A HISTORY OF ROME
DURING THE LATER REPUBLIC AND
EARLY PRINCIPATE
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CHAPTER VI
The land, on which the eyes of the world were soon to be fastened, was
the neglected protectorate which had been built up to secure the
temporary purpose of the overthrow of Carthage, and had since remained
in the undisturbed possession of the peaceful descendants of Masinissa.
The fortunes of the kingdom of Numidia, so far as they affected that
kingdom itself, deserved to be neglected by its suzerain; for the power
which Masinissa had won by arms and diplomacy was more than sufficient
to protect its own interests. The Numidia of the day formed in
territorial extent one of the mightiest kingdoms of the world, and
ranked only second to Egypt amongst the client powers of Rome.[847] It
extended from Mauretania to Cyrenaica,[848] from the river Muluccha to
the greater Syrtis, thus touching on the west the Empire of the Moors,
at that time confined to Tingitana, on the east almost penetrating to
Egypt, and enjoying the best part of the fertile region which borders
the coast of the Mediterranean.[849] For the Moroccan boundary of the
kingdom--the river Muluccha or Molocath--see Göbel Die Westküste
Afrikas im Altertum pp. 79,80. From this vast tract of country Rome had
cut out for herself a small section on the north-east. In the creation
of the province of Africa her moderation and forbearance must have
astonished her Numidian client; and, if Masinissa showed signs of
hesitancy in rousing himself for the destruction of Carthage, the fears
of his sons must have been immediately dispelled when they saw the
slender profits which Rome meant to reap from the suppression of their
joint rival. The Numidian kings were even allowed to keep the territory
which had been wrested from Carthage between the Second and Third Punic
Wars. This comprised the region about the Tusca, which boasted not less
than fifty towns, the district known as the Great Plains,[850] which has
been identified with the great basin of the Dakhla of the
Oulad-bon-Salem, and probably the plateau of Vaga (Bêdja) which
dominates this basin.[851] The Roman lines merely extended from the
Tusca (the Wäd El-Kebir) in the North, where that river flows into the
Mediterranean opposite the island of Thabraca (Tabarka) to Thenae
(Henschir Tina) on the south-east.[852] But even the upper waters of the
Tusca belonged to Numidia, as did the towns of Vaga, Sicca Veneria and
Zama Regia. Consequently the Roman frontier must have curved eastward
until it reached the point where a rocky region separates the basin of
the Bagradas (Medjerda) from the plains of the Sahel; thence it ran to
the neighbourhood of Aquae Regiae and thence, probably following the
line of a ditch drawn between the two great depressions of Kairouan and
El-Gharra, to its ultimate bourne at Thenae.[853] It is clear that the
Romans did not look on their province as an end desirable in itself.
They had left in the hands of their Numidian friends some of the most
fertile lands, some of the richest commercial towns, situated in a
district which they might easily have claimed. Against such annexation
Masinissa could have uttered no word of legitimate protest. His kingdom
had already been almost doubled by the acquisition of the lands of his
rival Syphax, and his sons saw themselves through the aid of Rome in
possession of an artificially created kingdom, which was so entirely out
of harmony with the traditions of Numidian life that it could scarcely
have entered into the dreams of any prince of that race. But the
conquering city reposed some faith in gratitude, and reposed still more
in its habitual policy of caution. The province which it created was
simply a political and strategic necessity. It was intended to secure
the negative object of preventing the reconstitution of the great
political and commercial centre which had fallen.[854] If Carthage was
never to rise again, a fragment of the coast-line must be kept in the
hands of the possessors of its devastated site. It might have been
better for the peace of Africa had the Romans been a little more
grasping and had the Roman position been stronger than it was. The
Phoenicians scattered along the coast had become familiar objects to the
Berber inhabitants and their kings; to the enlightened monarch they were
a valuable addition to the population of any of his cities--all the more
valuable now that they were politically powerless. But with the Roman
official and the Roman trader it was different. Here was an alien and
(in spite of the restraint of the government) an encroaching
civilisation, utterly unfamiliar to the eyes of the natives, but known
to justify its lordly security by that dim background of power which
clung to the name of the paramount city of the West. The Roman
possessions were an ugly eyesore to a man who held that Africa should be
for the Africans. The wise Masinissa might tolerate the spectacle,
content (as, indeed, he should have been) with the power and security
which Rome's friendship had brought to her ally. But it remained to be
seen whether his views would always be held by his own subjects or by
some less cautious or less happily placed successor of his own line.
It was indeed possible that a hostile feeling of nationality might be
awakened beyond the limits even of the great kingdom of Numidia. The
designations which the Romans employ for the natives of North Africa
obscure the fact, which was recognised in later times by the Arab
conquerors, of the unity of the great Berber folk.[855] Roman historians
and geographers speak of the Numidians and Mauretanians as though they
were distinct peoples; but there can be little doubt that, then as
to-day, they were but two fractions of the same great race, and that
even the wild Gaetulians of the South are but representatives of the
parent stock of this indigenous people. As in the case of nearly all
races which in default of historical data we are forced to call
indigenous, two separate elements may be distinguished in this stock, an
earlier and a later, and survivals of the original distinctions between
these elements were clearly discernible in many parts of Northern
Africa; but, as the fusion between these stocks had been effected in
prehistoric times, a common Berber nationality may be held to have
extended from the Atlantic almost to Egypt, at the time when the Romans
were added to the immigrant Semites and Greeks who had already sought to
dwell amidst its borders. The basis of this nationality is thought to be
found in the aborigines of the Sahara who had gradually moved up from
the desert to the present littoral. There they were joined by a race of
another type who were wending their way from what is now the continent
of Europe. The Saharic man was of a dark-brown colour but with no traces
of the negroid type. His European comrade was a man of fair complexion
and light hair; and these curiously blended races continued to live side
by side and to form a single nation, preserving perhaps each some of its
own psychical characteristics, but speaking in common the language of
the older Saharic stock.[856] But the two races were not uniformly
distributed over the various territories of Northern Africa. The white
race was perhaps more in evidence in Mauretania, as it is in the Morocco
of to-day;[857] the dark race was probably most strongly represented
amongst the Gaetulians of the South. There were, in short, in Northern
Africa two zones, marked by differences of civilisation as well as of
ethnic descent, which were clearly distinguished in antiquity. The first
is represented by the Afri, Numidians, and Moors, who inhabited the
coast region from East to West. These were early subjected to alien
influences, the greatest of which, before the coming of the Roman, was
the advent of the Semite. The second is shown by the vast aggregate of
tribes which form a curve along the south from the ocean to the
Cyrenaica. These tribes, which were called by the common name of
Gaetuli, were almost exempt from European influences in historic, and
probably in prehistoric, times. A few intermingled with the Aethiopians
of the Sahara,[858] but, taken as a whole, they are believed to
represent the primitive race of brown Saharic dwellers in all
its purity.
Had the term Nomad or Numidian been applied to the southern races, the
designation might have been justified by the migratory character of
their life. But it is more than questionable whether the designation is
defensible as applied to the people to whom it is usually attached. The
Numidians do not seem to have possessed either the character or habits
of a genuinely nomadic people such as the Arabs.[859] They lived in huts
and not in tents. These huts (mapalia), which had the form of an
upturned boat, may have seemed a poor habitation to Phoenicians, Greeks
and Romans; but, as habitations, they were meant to be permanent; they
were an index of the possession of property, of a lasting attachment to
the soil. The village formed by a group of these little homes clustering
round a steep height, was a still further index of a political and
military society that intended to maintain and defend the area on which
it had settled. The pages of Sallust give ample evidence of an active
village life engrossed with the toils of agriculture, and the mass of
the population of the region of the Tell must have been for a long time
fixed to the soil which yielded it a livelihood. Elsewhere there was
indeed need of something like periodic migration. On the high plateaux
pastoral life made the usual change from summer to winter stations
necessary. But this regulated movement does not correspond strictly to
the desultory life of a truly nomadic people. Yet it is easy to see how,
in contrast to the regular and often sedentary mercantile life of the
Phoenician and the Greek, that of the Numidian might be considered wild
and migratory. He was in truth a "trekker" rather than a nomad, and he
possessed the invaluable military attributes of the man unchained by
cities and accustomed to wander far in a hard and bracing country. A
skill in horsemanship that was the wonder of the world, the eye for a
country hastily traversed, the memory for the spot once seen, the power
of rapid mobilisation and of equally rapid disappearance, the gift of
being a knight one day, a shepherd or a peasant the next--these were the
attributes that made a Roman conquest of Numidia so long impossible and
rendered diplomacy imperative as a supplement to war.
