called

themselves their masters. Those who were thus dismissed, instead of

doing as he bade them, formed a conspiracy and went to the mountains.

The governor was not prepared for military measures, and even the

wretched militia of the island was not immediately at hand; so that he

concluded an alliance with one of the best known captains of banditti

in the island, and induced him by the promise of personal pardon to

betray the revolted slaves into the hands of the Romans. He thus

gained the mastery over this band. But another band of runaway

slaves succeeded in defeating a division of the garrison of Enna

(Castrogiovanni); and this first success procured for the insurgents--

what they especially needed--arms and a conflux of associates.

The armour of their fallen or fugitive opponents furnished the first

basis of their military organization, and the number of the insurgents

soon swelled to many thousands. These Syrians in a foreign land

already, like their predecessors, seemed to themselves not unworthy

to be governed by kings, as were their countrymen at home; and--

parodying the trumpery king of their native land down to the very

name--they placed the slave Salvius at their head as king Tryphon.

In the district between Enna and Leontini (Lentini) where these bands

had their head-quarters, the open country was wholly in the hands of

the insurgents and Morgantia and other walled towns were already

besieged by them, when the Roman governor with his hastily-collected

Sicilian and Italian troops fell upon the slave-army in front

of Morgantia. He occupied the undefended camp; but the slaves,

although surprised, made a stand. In the combat that ensued the

levy of the island not only gave way at the first onset, but, as the

slaves allowed every one who threw down his arms to escape unhindered,

the militia almost without exception embraced the good opportunity

of taking their departure, and the Roman army completely dispersed.

Had the slaves in Morgantia been willing to make common cause with

their comrades before the gates, the town was lost; but they preferred

to accept the gift of freedom in legal form from their masters, and by

their valour helped them to save the town--whereupon the Roman governor

declared the promise of liberty solemnly given to the slaves by the

masters to be void in law, as having been illegally extorted.

Athenion

While the revolt thus spread after an alarming manner in the interior

of the island, a second broke out on the west coast. It was headed

by Athenion. He had formerly been, just like Cleon, a dreaded

captain of banditti in his native country of Cilicia, and had been

carried thence as a slave to Sicily. He secured, just as his

predecessors had done, the adherence of the Greeks and Syrians

especially by prophesyings and other edifying impostures; but skilled

in war and sagacious as he was, he did not, like the other leaders, arm

the whole mass that flocked to him, but formed out of the men able for

warfare an organized army, while he assigned the remainder to peaceful

employment. In consequence of his strict discipline, which repressed

all vacillation and all insubordinate movement in his troops, and his

gentle treatment of the peaceful inhabitants of the country and even of

the captives, he gained rapid and great successes. The Romans were on

this occasion disappointed in the hope that the two leaders would fall

out; Athenion voluntarily submitted to the far less capable king

Tryphon, and thus preserved unity among the insurgents. These soon

ruled with virtually absolute power over the flat country, where

the free proletarians again took part more or less openly with the

slaves; the Roman authorities were not in a position to take the field

against them, and had to rest content with protecting the towns,

which were in the most lamentable plight, by means of the militia of

Sicily and that of Africa brought over in all haste. The administration

of justice was suspended over the whole island, and force was

the only law. As no cultivator living in town ventured any longer

beyond the gates, and no countryman ventured into the towns, the most

fearful famine set in, and the town-population of this island which

formerly fed Italy had to be supported by the Roman authorities

sending supplies of grain. Moreover, conspiracies of the town-

slaves everywhere threatened to break out within, while the insurgent

armies lay before, the walls; even Messana was within a hair's breadth

of being conquered by Athenion.