It is less easy to reconstruct the moral and political attributes of
this people from the data which we at present possess, or to reconcile
the experience of to-day with the impressions of ancient historians. But
so permanent has been the great bulk of the population of Northern
Africa that it is tempting to interpret the ancient Numidian in the
light of the modern Kabyle. One who has had experience of the latter
endows him with an intelligent head, a frank and open physiognomy and a
lively eye, describes him as active and enterprising, lively and
excitable, possessed of moral pride, eminently truthful, a stern holder
of his plighted word and a respecter of women--a respect shown by the
general practice of monogamy.[860] Even when stirred to war he is said
not to lend himself to unnecessary cruelty.[861] The activity,
liveliness and excitability of this people may be traced in the accounts
of antiquity; but Roman records would add the impression of duplicity,
treachery and cruelty as characteristics of the race. Yet as these
characteristics are exhibited in the record of a great national war
against a hated invader, and are chiefly illustrated in the persons of a
king or his ministers--individuals spoilt by power or maddened by
fear--we need not perhaps attach too much importance to the discrepancy
between the evidence of the ancient and modern world.
Much of the history of Numidia, especially during the epoch of the war
of the Romans against Jugurtha, would be illuminated if we could
interpret the political tendencies of its ancient inhabitants by those
of the Kabyle of modern times. The latter is said to be a sturdy
democrat, founding his society on the ideas of equality and
individuality. Each member of this society enjoys the same rights and is
bound down to the same duties. There is no military or religious
nobility, there are no hereditary chiefs. The affairs of the society,
about which all can speak or vote, are administered by simple
delegates.[862] There is nothing in the history of the war with Jugurtha
to belie these characteristics, there is much which confirms them. In
the narrative of that war there is no mention of a nobility. The
influential men described are simply those who have been elevated by
wealth or familiarity with the king. The monarchy itself is a great
power where the king is present, but the life of the community is not
broken when the king is a fugitive; and loyalty to the crown centres
round a great personality, who is expected to drive the hated invaders
into the sea, not merely round the name of a legitimate dynasty.
Monarchy, in fact, seems a kind of artificial product in Numidia; but,
artificial as it may have been, it had done good work. An active reign
of more than fifty years by a man who united the absolutism of the
savage potentate with the wisdom and experience of the civilised ruler,
had produced effects in Numidia that could never die, Masinissa had
proved what Numidian agriculture might become under the guidance of
scientific rules by the creation of model farms, whose fertile acres
showed that cultivated plants of every kind could be grown on native
soil;[863] while under his rule and that of his son Micipsa the life of
the city showed the same progress as that of the country. Numidia could
not become one of the granaries of the world without its capital rising
to the rank of a great commercial city. Cirta, though situated some
forty-eight Roman miles from the sea,[864] was soon sought by the
Greeks, those ubiquitous bankers of the Mediterranean world,[865] while
Roman and Italian capitalists eagerly plied their business in this new
and attractive sphere which had been presented to their efforts by the
conquests of Rome and the civilising energy of its native rulers.
The kingdom of Numidia suffered from a weakness common to monarchies
where the strong spirits of subjects and local chiefs can be controlled
only by the still stronger hand of the central potentate, and where the
practice of polygamy and concubinage in the royal house sometimes gave
rise to many pretenders but to no heir with an indefeasible claim to
rule. There was no settled principle of succession to the throne, and
the death of the sovereign for the time being threatened the peace or
unity of the kingdom, while it entailed grave responsibilities upon its
nominal protector. Masinissa himself had been excluded from the throne
by an uncle,[866] and but for his vigour and energy might have remained
the subject of succeeding pretenders.
A crisis was threatened at his own decease but was happily averted by
the prudence of the dying monarch. Loath as he probably was to
acknowledge the supremacy of Rome, he thrust on her the invidious task
of deciding the succession to the throne. He felt that Roman authority
would be more effective than paternal wishes; perhaps he saw that
amongst his sons there was not one who could be trusted alone and
unaided to continue to build up the fortunes of the state and to claim
recognition from his brothers as their undisputed lord, while the show
of submission to Rome might weaken the vigilance and disarm the jealousy
of the protecting power. Scipio was summoned to his deathbed to
apportion the kingdom between the legitimate sons who survived him,
Micipsa, Gulussa and Mastanabal.[867] To Micipsa was given the capital
Cirta, the royal palace and the general administration of the kingdom,
the warlike Gulussa was made commander-in-chief, while to Mastanabal the
youngest was assigned the task of directing the judicial affairs of the
dominion.[868] This division of authority was soon disturbed by the
death of the two younger brothers, and Micipsa was left alone to indulge
his peaceful inclinations during a long and uneventful reign of nearly
thirty years. The fall of Carthage had left him free from all irritating
external relations; for the King of Numidia was no longer required to
act the part of a constant spy on the actions, and an occasional
trespasser on the territory, of the greatest of African powers. The
nearest scene of disturbance was the opposite continent of Spain, and
here he did Rome good service by sending her assistance against
Viriathus and the Numantines.[869] Unvexed by troubles within his
borders, Micipsa devoted his life to the arts of peace. He beautified
Cirta and attracted Greek settlers to the town, amongst them men of arts
and learning, who delighted the king with their literary and philosophic
discourse.[870] The period of rest fostered the resources of the
kingdom, and in spite of a devastating pestilence which is said to have
swept off eight hundred thousand of the king's subjects,[871] the state
could boast at his death of a regular army of ten thousand cavalry and
twenty thousand foot.[872] This was but the nucleus of the host that
might be raised in the interior, and swelled by the border tribes of
Numidia; and the man who could win the confidence of the soldiers and
the attachment of the peasantry held the fortune of Numidia in his
hands. This reflection may have cast a shadow over the latter years of
Micipsa. Certainly the prospect of the succession was as dark to him as
it had been to his father, Masinissa. Like his predecessor he believed
that a dynasty was stronger than an individual, and he deliberately
imitated the work of Scipio by leaving a collegiate rule to his
successors. One of these successors, however, was not his own offspring.
His brother Mastanabal had left behind him an illegitimate son named
Jugurtha. The boy had been neglected during the lifetime of his
grandfather, Masinissa; perhaps the hope that Mastanabal might yet beget
a representative worthy of the succession caused little importance to be
attached to the concubine's son, in spite of the fact that it was the
policy of the Numidian monarchs to keep as many heirs in reserve as it
was possible for them to procure. But when Gauda, the only legitimate
son of Mastanabal, proved to be weak in body and deficient in mind,[873]
greater regard was paid to the vigorous boy who was now the sole
efficient representative of one branch of the late dynasty. Even without
this motive the kindly nature of Micipsa would probably have led him to
look with favour on the orphan child of his brother; the young Jugurtha
was reared in the palace and educated with the heirs presumptive,
Adherbal and Hiempsal, the two sons of the reigning king. It soon became
manifest that a very lion had been begotten and was growing to strength
in the precincts of the royal court. All the graces of the love-born
offspring seem to have been present at Jugurtha's birth. A mighty frame,
a handsome face, were amongst his lesser gifts. More remarkable were the
vigour and acuteness of his mind, the moral strength which yielded to no
temptation of ease or indolence, the keen zest for life which led him to
throw himself into the hardy sports of his youthful compeers, to run, to
ride, to hurl the javelin with a skill known only to the nomad, the
bonhomie and bright good temper which endeared him to the comrades
whom his skill had vanquished. Much of his leisure was passed in
tracking the wild beasts of the desert; his skill as a hunter was
matchless, or was equalled only by his easy indifference to his
success.[874]
The sight of these qualities gladdened Micipsa's heart; for the military
leader, so essential to the safety of the Numidian monarchy, seemed to
be now assured. We are told that a shade of anxiety crossed his mind
when he compared the youth of his own sons with the glorious manhood of
Jugurtha, and thought of the temptations which the prospect of an
undivided monarchy might present to a mind gradually weaned from loyalty
by the very sense of its own greatness;[875] but there is no reason to
believe that the good old king allowed his imagination to embrace
visions of the dagger or the poisoned bowl, and that the mysterious
death of his nephew was only hindered by the thought of the resentment
which it would arouse amongst the Numidian chiefs and their dependents.
Certainly the mission with which Jugurtha was soon credited--the mission
which was perhaps to alter the whole tone of his mind and to concentrate
its energies on an unlawful end--was one which any Numidian king might
have destined for the most favoured of his sons. Jugurtha was to be sent
to Numantia to lead the Numidian auxiliaries of horse and foot, to be a
member of the charmed circle that surrounded Scipio, to see, as he moved
amongst the young nobility, the promise of greatness that was in store
for Rome in the field whether of politics or of war, to form perhaps
binding friendships and to lay up stores of gratitude for future use. In
dismissing his nephew, Micipsa was putting the issue into the hands of
fate. Jugurtha might never return; but, if he did, it would be with an
experience and a prestige which would render him more than ever the
certain arbiter of the destinies of the kingdom.
The advantage which Jugurtha took of this marvellous opportunity was a
product of his nature and proves no ulterior design. Had he been the
simplest and most loyal of souls, he would have been forced to act as he
did. As a man of insight he soon learnt Scipio by heart, as a born
strategist and trained hunter he soon saw through the tricks of the
enemy, as a man devoid of the physical sense of fear he was foremost in
every action. He had grasped at once the secret of Roman discipline, and
his habit of implicit obedience to the word of command was as remarkable
as his readiness in offering the right suggestion, when his opinion was
asked. Intelligence was not a striking feature in the mental equipment
of the staff which surrounded Scipio; it was grasped by the general
wherever found without respect to rank or nationality; and while Marius
was rising step by step in virtue of his proved efficiency, the Numidian
prince, who might have been merely an ornamental adjunct to the army,
was made the leader or participant in almost every enterprise which
demanded a shrewd head and a stout heart. The favour of Scipio increased
from day to day.[876] This was to be won by merit and success alone.
With Romans of a weaker mould Jugurtha's wealth and social qualities
produced a similar result. He entertained lavishly, he was clever,
good-natured and amusing. He charmed the Romans whom he excelled as in
his childish days he had charmed the Numidian boys whom he outraced.
In these rare intervals of rest from warfare there was opportunity for
converse with men of influence and rank. Jugurtha's position and the
future of Numidia were sometimes discussed, and the youthful wiseacres
who claimed his friendship would sometimes suggest, with the cheerful
cynicism which springs from a shallow dealing with imperial interests,
that merit such as his could find its fitting sphere only if he were the
sole occupant of the Numidian throne.[877] The words may often have been
spoken in jest or idle compliment; although some who used them may have
meant them to be an expression of the maxim that a protectorate is best
served by a strong servant, and that a divided principality contains in
itself the seeds of disturbance. Others went so far as to suggest the
means as well as the end. Should difficulties arise with Rome, might not
the assent of the great powers be purchased with a price? Scipio had not
been blind to the colloquies of his favourite. When Numantia had been
destroyed and the army was folding its tents, he gave Jugurtha the
benefit of a public ovation and a private admonition. Before the
tribunal he decorated him with the prizes of war, and spoke fervidly in
his praise; then he invited him secretly to his tent and gave him his
word of warning. "The friendship of the Roman people should be sought
from the Roman people itself; no good could come of securing the support
of individuals by equivocal means; there was a danger in purchasing
public interest from a handful of vendors who professed to have power to
sell; Jugurtha's own qualities were his best asset; they would secure
him glory and a crown; if he tried to hasten on the course of events,
the material means on which he relied might themselves provoke his utter
ruin." [878]
On one point only Scipio seems to have been in agreement with the evil
counsellors of Jugurtha. He seems to have believed that the true
guardian of Numidia had been found, and the prince took with him a
splendid testimonial to be presented to his uncle Micipsa. Scipio wrote
in glowing terms of the great qualities which Jugurtha had displayed
throughout the war; he expressed his own delight at these services, his
own intention of making them known to the senate and Roman people, his
sense of the joy that they must have brought to the monarch himself. His
old friendship with Micipsa justified a word of congratulation; the
prince was worthy of his uncle and of his grandfather Masinissa.[879]
Whatever Micipsa's later intentions may have been, whether under
ordinary circumstances his natural benevolence and even his patriotism
would have continued to war with an undefined feeling of distrust, this
letter relieved his doubts, if only because it showed that Jugurtha
could never fill a private station. The act of adoption was immediately
accomplished, and a testament was drawn up by which Jugurtha was named
joint heir with Micipsa's own sons to the throne of Numidia.[880] A few
years later the aged king lay on his deathbed. As he felt his end
approaching, he is said to have summoned his friends and relatives
together with his two sons, and in their presence to have made a parting
appeal to Jugurtha. He reminded him of past kindnesses but acknowledged
the ample return; he had made Jugurtha, but Jugurtha had made the
Numidian name again glorious amongst the Romans and in Spain. He
exhorted him to protect the youthful princes who would be his colleagues
on the throne, and reminded him that in the maintenance of concord lay
the future strength of the kingdom. He appealed to Jugurtha as a
guardian rather than as a mere co-regent; for the power and name of the
mature and distinguished ruler would render him chiefly responsible for
harmony or discord; and he besought his sons to respect their cousin, to
emulate his virtues, to prove to the world that their father was as
fortunate in the children whom nature had given him as in the one who
had been the object of his adoption.[881] The appeal was answered by
Jugurtha with a goodly show of feeling and respect, and a few days later
the old king passed away. The hour which closed his splendid obsequies
was the last in which even a show of concord was preserved between the
ill-assorted trio who were now the rulers of Numidia. The position of
Jugurtha was difficult enough; for to rule would mean either the
reduction of his cousins to impotence or the perpetual thwarting of his
plans by crude and suspicious counsels. For that these would be
suspicious as well as crude, was soon revealed: and the situation was
immediately rendered intolerable by the conduct of Hiempsal. This
prince, the younger of the two brothers, was a headstrong boy filled
with a sense of resentment at Jugurtha's elevation to the throne and
smarting at the neglect of what he held to be the legitimate claim to
the succession. When the first meeting of the joint rulers was held in
the throne room, Hiempsal hurried to a seat at the right of Adherbal,
that Jugurtha might not occupy the place of honour in the centre; it was
with difficulty that he was induced by the entreaties of his brother to
yield to the claims of age and to move to the seat on the other side.
This struggle for precedence heralded the coming storm. In the course of
a long discussion on the affairs of the kingdom Jugurtha threw out the
suggestion that it might be advisable to rescind the resolutions and
decrees of the last five years, since during that period age had
impaired the faculties of Micipsa. Hiempsal said that he agreed, since
it was within the last three years that Jugurtha had been adopted to a
share in the throne. The object of this remark betrayed little emotion;
but it was believed that the peevish insult was the stimulus to an
anxious train of thought which, as was to be expected from the resolute
character of the thinker, soon issued into action. To be a usurper was
better than to be thought one; the first situation entailed power, the
second only danger. Anger played its part no doubt; but in a temperament
like Jugurtha's such an emotion was more likely to be the justification
than the cause of a crime. His thoughts from that moment were said to
have been bent on ensnaring the impetuous Hiempsal. But guile moves
slowly, and Jugurtha would not wait.[882]
The first meeting of the kings had given so thorough a proof of the
impossibility of united rule that a resolution was soon framed to divide
the treasures and territories of the monarchy. A time was fixed for the
partition of the domains, and a still earlier date for the division of
the accumulated wealth. The kings meanwhile quitted the capital to
reside in close propinquity to their cherished treasures. Hiempsal's
temporary home was in the fortified town of Thirmida,[883] and, as
chance would have it, he occupied a house which belonged to a man who
had once been a confidential attendant on Jugurtha.[884] The inner
history of the events which followed could never have been known with
certainty; but it was believed that Jugurtha induced this man to visit
the house under some pretext and bring back impressions of the keys. The
security of Hiempsal's person and treasures was supposed to be
guaranteed by his regularly receiving into his own hands the keys of the
gates after they had been locked; but a night came in which the portals
were noiselessly opened and a band of soldiers burst into the house.