Aquillius

Difficult as it was for the government during the serious war with

the Cimbri to place a second army in the field, it could not avoid

sending in 651 an army of 14,000 Romans and Italians, not including

the transmarine militia, under the praetor Lucius Lucullus to the

island. The united slave-army was stationed in the mountains above

Sciacca, and accepted the battle which Lucullus offered. The better

military organization of the Romans gave them the victory; Athenion

was left for dead on the field, Tryphon had to throw himself into the

mountain-fortress of Triocala; the insurgents deliberated earnestly

whether it was possible to continue the struggle longer. But the

party, which was resolved to hold out to the last man, retained the

upper hand; Athenion, who had been saved in a marvellous manner,

reappeared among his troops and revived their sunken courage; above

all Lucullus with incredible negligence took not the smallest step

to follow up his victory; in fact, he is said to have intentionally

disorganized the army and to have burned his field baggage, with a

view to screen the total inefficacy of his administration and not to

be cast into the shade by his successor. Whether this was true or

not, his successor Gaius Servilius (652) obtained no better results;

and both generals were afterwards criminally impeached and condemned

for their conduct in office--which, however, was not at all a certain

proof of their guilt. Athenion, who after the death of Tryphon

(652) was invested with the sole command, stood victorious at the

head of a considerable army, when in 653 Manius Aquillius, who had

during the previous year distinguished himself under Marius in the

war with the Teutones, was as consul and governor entrusted with the

conduct of the war. After two years of hard conflicts--Aquillius is

said to have fought in person with Athenion, and to have killed him

in single combat--the Roman general at length put down the desperate

resistance, and vanquished the insurgents in their last retreats by

famine. The slaves on the island were prohibited from bearing arms

and peace was again restored to it, or, in other words, its recent

tormentors were relieved by those of former use and wont; in fact,

the victor himself occupied a prominent place among the numerous

and energetic robber-magistrates of this period. Any one who still

required a proof of the internal quality of the government of

the restored aristocracy might be referred to the origin and

to the conduct of this second Sicilian slave-war, which,

lasted for five years.

The Dependent States

But wherever the eye might turn throughout the wide sphere of Roman

administration, the same causes and the same effects appeared.

If the Sicilian slave-war showed how far the government was from

being equal to even its simplest task of keeping in check the

proletariate, contemporary events in Africa displayed the skill with

which the Romans now governed the client-states. About the very time

when the Sicilian slave-war broke out, there was exhibited before

the eyes of the astonished world the spectacle of an unimportant

client-prince able to carry out a fourteen years' usurpation and

insurrection against the mighty republic which had shattered the

kingdoms of Macedonia and Asia with one blow of its weighty arm--

and that not by means of arms, but through the pitiful character

of its rulers.

Numidia

Jugurtha

The kingdom of Numidia stretched from the river Molochath to

the great Syrtis,(9) bordering on the one side with the Mauretanian

kingdom of Tingis (the modern Morocco) and on the other with Cyrene

and Egypt, and surrounding on the west, south, and east the narrow

district of coast which formed the Roman province of Africa.

In addition to the old possessions of the Numidian chiefs, it embraced

by far the greatest portion of the territory which Carthage had possessed

in Africa during the times of its prosperity--including several

important Old-Phoenician cities, such as Hippo Regius (Bona) and Great

Leptis (Lebidah)--altogether the largest and best part of the rich

seaboard of northern Africa. Numidia was beyond question, next to

Egypt, the most considerable of all the Roman client-states. After the

death of Massinissa (605), Scipio had divided the sovereign functions

of that prince among his three sons, the kings Micipsa, Gulussa, and

Mastanabal, in such a way that the firstborn obtained the residency

and the state-chest, the second the charge of war, and the third the

administration of justice.(10) Now after the death of his two brothers

Massinissa's eldest son, Micipsa,(11) reigned alone, a feeble peaceful

old man, who was fond of occupying himself more with the study of

Greek philosophy than with affairs of state. As his sons were not

yet grown up, the reins of government were practically held by an

illegitimate nephew of the king, the prince Jugurtha. Jugurtha was

no unworthy grandson of Massinissa. He was a handsome man and a

skilled and courageous rider and hunter; his countrymen held him

in high honour as a clear and sagacious administrator, and he had

displayed his military ability as leader of the Numidian contingent

before Numantia under the eyes of Scipio. His position in the

kingdom, and the influence which he possessed with the Roman

government by means of his numerous friends and war-comrades, made

it appear to king Micipsa advisable to adopt him (634), and to arrange

in his testament that his own two elder sons Adherbal and Hiempsal,

and his adopted son Jugurtha along with them, should jointly inherit

and govern the kingdom, just as he himself had done with his two

brothers. For greater security this arrangement was placed under

the guarantee of the Roman government.