They divided into parties, ranging each room in turn, prying into every
recess, bursting doors that barred their entrance, stabbing the
attendants, some in their sleep, others as they ran to meet the
invaders. At last Hiempsal was found crouching in a servant's room; he
was slain and beheaded, and those who held Jugurtha to be the author of
the crime reported that the head of the murdered prince was brought to
him as a pledge of the accomplished act.[885]
The news of the crime was soon spread through the whole of Northern
Africa. It divided Numidia into two camps. Adherbal was forced by panic
to arm in his own defence, and most of those who remained loyal to the
memory of Micipsa gathered to the standard of the legitimate heir. But
Jugurtha's fame amongst the fighting men of the kingdom stood him in
good stead. His adherents were the fewer in number, but they were the
more effective warriors.[886] He rapidly gathered such forces as were
available, and dashed from city to city, capturing some by storm and
receiving the voluntary submission of others. He had plunged boldly into
a civil war, and by his action declared the coveted prize to be nothing
less than the possession of the whole Numidian kingdom. But boldness was
his best policy; Rome might more readily condone a conquest than a
rebellion, and be more willing to recognise a king than a claimant.
Adherbal meanwhile had sent an embassy to the protecting State, to
inform the senate of his brother's murder and his own evil plight. But,
diffident as he was, he must have felt that a passive endurance of the
outrages inflicted by Jugurtha dimmed his prestige and imperilled his
position; he found himself at the head of the larger army, and trusting
to his superiority in numbers ventured to risk a battle with his veteran
enemy. The first conflict was decisive; his forces were so utterly
routed that he despaired of maintaining his position in any part of the
kingdom. He fled from the battlefield to the province of Africa and
thence took ship to Rome.[887]
Jugurtha was now undisputed master of the whole of Numidia and had
leisure to think out the situation. It could not have needed much
reflection to show that the safer course lay in making an appeal to
Rome. It was no part of his plan to detach Numidia entirely from the
imperial city; even if such an end were desirable, a national war could
not be successfully waged by a people divided in allegiance, against a
state whose tenacious policy and inexhaustible resources were only too
well known to Jugurtha. But he also knew that Rome, though tenacious,
had the tolerance which springs from the unwillingness to waste blood
and treasure on a matter of such little importance as a change in the
occupancy of a subject throne, that a dynastic quarrel would seem to
many blasé senators a part of the order of nature in a barbarian
monarchy, that it is usually to the interest of a protecting state to
recognise a king in fact as one in law, and that he himself possessed
many powerful friends in the capital and had been told on good authority
that royal presents judiciously distributed might confirm or even mould
opinion. Within a few days of his victory he had despatched to Rome an
embassy well equipped with gold and silver. His ambassadors were to
confirm the affection of his old friends, to win new ones to his cause,
and to spare no pains to gain any fraction of support that a bountiful
generosity could buy.[888] Possibly few, who received courteous visits
or missives from these envoys, would have admitted that they had been
bribed. It was the custom of kings to send presents, and they did but
answer to the call of an old acquaintance and a man who had done signal
service to Rome. The news of Hiempsal's tragic end, the flight and
arrival of his exiled brother, had at the moment caused a painful
sensation in Roman circles. Now many members of the nobility plucked up
courage to remark that there might be another side to the question. The
newly gilded youth thronged their seniors in the senate and begged that
no inconsiderate resolution should be taken against Jugurtha. The
envoys, as men conscious of their virtue, calmly expressed their
readiness to await the senate's pleasure. The appointed day arrived, and
Adherbal, who appeared in person, unfolded the tale of his wrongs.[889]
Apart from the emotions of pity and consequent sympathy which may have
been awakened in some breasts by the story of the ruined and exiled
king, his appeal--passionate, vigorous and telling as it was--could not
have been listened to with any great degree of pleasure by the assembled
fathers; for it brought home to the government of a protecting state
that most unpleasant of lessons, its duty to the protected. With the
ingenuity of despair Adherbal exaggerated the degree of Roman
government, in order to emphasise the moral and political obligations of
the rulers to their dependents. If the King of Numidia was a mere agent
of the imperial[890] city, subordinating his wishes to her ends, seeing
the security of his own possessions in the extension of her influence
alone, clinging to her friendship with a trust as firm as that inspired
by ties of blood, it was the duty of the mistress to protect such a
servant, and to avenge an outrage which reflected alike on her gratitude
and her authority. It had been a maxim of Micipsa's that the clients of
Rome supported a heavy burden, but were amply compensated by the
immunity from danger that they enjoyed. And, if Rome did not protect, to
whom could a client-king look for aid? His very service to Rome had made
him the enemy of all neighbouring powers. It was true that Adherbal
could claim little in his own right; he was a suppliant before he could
be a benefactor, stripped of all power of benefiting his great protector
before his devotion could be put to the test. Yet he could claim a debt;
for he was the sole relic of a dynasty that had given their all to Rome.
Jugurtha was destroying a family whose loyalty had stood every test, he
was committing horrid atrocities on the friends of Rome, his insolence
and impunity were inflicting as grave an injury on the Roman name as on
the wretched victims of his cruelty.
Such was the current of subtle and cogent reasoning that ran through the
passionate address of the exiled king, crying for vengeance, but above
all for justice. The answer of Jugurtha's envoys was brief and to the
point. They had only to state their fictitious case. A plausible case
was all that was needed; their advocates would do the rest. Hiempsal,
they urged, had been put to death by the Numidians in consequence of the
cruelty of his rule. Adherbal had been the aggressor in the late war. He
had suffered defeat, and was now petitioning for help because he had
found himself unable to perpetrate the wrong which he had intended.
Jugurtha entreated the senate to let the knowledge which had been gained
of him at Numantia guide their opinion of him now, and to set his own
past deeds before the words of a personal enemy.[891] Both parties then
withdrew and the senate fell to debate.
It is sufficiently likely that, even had there been no corruption or
suspicion of corruption, the opinions of the House would have been
divided on the question that was put before them. Some minds naturally
suspicious might have been doubtful of the facts. Were Hiempsal's death
and Adherbal's flight due to national discontent or the unprovoked
ambition of Jugurtha? If the former was the case, was the restoration of
the king to an unwilling people by an armed force a measure conducive to
the interest of the protecting state? But even some who accepted
Adherbal's statement of the case, may have doubted the wisdom of a
policy of armed intervention; for it was manifest that a considerable
degree of force would have to be employed to lead Jugurtha to relinquish
his claims and to stamp out the loyalty of his adherents. The senate
could have been in no humour for another African war; they regarded
their policy as closed in that quarter of the world; they had shifted
the burden of frontier defence on to the Kings of Numidia, and must have
viewed with alarm the prospect of something far worse than a frontier
war arising from the quarrels of those kings. It is probable, therefore,
that proposals for a peaceful settlement would in any case have
commanded the respectful attention of the senate; had these been made
with a show of decency, with a general recognition of Adherbal's claims,
and some censure of Jugurtha's overbearing conduct (for this must have
been better attested than his share in Hiempsal's death), but little
adverse comment might have been excited by the tone of the debate. As it
was, when member after member rose, lauded Jugurtha's merits to the
skies and poured contempt on the statements of Adherbal,[892] an
unpleasant feeling was excited that this fervour was not wholly due to a
patriotic interest in the security of the empire. The very
boisterousness of the championship induced a more rigorous attitude on
the part of those who had not been approached by Jugurtha's envoys or
had resisted their overtures. They maintained that Adherbal must be
helped at all costs, and that strict punishment should be exacted for
Hiempsal's murder. This minority found an ardent advocate in Scaurus,
the keeper of the conscience of the senate, the man who knew better than
any that an individual or a government lives by its reputation, who saw
with horror that no specious pretexts were being employed to clothe a
policy which the malevolent might interpret as a political crime, and
that the sinister rumours which had been current in Rome were finding
their open verification in the senate. A vigorous championship of the
cause of right from the foremost politician of the day, might not
influence the decision of the House, and would certainly not lead to a
quixotic policy of armed intervention; but it might prove to critics of
the government that the inevitable decision had not been reached wholly
in defiance of the claims of the suppliant and wholly in obedience to
the machinations of a usurper. The decision, which closed the unreal
debate, recognised Jugurtha and Adherbal as joint rulers of Numidia. It
wilfully ignored Hiempsal's death, it wantonly exposed the lamb to the
wolf, it was worthless as a settlement of the dynastic question, unless
Jugurtha's supporters entertained the pious hope that their favourite's
ambition might be satisfied with the increase now granted to his wealth
and territory, and that his prudence might withhold him from again
testing the forbearance of the protecting power. But those who possessed
keener insight or who knew Jugurtha better, must have foreseen the
probable result of the impunity which had been granted; they must have
presaged, with anxious foreboding or with patient cynicism, the final
disappearance of Adherbal from the scene and a fresh request for the
settlement of the Numidian question, which would have become less
complex when there was but one candidate for the throne. The decree of
the senate enjoined the creation of a commission of ten, which should
visit Numidia and divide the whole of the kingdom which had been
possessed by Micipsa, between the rival chiefs.[893]
The head of the commission was Lucius Opimius, whose influence amongst
the members of his order had never waned since he had exercised and
proved his right of saving the State from the threatened dangers of
sedition. His selection on this occasion gave an air of impartiality to
the commission, for he was known to be no friend to Jugurtha.[894]
That prince, however, did not allow his past relations to be an obstacle
to his present enterprise. The conquest of Opimius was the immediate
object to which he devoted all his energies. As soon as the
commissioners had appeared on African soil, they and their chief were
received with the utmost deference by the king. The frequent and secret
colloquies which took place between the arbitrators and one of the
parties interested in their decision were not a happy omen for an
impartial judgment, and, if the award could by the exercise of
malevolent ingenuity be interpreted as unfair, would certainly breed the
suspicion, and, in case the matter was ever submitted to a hostile court
of law, the proof that the honour of the commissioners had succumbed to
the usual vulgar and universally accredited methods of corruption. On
the face of it the award seemed eminently just. Numidia was becoming a
commercial and agricultural state; but since commerce and agriculture
did not flourish in the same domains, it was impossible to endow each of
the claimants equally with both these sources of wealth. To Adherbal was
given that part of the kingdom which in its external attributes seemed
the more desirable; he was to rule over the eastern half of Numidia
which bordered on the Roman province, the portion of the country which
enjoyed a readier access to the sea and could boast of a fuller
development of urban life. Cirta the capital lay within this sphere, and
Adherbal could continue to give justice from the throne of his fathers.
But those who held that the strength of a country depended mainly on its
people and its soil, believed that Jugurtha had received the better
part. The territories with which he was entrusted were those bordering
on Mauretania, rich in the products of the soil and teeming with healthy
human life.[895] From the point of view of military resources there
could be no question as to which of the two kings was the stronger. The
peaceful character of Adherbal may have seemed a justification for his
peaceful sphere of rule; but the original aggressor was kept at his
normal strength. Jugurtha ruled over the lands in which the national
spirit, of which he was himself the embodiment, found its fullest and
fiercest expression. He did not mean to acquiesce for a moment in the
settlement effected by the commission. No sooner had it completed its
task and returned home, than he began to devise a scheme which would
lead to war between the two principalities and the consequent
annihilation of Adherbal. He shrank at first from provoking the senate
by a wanton attack on the neighbouring kingdom which they had just
created; his design was rather to draw Adherbal into hostilities which
would lead to a pitched battle, a certain victory, the disappearance of
the last of Micipsa's race and the union of the two crowns. With this
object he massed a considerable force on the boundary between the two
kingdoms and suddenly crossed the frontier. His mounted raiders captured
shepherds with their flocks, ravaged the fields of the peasantry, looted
and burned their homes; then swept back within their own borders.[896]
But Adherbal was not moved to reprisals. His circumstances no less than
his temperament dictated methods of peace: and, if he could not keep his
crown by diplomacy, he must have regarded it as lost. The Roman people
was a better safeguard than his Numidian subjects, and it was necessary
to temporise with Jugurtha until the senate could be moved by a strong
appeal. Envoys were despatched to the court of the aggressor to complain
of the recent outrage; they brought back an impudent reply; but
Adherbal, steadfast in his pacific resolutions, still remained
quiescent, Jugurtha's plan had failed and he was in no mood for further
delay; he held now, as he had done once before, that his end could best
be effected by vigorous and decisive action. The lapse of time could not
improve his own position but might strengthen that of Adherbal, and it
was advisable that a new Roman commission should witness an accomplished
fact and make the best of it rather than engage again in the settlement
of a disputed claim. It was no longer a predatory band but a large and
regular army that he now collected; his present purpose was not a foray
but a war.[897] He advanced into his rival's territory ravaging its
fields, harrying its cities and gathering booty as he went. At every
step the confidence of his own forces, the dismay of the enemy
increased.
Adherbal was at last convinced that he must appeal to the sword for the
security of his crown. A second flight to Rome would have utterly
discredited him in the eyes of his subjects, perhaps in those of the
Roman government itself; yet, as his chief hope still lay in Rome, he
hurriedly despatched an embassy to the suzerain city[898] while he
himself prepared to take the field. With unwilling energy he gathered
his available forces and marched to oppose Jugurtha's triumphant
progress. The invading host had now skirted Cirta to the west and was
apparently attempting to cut off its communications with the sea. The
disastrous results that would have followed the success of this attempt,
may have been the final motive that spurred Adherbal to his appeal to
arms; and it was somewhere within the fifty miles that intervened
between the capital and its port of Rusicade and at a spot nearer to the
sea than to Cirta,[899] that the opposing armies met. The day was
already far spent when Adherbal came into touch with his enemy: there
was no thought of a pitched battle in the gathering gloom, and either
party took up his quarters for the night. Towards the late watches of
the night, in the doubtful light of the early dawn, the soldiers of
Jugurtha crept up to the outposts of the enemy; at a given signal they
rushed on the camp and carried it by storm. Adherbal's soldiers, heavy
with sleep and groping for their arms, were routed or slain; the prince
himself sprang on his horse and with a handful of his knights sped for
safety to the walls of Cirta, Jugurtha's troops in hot pursuit. They had
almost closed on the fugitive before the walls were reached; but the
race had been watched from the battlements, and, as the flying Adherbal
passed the gates, the walls were manned by a volunteer body of Italian
merchants who kept the pursuing Numidians at bay.[900] It was the
merchant class that had most to fear from the cruelty and cupidity of
the nomad hordes that now beat against the fortress, and during the
siege that followed they controlled the course of events far more
effectually than the unhappy king whom they had for the moment saved
from destruction.
Jugurtha's plans were foiled; Adherbal had escaped, and there lay before
him the irksome prospect of a siege, of probable interference from Rome
and, it might be, of the necessity of openly defying the senate's
commands. But it was now too late to draw back, and he set himself
vigorously to the work of reducing Cirta by assault or famine. The task
must have been an arduous one. The town formed one of the strongest
positions for defence that could be found in the ancient world. It was
built on an isolated cube of rock that towered above the vast cultivated
tracts of the surrounding plain. At its eastern extremity the precipice
made a sheer drop of six hundred feet, and was perhaps quite
inaccessible on this side, although it threw out spurs, whether natural
or of artificial construction, which formed a difficult and easily
defensible communication with the lower land around. Its natural
bastions were completed by a natural moat, for the river Ampsaga (the
Wäd Remel) almost encircled the town, and on the eastern side its deep
and rushing waters could only be crossed by a ledge of rock, through
which it bored a subterranean channel and over which some kind of bridge
or causeway had probably been formed.[901] The natural and easy mode of
approach to the city was to be found in the south-west, where a neck of
land of half a furlong's breadth led up to the principal gate.