The War for the Numidian Succession

Soon afterwards, in 636, king Micipsa died. The testament came into

force: but the two sons of Micipsa--the vehement Hiempsal still more

than his weak elder brother--soon came into so violent collision

with their cousin whom they looked on as an intruder into the

legitimate line of succession, that the idea of a joint reign of the

three kings had to be abandoned. An attempt was made to carry out

a division of the heritage; but the quarrelling kings could not agree

as to their quotas of land and treasure, and the protecting power, to

which in this case the decisive word by right belonged, gave itself,

as usual, no concern about this affair. A rupture took place;

Adherbal and Hiempsal were disposed to characterize their father's

testament as surreptitious and altogether to dispute Jugurtha's right

of joint inheritance, while on the other hand Jugurtha came forward

as a pretender to the whole kingdom. While the discussions as to the

partition were still going on, Hiempsal was made away with by hired

assassins; then a civil war arose between Adherbal and Jugurtha, in

which all Numidia took part. With his less numerous but better

disciplined and better led troops Jugurtha conquered, and seized the

whole territory of the kingdom, subjecting the chiefs who adhered to

his cousin to the most cruel persecution. Adherbal escaped to the

Roman province and proceeded to Rome to make his complaint there.

Jugurtha had expected this, and had made his arrangements to meet the

threatened intervention. In the camp before Numantia he had learned

more from Rome than Roman tactics; the Numidian prince, introduced

to the circles of the Roman aristocracy, had at the same time been

initiated into the intrigues of Roman coteries, and had studied at

the fountain-head what might be expected from Roman nobles. Even

then, sixteen years before Micipsa's death, he had entered into

disloyal negotiations as to the Numidian succession with Roman

comrades of rank, and Scipio had been under the necessity of gravely

reminding him that it was becoming in foreign princes to be on terms

of friendship with the Roman state rather than with individual

Roman citizens. The envoys of Jugurtha appeared in Rome, furnished

with something more than words: that they had chosen the right means

of diplomatic persuasion, was shown by the result. The most zealous

champions of Adherbal's just title were with incredible rapidity

convinced that Hiempsal had been put to death by his subjects on

account of his cruelty, and that the originator of the war as to the

succession was not Jugurtha, but Adherbal. Even the leading men in

the senate were shocked at the scandal; Marcus Scaurus sought to

check it, but in vain. The senate passed over what had taken place

in silence, and ordained that the two surviving testamentary heirs

should have the kingdom equally divided between them, and that, for

the prevention of fresh quarrels, the division should be undertaken

by a commission of the senate. This was done: the consular Lucius

Opimius, well known through his services in setting aside the

revolution, had embraced the opportunity of gathering the reward

of his patriotism, and had got himself placed at the head of the

commission. The division turned out thoroughly in favour of Jugurtha,

and not to the disadvantage of the commissioners; Cirta (Constantine)

the capital with its port of Rusicade (Philippeville) was no doubt

given to Adherbal, but by that very arrangement the portion which

fell to him was the eastern part of the kingdom consisting almost

wholly of sandy deserts, while Jugurtha obtained the fertile

and populous western half (what was afterwards Mauretania

Caesariensis and Sitifensis).

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.