In spite of the formidable difficulties of the task Jugurtha attempted
an assault, for it was of the utmost importance that he should possess
the person of Adherbal before interference was felt from Rome. Mantlets,
turrets and all the engines of siege warfare were vigorously employed to
carry the town by storm;[902] but the stout walls baffled every effort,
and Jugurtha was forced to face as best he might another Roman embassy
which Adherbal's protests had brought to African soil. The senate, when
it had learnt the news of the renewed outbreak of the war, was as
unwilling as ever to intervene as a third partner in a three-sided
conflict. To play the part of the policeman as well as of the judge was
no element in Roman policy; the very essence of a protectorate was that
it should take care of itself; were intervention necessary, it should be
decisive, and it would be a lengthy task and an arduous strain to gather
and transport to Africa a force sufficient to overawe Jugurtha. The easy
device of a new commission was therefore adopted. If its Suggestions
were obeyed, all would be well; if they were neglected, matters could
not be much worse than they were at present. As the new commissioners
had merely to take a message and were credited with no discretionary
power, it was thought unnecessary to burden the higher magnates of the
State with the unenviable task, or to expose them to the undignified
predicament of finding their representations flouted by a rebel who
might have eventually to be recognised as a king. A chance was given to
younger members of the senatorial order, and the three who landed in
Africa were branded by the hostile criticism that was soon to find
utterance and in the poverty of its indictment to catch at every straw,
as lacking the age and dignity demanded by the mission--qualities which,
had they been present, would probably have failed to make the least
impression on Jugurtha's fixed resolve. The commissioners were to
approach both the kings and to bring to their notice the will and
resolution of the Roman senate and people, which were to the effect that
hostilities should be suspended and that the questions at issue between
the rivals should be submitted to peaceful arbitration. This conduct the
senate recommended as the only one worthy of its royal clients and of
itself.[903]
The speed of the envoys was accelerated by the impression that they
might find but one king to be the recipient of their message. On the eve
of their departure the news of the decisive battle and the siege of
Cirta had reached their ears. Haste was imperative, if they were to
retain their position as envoys, for the next despatch might bring news
of Adherbal's death. The actual news received fell short of the
truth,[904] and was perhaps still further softened for the public ear;
the fact that the envoys had sailed was itself an official indication
that all hope had not been abandoned. If they cherished a similar
illusion themselves, it must almost have vanished before the sight that
met their eyes in Numidia. They saw a closely beleaguered town in which
one of the kings, who were to be the recipients of their message, was so
closely hemmed that access to him was impossible.[905] The other,
without abating one jot of his military preparations, met them with an
answer as uncompromising as it was courteous. Jugurtha held nothing more
precious than the authority of the senate; from his youth up he had
striven to meet the approbation of the good; it was by merit not by
artifice, that he had gained the favour of Scipio; it was desert that
had won him a place amongst Micipsa's children and a share in the
Numidian crown. But qualities carry their responsibilities; the very
distinction of his services made it the more incumbent on him to avenge
a wrong. Adherbal had treacherously plotted against his life; the crime
had been revealed and he had but taken steps to forestall it; the Roman
people would not be acting justly or honourably, if they hindered him
from taking such steps in his own defence as were the common right of
all men.[906]
He would soon send envoys to Rome to deal with the whole question in
dispute.
This answer showed the Roman commissioners the utter helplessness of
their position. Their presence in Jugurtha's camp within sight of a city
in which a client king and a number of their own citizens were
imprisoned, was itself a stigma on the name of Rome. If they had prayed
to see Adherbal, the request, must have been refused; to prolong the
negotiations was to court further insult, and they set their faces once
more for Rome after faithfully performing the important mission of
repeating a message of the senate with verbal correctness. Jugurtha
granted them the courtesy of not renewing his active operations until he
thought that they had quitted Africa. Then, despairing of carrying the
town by assault, he settled to the work of a regular siege. The nature
of the ground must have made a complete investment impossible; but it
also rendered it unnecessary. The cliffs and the river bed made escape
as difficult as attack. On some sides it was but necessary to maintain a
strenuous watch on every possible egress; on others lines of
circumvallation, with ramparts and ditches, kept the beleaguered within
their walls. Siege-towers were raised to mate the height of the
fortifications which they threatened, and manned with garrisons to harry
the town and repel all efforts of its citizens to escape. The blockade
was varied by a series of surprises, of sudden assaults by day or night;
no method of force or fraud was left untried; the loyalty of the
defenders who appeared on the walls was assailed by threats or promises;
the assailants were strenuously exhorted to effect a speedy entry.
It would seem that Cirta was ill-provided with supplies.[907] Adherbal,
who had made it the basis of his attack and must have foreseen the
probability of his defeat, should have seen that it was well
provisioned; and the vast cisterns and granaries cut in the solid rock,
that were in later times to be found within the city, should have
supplied water and food sufficient to prolong the siege to a degree that
might have tried the senate's patience as sorely as Jugurtha's. But
neither the king nor his advisers were adepts in the art of war; it must
have been difficult to regulate the distribution of provisions amidst
the trading classes, of unsettled habits and mixed nationalities, that
were crowded within the walls; discontent could not be restrained by
discipline and might at any moment be a motive to surrender. The
imprisoned king saw no prospect of a prolongation of the war that could
secure even his personal safety; no help could be looked for from
without and a ruthless enemy was battering at his gates. His only hope,
a faint one, lay in a last appeal to Rome; but the invader's lines were
drawn so close that even a chance of communicating with the protecting
city seemed denied. At length, by urgent appeals to pity and to avarice,
he induced two of the comrades who had joined his flight from the field
of battle, to risk the venture of penetrating the enemy's lines and
reaching the sea.[908] The venture, which was made by night, succeeded;
the two bold messengers stole through the enclosing fortifications,
rapidly made for the nearest port, and thence took ship to Rome. Within
a few days they were in the presence of the senate,[909] and the
despairing cry of Adherbal was being read to an assembly, to whom it
could convey no new knowledge and on whom it could lay no added burden
of perplexity. But emotion, although it cannot teach, may focus thought
and clarify the promptings of interest. To many a loose thinker
Adherbal's missive may have been the first revelation, not only of the
shame, but of the possible danger of the situation. The facts were too
well known to require detailed treatment. It was sufficient to remind
the senate that for five months a friend and ally of the Roman people
had been blockaded in his own capital; his choice was merely one between
death by the sword and death by famine. Adherbal no longer asked for his
kingdom; nay, he barely ventured to ask for his life; but he deprecated
a death by torture--a fate that would most certainly be his if he fell
into the hands of his implacable foe. The appeal to interest was
interwoven with that made to pity and to honour. What were Jugurtha's
ultimate motives? When he had consummated his crimes and absorbed the
whole of Numidia, did he mean to remain a peaceful client-king, a
faithful vassal of Rome? His fidelity and obedience might be measured by
the treatment which he had already accorded to the mandate and the
envoys of the senate. The power of Rome in her African possessions was
at stake; and the majesty of the empire was appealed to no less than the
sense of friendship, loyalty, and gratitude, as a ground for instant
assistance which might yet save the suppliant from a terrible and
degrading end.
The impression produced by this appeal was seen in the bolder attitude
adopted by that section of the senate which had from the first regarded
Jugurtha as a criminal at large, and had never approved the policy of
leaving Numidia to settle its own affairs. Voices were heard advocating
the immediate despatch of an army to Africa, the speedy succour of
Adherbal, the consideration of an adequate punishment for the contumacy
of Jugurtha in not obeying the express commands of Rome.[910] But the
usual protests were heard from the other side, protests which were
interpreted as a proof of the utter corruption of those who uttered
them,[911] but which were doubtless veiled in the decent language, and
may in some cases have been animated by the genuine spirit, of the
cautious imperialist who prefers a crime to a blunder. The conflict of
opinion resulted in the usual compromise. A new commission was to be
despatched with a more strongly worded message from the senate; but, as
rumour had apparently been busy with the adventures of the "three young
men" whom Jugurtha had turned back, it was deemed advisable to select
the present envoys from men whose age, birth and ample honours might
give weight to a mission that was meant to avert a war.[912] The
solemnity of the occasion was attested, and some feeling of assurance
may have been created, by the fact that there figured amongst the
commissioners no less a person than the chief of the senate Marcus
Aemilius Scaurus, beyond all question the foremost man of Rome,[913] the
highest embodiment of patrician dignity and astute diplomacy. The
pressing appeal of Adherbal's envoys, the ugly rumours which were
circulating in Rome, urged the commissioners to unwonted activity.
Within three days they were on board, and after a short interval had
landed at Utica in the African province. The experience of the former
mission had taught them that their dignity might be utterly lost if they
quitted the territory of the Roman domain. They did not deign to set
foot in Numidia, but sent a message to Jugurtha informing him that they
had a mandate from the senate and ordering him to come with all speed to
the Roman province.
Jugurtha was for the moment torn by conflicting resolutions. The very
audacity of his acts had been tempered and in part directed by a secret
fear of Rome. Whether in any moments of ambitious imagination he had
dreamed of throwing off the protectorate and asserting the unlimited
independence of the Numidian kingdom, must remain uncertain; but in any
case that consummation must belong to the end, not to the intermediate
stage, of his present enterprise. His immediate plan had been to win or
purchase recognition of an accomplished fact from the somnolence,
caution or corruption of the government; and here was intervention
assuming a more formidable shape while the fact was but half
accomplished and he himself was but playing the part of the rebel, not
of the king. The dignity of the commissioners, and the peremptory nature
of their demand, seemed to show that negotiations with Rome were losing
their character of a conventional game and assuming a more serious
aspect. It is possible that Jugurtha did not know the full extent of the
danger which he was running; it is possible that, like so many other
potentates who had relations with the imperial city, he made the mistake
of imagining that the senate was in the fullest sense the government of
Rome, and had no cognisance of the subtle forces whose equilibrium was
expressed in a formal control by the nobility; but even what he saw was
sufficient to alarm him and to lead him, in a moment of panic or
prudence, to think of the possibility of obeying the commission. At the
next moment the new man, which the deliberate but almost frenzied
pursuit of a single object had made of Jugurtha, was fully
reasserted.[914] But his passion was not blind; his recklessness still
veiled a plan; his one absorbing desire was to see Adherbal in his hands
before he should himself be forced to meet the envoys. He gave orders
for his whole force to encircle the walls of Cirta; a simultaneous
assault was directed against every vulnerable point; the attention of
the defenders was to be distracted by the ubiquitous nature of the
attack; a failure of vigilance at any point might give him the desired
entry by force or fraud. But nothing came of the enterprise; the
assailants were beaten back, and Jugurtha had another moment for cool
reflection. He soon decided that further delay would not strengthen his
position. The name of Scaurus weighed heavily on his mind.[915] He was
an untried element with respect to the details of the Numidian affair;
but all that Jugurtha knew of him--his influence with the senate, his
uncompromising respectability, his earlier attitude on the
question--inspired a feeling of fear. Obedience to the demand which the
commissioners had made for his presence might be the wiser course;
whatever the result of the interview, such obedience might prolong the
period of negotiation and delay armed intervention until his own great
object was fulfilled. With a few of his knights Jugurtha crossed into
the Roman province and presented himself before the commissioners. We
have no record of the discussion which ensued. The senate's message was
almost an ultimatum; it threatened extreme measures if Jugurtha did not
desist from the siege of Cirta; but the peremptory nature of the missive
did not prevent close and lengthy discussions between the envoys and the
king. The plausible personality of Jugurtha may have told in his favour
and may have led to the hopes of a compromise; for it is not probable
that he ventured on a summary rejection of their orders or advice. But
the commissioners could merely threaten or advise; they had no power to
wring promises from the king or to keep him to them when they were made.
Thus when, at the close of the debates, Jugurtha returned to Numidia and
the envoys embarked at Utica, it was felt on all sides that nothing had
been accomplished.[916] The commissioners may have believed that they
had made Jugurtha sensible of his true relations to Rome; they had
perhaps threatened open war as the result of disobedience; but they had
neither checked his progress nor stayed his hand; and the taint with
which all dealings with the wealthy potentate infected his environment,
clung even to this select body of distinguished men.
The immediate effect of the fruitless negotiations was the disaster
which every one must have foreseen. Cirta and her king had been utterly
betrayed by their protectress; and when the news of the departure of the
envoys and the return of Jugurtha penetrated within the walls, despair
of further resistance gave substance to the hope of the possibility of
surrender on tolerable terms. The hope was never present to the mind of
Adherbal; he knew his enemy too well. Nor could it have been entertained
in a very lively form by the king's Numidian councillors and subjects.
But the Numidian was not the strongest element in Cirta. There the
merchant class held sway. In the defence of their property and commerce,
the organised business and the homes which they had established in the
civilised state, they had taken the lead in repelling the hordes of
Western Numidians which Jugurtha led; and amongst the merchant class
those of Italian race had been the most active and efficient in
repelling the assaults of the besiegers. To these men the choice was not
between famine and the sword; but merely between famine and the loss of
property or comfort. For what Roman or Italian could doubt that the most
perfect security for his life and person was still implicit in the magic
name of Rome? Confident in their safety they advised Adherbal to hand
over the town to Jugurtha; the only condition which he needed to make
was the preservation of his own life and that of the besieged; all else
was of less importance, for their future fortunes rested not with
Jugurtha but with the senate.[917] It is questionable whether the
Italians were really inspired with this blind confidence in the senate's
power to restore as well as to save; even their ability to save was more
than doubtful to Adherbal; still more worthless was a promise made by
his enemy. The unhappy king would have preferred the most desperate
resistance to a trust in Jugurtha's honour; but the advice of the
Italians was equivalent to a command; and a gleam of hope, sufficient at
least to prevent him from taking his own life, may have buoyed him up
when he yielded to their wishes and made the formal surrender. The hope,
if it existed, was immediately dispelled. Adherbal was put to death with
cruel tortures.[918] The Italians then had their proof of the present
value of the majesty of the name of Rome. Their calculations had been
vitiated by one fatal blunder. They forgot that they were letting into
their stronghold an exasperated people drawn from the rudest parts of
Numidia--a people to whom the name of Rome was as nothing, to whom the
name of merchant or foreigner was contemptible and hateful. As the
surging crowd of Jugurtha's soldiery swept over the doomed city,
massacring every Numidian of adult age, the claim of nationality made by
the protesting merchants was not unnaturally met by a thrust from the
sword. If even the assailants could distinguish them in the frenzy of
victory, they knew them for men who had occupied the fighting line; and
this fact was alone sufficient to doom them to destruction. Jugurtha may
also have made his blunder. Unless we suppose that his penetrating mind
had been, suddenly clouded by the senseless rage which prompts the
half-savage man to a momentary act of demoniacal folly, he could never
have willed the slaughter of the Roman and Italian merchants.[919] If he
willed it in cold blood, he was consciously making war on Rome and
declaring the independence of Numidia. For, even with his limited
knowledge of the balance of interests in the capital, he must have seen
that the act was inexpiable. His true policy, now as before, was not to
cross swords with Rome, but merely to wring from her indifference a
recognition of a purely national crime. His wits had failed him if he
had ordered a deed which put indifference and recognition out of the
question. It is probable that he did not calculate on the fury of his
troops; it is possible that he had ceased to lead and was a mere unit
swept along in the avalanche which sated its wrath at the prolonged
resistance, and avenged the real or fancied crimes committed by the
merchant class.
The massacre of the merchants caused a complete change in the attitude
with which Numidian events were viewed at Rome. It cut the commercial
classes to the quick, and this third party which moulded the policy of
Rome began closing up its ranks. The balance of power on which the
nobility had rested its presidency since the fall of Caius Gracchus,
began to be disturbed. It was possible again for a leader of the people
to make his voice heard; not, however, because he was the leader of the
people, but because he was the head of a coalition. The man of the hour
was Caius Memmius, who was tribune elect for the following year. He was
an orator, vehement rather than eloquent, of a mordant utterance, and
famed in the courts for his power of attack.[920] His critical
temperament and keen eye for abuses had already led him to join the
sparse ranks of politicians who tried still to keep alive the healthy
flame of discontent, and to utter an occasional protest against the
manner in which the nobility exercised their trust.[921] His influence
must have been increased by the growing suspicion of the last few years
and the scandal that fed on tales of bribery in high places; it was
assured by the latest news which, through the illogical process of
reasoning out of which great causes grow, seemed to make rumour a
certainty and to justify suspicion by the increased numbers and
respectability of the suspecting. A pretext for action was found in the
shifty and dilatory proceedings of the senate. Even the latest phase of
the Numidian affair was not powerful or horrible enough to crush all
attempts at a temporising policy.[922] Men were still found to interrupt
the course of a debate which promised to issue in some strong and speedy
resolution, by raising counter-motions which the great names of the
movers forced on the attention of the house; every artifice which
influence could command was employed to dull the pain of a wounded
self-respect; and when this method failed, idle recrimination took the
place of argument as a means of consuming the time for action and
passing the point at which anger would have cooled into indifference, or
at least into an emotion not stronger than regret. It was plain that the
stimulus must be supplied from without; and Memmius provided it by going
straight to the people and embodying their floating suspicions in a bald
and uncompromising form. He told them[923] that the prolonged
proceedings in the senate meant simply that the crime of Jugurtha was
likely to be condoned through the influence of a few ardent partisans of
the king; and it is probable that he dealt frankly and in the true Roman
manner with the motives for this partisanship. The pressure was
effectual in bringing to a head the deliberations of the senate. The
council as a whole did not need conversion on the main question at
issue, for most of its members must have felt that it had exhausted the
resources of peaceful diplomacy, and it showed its characteristic
aversion to the provocation of a constitutional crisis, which might
easily arise if the people chose to declare war on the motion of a
magistrate without waiting for the advice of the fathers; while the
obstructive minority may have been alarmed by the distant vision of a
trial before the Assembly or before a commission of inquiry composed of
judges taken from the angry Equites. The senate took the lead in a
formal declaration of war; Numidia was named as one of the provinces
which were to be assigned to the future consuls in accordance with the
provisions of the Sempronian law. The choice of the people fell on
Publius Scipio Nasica and Lucius Calpurnius Bestia as consuls for the
following year.[924] The lot assigned the home government and the
guardianship of Italy to Nasica, while Bestia gained the command in the
impending war. Military preparations were pushed on with all haste; an
army was levied for service in Africa; pay and supplies were voted on an
adequate scale.