Conflicts without Result

Accordingly he took the place of Metellus in the course of 647;

and held the command in the campaign of the following year; but his

confident promise to do better than his predecessor and to deliver

Jugurtha bound hand and foot with all speed at Rome was more easily

given than fulfilled. Marius carried on a desultory warfare with

the Gaetulians; he reduced several towns that had not previously been

occupied; he undertook an expedition to Capsa (Gafsa) in the extreme

south-east of the kingdom, which surpassed even that of Thala in

difficulty, took the town by capitulation, and in spite of the

convention caused all the adult men in it to be slain--the only

means, no doubt, of preventing the renewed revolt of that remote city

of the desert; he attacked a mountain-stronghold--situated on the

river Molochath, which separated the Numidian territory from the

Mauretanian--whither Jugurtha had conveyed his treasure-chest, and,

just as he was about to desist from the siege in despair of success,

fortunately gained possession of the impregnable fastness through

the coup de main of some daring climbers. Had his object merely

been to harden the army by bold razzias and to procure booty for the

soldiers, or even to eclipse the march of Metellus into the desert

by an expedition going still farther, this method of warfare might

be allowed to pass unchallenged; but the main object to be aimed at,

and which Metellus had steadfastly and perseveringly kept in view--

the capture of Jugurtha--was in this way utterly set aside.

The expedition of Marius to Capsa was a venture as aimless, as

that of Metellus to Thala had been judicious; but the expedition

to the Molochath, which passed along the border of, if not into,

the Mauretanian territory, was directly repugnant to sound policy.

King Bocchus, in whose power it lay to bring the war to an issue

favourable for the Romans or endlessly to prolong it, now concluded

with Jugurtha a treaty, in which the latter ceded to him a part of

his kingdom and Bocchus promised actively to support his son-in-law

against Rome. The Roman army, which was returning from the river

Molochath, found itself one evening suddenly surrounded by immense

masses of Mauretanian and Numidian cavalry; they were obliged to fight

just as the divisions stood without forming in a proper order of battle

or carrying out any leading command, and had to deem themselves

fortunate when their sadly-thinned troops were brought into temporary

safety for the night on two hills not far remote from each other.

But the culpable negligence of the Africans intoxicated with victory

wrested from them its consequences; they allowed themselves to be

surprised in a deep sleep during the morning twilight by the Roman

troops which had been in some measure reorganized during the night,

and were fortunately dispersed. Thereupon the Roman army continued

its retreat in better order and with greater caution; but it was

yet again assailed simultaneously on ail the four sides and was in

great danger, till the cavalry officer Lucius Cornelius Sulla first

dispersed the squadrons opposed to him and then, rapidly returning

from their pursuit, threw himself also on Jugurtha and Bocchus at

the point where they in person pressed hard on the rear of the

Roman infantry. Thus this attack also was successfully repelled;

Marius brought his army back to Cirta, and took up his winter

quarters there (648-9).

Negotiations with Bocchus

Strange as it may seem, we can yet understand why the Romans now,

after king Bocchus had commenced the war, began to make most zealous

exertions to secure his friendship, which they had at first slighted

and thereafter had at least not specially sought; by doing so they

gained this advantage, that no formal declaration of war took place

on the part of Mauretania. King Bocchus was not unwilling to return

to his old ambiguous position: without dissolving his agreement with

Jugurtha or dismissing him, he entered into negotiations with the

Roman general respecting the terms of an alliance with Rome. When

they were agreed or seemed to be so, the king requested that, for

the purpose of concluding the treaty and receiving the royal captive,

Marius would send to him Lucius Sulla, who was known and acceptable

to the king partly from his having formerly appeared as envoy of

the senate at the Mauretanian court, partly from the commendations of

the Mauretanian envoys destined for Rome to whom Sulla had rendered

services on their way. Marius was in an awkward position.

His declining the suggestion would probably lead to a breach; his

accepting it would throw his most aristocratic and bravest officer

into the hands of a man more than untrustworthy, who, as every one

knew, played a double game with the Romans and with Jugurtha, and

who seemed almost to have contrived the scheme for the purpose of

obtaining for himself provisional hostages from both sides in the

persons of Jugurtha and Sulla. But the wish to terminate the war

outweighed every other consideration, and Sulla agreed to undertake

the perilous task which Marius suggested to him. He boldly departed

under the guidance of Volux the son of king Bocchus, nor did his

resolution waver even when his guide led him through the midst of

Jugurtha's camp. He rejected the pusillanimous proposals of flight

that came from his attendants, and marched, with the king's son at

his side, uninjured through the enemy. The daring officer evinced

the same decision in the discussions with the sultan, and induced

him at length seriously to make his choice.

Surrender and Execution of Jugurtha

Jugurtha was sacrificed. Under the pretext that all his requests were

to be granted, he was allured by his own father-in-law into an ambush,

his attendants were killed, and he himself was taken prisoner.

The great traitor thus fell by the treachery of his nearest relatives.

Lucius Sulla brought the crafty and restless African in chains along

with his children to the Roman headquarters; and the war which had

lasted for seven years was at an end. The victory was primarily

associated with the name of Marius. King Jugurtha in royal robes

and in chains, along with his two sons, preceded the triumphal chariot

of the victor, when he entered Rome on the 1st of January 650: by

his orders the son of the desert perished a few days afterwards in

the subterranean city-prison, the old -tullianum- at the Capitol--

the "bath of ice," as the African called it, when he crossed the

threshold in order either to be strangled or to perish from cold and

hunger there. But it could not be denied that Marius had the least

important share in the actual successes: the conquest of Numidia up

to the edge of the desert was the work of Metellus, the capture of

Jugurtha was the work of Sulla, and between the two Marius played a

part somewhat compromising the dignity of an ambitious upstart.

Marius reluctantly tolerated the assumption by his predecessor of the

name of conqueror of Numidia; he flew into a violent rage when king

Bocchus afterwards consecrated a golden effigy at the Capitol, which

represented the surrender of Jugurtha to Sulla; and yet in the eyes

of unprejudiced judges the services of these two threw the generalship

of Marius very much into the shade--more especially Sulla's brilliant

expedition to the desert, which had made his courage, his presence of

mind, his acuteness, his power over men to be recognized by the

general himself and by the whole army. In themselves these military

rivalries would have been of little moment, if they had not been mixed

up with the conflict of political parties, if the opposition had not

supplanted the senatorial general by Marius, and if the party of the

government had not, with the deliberate intention of exasperating,

praised Metellus and still more Sulla as the military celebrities

and preferred them to the nominal victor. We shall have to return

to the fatal consequences of these animosities when narrating

the internal history.

Reorganization of Numidia

Otherwise, this insurrection of the Numidian client-state passed

away without producing any noticeable change either in political

relations generally or even in those of the African province.

By a deviation from the policy elsewhere followed at this period

Numidia was not converted into a Roman province; evidently because

the country could not be held without an army to protect the frontier

against the barbarians of the desert, and the Romans were by no

means disposed to maintain a standing army in Africa. They

contented themselves accordingly with annexing the most westerly

district of Numidia, probably the tract from the river Molochath to

the harbour of Saldae (Bougie)--the later Mauretania Caesariensis

(province of Algiers)--to the kingdom of Bocchus, and with handing

over the kingdom of Numidia thus diminished to the last legitimate

grandson of Massinissa still surviving, Gauda the half-brother of

Jugurtha, feeble in body and mind, who had already in 646 at the

suggestion of Marius asserted his claims before the senate.(15)

At the same time the Gaetulian tribes in the interior of Africa were

received as free allies into the number of the independent nations

that had treaties with Rome.

Political Issues

Of greater importance than this regulation of African clientship were

the political consequences of the Jugurthine war or rather of the

Jugurthine insurrection, although these have been frequently estimated

too highly. Certainly all the evils of the government were therein

brought to light in all their nakedness; it was now not merely

notorious but, so to speak, judicially established, that among the

governing lords of Rome everything was treated as venal--the treaty

of peace and the right of intercession, the rampart of the camp and

the life of the soldier; the African had said no more than the simple

truth, when on his departure from Rome he declared that, if he

had only gold enough, he would undertake to buy the city itself.

But the whole external and internal government of this period bore

the same stamp of miserable baseness. In our case the accidental fact,

that the war in Africa is brought nearer to us by means of better

accounts than the other contemporary military and political events,

shifts the true perspective; contemporaries learned by these

revelations nothing but what everybody knew long before and every

intrepid patriot had long been in a position to support by facts.

The circumstance, however, that they were now furnished with some fresh,

still stronger and still more irrefutable, proofs of the baseness of

the restored senatorial government--a baseness only surpassed by its

incapacity--might have been of importance, had there been an opposition

and a public opinion with which the government would have found

it necessary to come to terms. But this war had in fact exposed the

corruption of the government no less than it had revealed the utter

nullity of the opposition. It was not possible to govern worse than

the restoration governed in the years 637-645; it was not possible

to stand forth more defenceless and forlorn than was the Roman

senate in 645: had there been in Rome a real opposition, that is to

say, a party which wished and urged a fundamental alteration of the

constitution, it must necessarily have now made at least an attempt

to overturn the restored senate. No such attempt took place; the

political question was converted into a personal one, the generals

were changed, and one or two useless and unimportant people were

banished. It was thus settled, that the so-called popular party

as such neither could nor would govern; that only two forms of

government were at all possible in Rome, a -tyrannis- or an

oligarchy; that, so long as there happened to be nobody sufficiently

well known, if not sufficiently important, to usurp the regency of

the state, the worst mismanagement endangered at the most individual

oligarchs, but never the oligarchy; that on the other hand, so soon

as such a pretender appeared, nothing was easier than to shake the

rotten curule chairs. In this respect the coming forward of Marius

was significant, just because it was in itself so utterly unwarranted.

If the burgesses had stormed the senate-house after the defeat of

Albinus, it would have been a natural, not to say a proper course; but

after the turn which Metellus had given to the Numidian war, nothing

more could be said of mismanagement, and still less of danger to the

commonwealth, at least in this respect; and yet the first ambitious

officer who turned up succeeded in doing that with which the older

Africanus had once threatened the government,(16) and procured for

himself one of the principal military commands against the distinctly-

expressed will of the governing body. Public opinion, unavailing in

the hands of the so-called popular party, became an irresistible

weapon in the hands of the future king of Rome. We do not mean to say

that Marius intended to play the pretender, at least at the time when

he canvassed the people for the supreme command in Africa; but,

whether he did or did not understand what he was doing, there was

evidently an end of the restored aristocratic government when the

comitial machine began to make generals, or, which was nearly the

same thing, when every popular officer was able in legal fashion to

nominate himself as general. Only one new element emerged in these

preliminary crises; this was the introduction of military men and of

military power into the political revolution. Whether the coming

forward of Marius would be the immediate prelude of a new attempt

to supersede the oligarchy by the -tyrannis-, or whether it would,

as in various similar cases, pass away without further consequence

as an isolated encroachment on the prerogative of the government,

could not yet be determined; but it could well be foreseen that, if

these rudiments of a second -tyrannis- should attain any development,

it was not a statesman like Gaius Gracchus, but an officer that would

become its head. The contemporary reorganization of the military

system--which Marius introduced when, in forming his army destined

for Africa, he disregarded the property-qualification hitherto

required, and allowed even the poorest burgess, if he was otherwise

serviceable, to enter the legion as a volunteer--may have been

projected by its author on purely military grounds; but it was none

the less on that account a momentous political event, that the army

was no longer, as formerly, composed of those who had much, no

longer even, as in the most recent times, composed of those who had

something, to lose, but became gradually converted into a host of

people who had nothing but their arms and what the general bestowed

on them. The aristocracy ruled in 650 just as absolutely as in 620;

but the signs of the impending catastrophe had multiplied, and on

the political horizon the sword had begun to appear by the side

of the crown.