The news is said to have surprised Jugurtha.[925] Perhaps earlier
messages of a more cheerful import had reached him from Rome during the
days when successful obstruction seemed to be achieving its end, and had
dulled the fears which the massacre of Cirta most have aroused even in a
mind so familiar with the acquiescent policy of the senate. Yet even now
he did not lose heart, nor did his courage take the form, prevalent
amongst the lower types of mind, of a mere reliance on brute force, on
the resources of that Numidia of which he was now the undisputed lord.
With a persistence born of successful experience he still attempted the
methods of diplomacy-methods which prove a lack of insight only in the
sense that Rome was an impossible sphere for their present exercise. The
king had not gauged the situation in the capital; but subsequent events
proved that he still possessed a correct estimate of the real
inclinations of the men who were chiefly responsible for Roman policy.
The Numidian envoy was no less a person than the king's own son, and he
was supported by two trusty counsellors of Jugurtha.[926] As was usual
in the case of a diplomatic mission arriving from a country which had no
treaty relations, or was actually in a state of war, with Rome, the
envoys were not permitted to pass the gates until the will of the senate
was known. An excellent opportunity was given for proving the conversion
of the senate. When the consul Bestia put the question "Is it the
pleasure of the house that the envoys of Jugurtha be received within the
walls?" the firm answer was returned that "Unless these envoys had come
to surrender Numidia and its king to the absolute discretion of the
Roman people, they must cross the borders of Italy within ten
days".[927] The consul had this message conveyed to the prince, and he
and his colleagues returned from their fruitless mission.
Bestia meanwhile was consumed with military zeal. His army was ready,
his staff was chosen, and he was evidently bent on an earnest
prosecution of the war. He was in many respects as fit a man as could
have been selected for the task. His powers of physical endurance and
the vigour of his intellect had already been tested in war; he possessed
the resolution and the foresight of a true general. But the canker of
the age was supposed to have infected Bestia and neutralised his
splendid qualities.[928] The proof that he allowed greed to dominate his
public conduct is indeed lacking; but he would have departed widely from
the spirit of his time if he had allowed no thought of private gain to
add its quota to the joy of the soldier who finds himself for the first
time in the untrammelled conduct of a war. To the commanders of the age
foreign service was as a matter of course a source of profit as well as
a sphere of duty or of glory. To Bestia it was also to be a sphere for
diplomacy; and diplomacy and profit present an awkward combination,
which gives room for much misinterpretation. Although the war was in
some sense a concession to outside influences, the consul did not
represent the spirit to which the senate had yielded. Nine years earlier
he had served the cause of the nobility by effecting the recall of
Popillius from exile, and was now a member of that inner circle of the
government whose cautious manipulation of foreign affairs was veiled in
a secrecy which might easily rouse the suspicion, because it did not
appeal to the intelligence, of the masses. How vital a part diplomacy
was to play in the coming war, was shown by Bestia's selection of his
staff. It was practically a committee of the inner ring of governing
nobles,[929] and the importance attached to the purely political aspect
of the African war was proved by the fact that Scaurus himself deigned
to occupy a position amongst the legates of the commander. It was a
difficult task which Bestia and his assistants had to perform. They were
to carry out the mandate of the people and pursue Jugurtha as a
criminal; they were to follow out their own conviction as to the best
means of saving Rome from a prolonged and burdensome war with a whole
nation-a conviction which might, force them to recognise Jugurtha as a
king. To avenge honour and at the same time to secure peace was, in the
present condition of the public mind, an almost impossible task. Its
gravity was increased by the fact that, through the method of selection
employed for composing the general's council, a certain section of the
nobility, already marked out for suspicion, would be held wholly
responsible for its failure. It was a gravity that was probably
undervalued by the leaders of the expedition, who could scarcely have
looked forward to the day when it might be said that Bestia had selected
his legates with a view of hiding the misdeeds which, he meant to commit
under the authority of their names.[930]
When the time for departure had arrived, the legions were marched
through Italy to Rhegium, were shipped thence to Sicily and from Sicily
were transferred to the African province. This was to be Bestia's basis
of operations; and when he had gathered adequate supplies and organised
his lines of communication, he entered Numidia. His march was from a
superficial point of view a complete success; large numbers of prisoners
were taken and several cities were carried by assault.[931] But the
nature of the war in hand was soon made painfully manifest. It was a war
with a nation, not a mere hunting expedition for the purpose of tracking
down Jugurtha. The latter object could be successfully accomplished only
if some assistance were secured from friendly portions of Numidia or
from neighbouring powers. But there was no friendly portion of Numidia.
The mercantile class had been wiped out, and though the Romans seem to
have regained possession of Cirta at an early period of the war,[932] it
is not likely that it ever resumed the industrial life, which might have
supplied money and provisions, if not men; while the position of the
town rendered it useless as a basis of operations for expeditions into
that western portion of Numidia, from which the chief military strength
of Jugurtha was drawn. In these regions a possible ally was to be found
in Bocchus King of Mauretania; but his recent overtures to Rome had been
deliberately rejected by the senate. Nothing but the name of this great
King of the Moors, who ruled over the territory stretching from the
Muluccha to Tingis, had hitherto been known to the Roman people; even
the proximity of a portion of his kingdom to the coast of Spain had
brought him into no relations, either friendly or hostile, to the
imperial government.[933]
Bocchus had secured peace with his eastern neighbour by giving his
daughter in marriage to Jugurtha; but he never allowed this family
connection to disturb his ideas of political convenience and, as soon as
he heard that war had been declared against Jugurtha, he sent an embassy
to Rome praying for a treaty with the Roman people and a recognition as
one of the friends of the Republic.[934] This conduct may have been due
to the belief that a victory of the Romans over Jugurtha would entail
the destruction of the Numidian monarchy and the reduction of at least a
portion of the territory to the condition of a province. In this case
Mauretania would itself be the frontier kingdom, playing the part now
taken by Numidia; and Bocchus may have wished to have some claim on Rome
before his eastern frontier was bordered, as his northern was commanded,
by a Roman province. He may even have hoped to benefit by the spoils of
war, as Masinissa had once benefited by those which fell from Syphax and
from Carthage, and to increase his territories at the expense of his
son-in-law. There can be no better proof of the real intentions of the
government as regards Numidia, even after war had been declared, than
the senate's rejection of the offer made by Bocchus. His aid would be
invaluable from a strategic point of view, if the aim of the expedition
were to make Numidia a province or even to crush Jugurtha. But the most
constant maxim of senatorial policy was to avoid an extension of the
frontiers, and this principle was accompanied by a strong objection to
enter into close relations with any power that was not a frontier state.
Such relations might involve awkward obligations, and were inconsistent
with the policy which devolved the whole obligation for frontier defence
and frontier relations on a friendly client prince. Whether the
maintenance of the traditional scheme of administration in Africa
demanded the renewed recognition of Jugurtha as King of Numidia, was a
subordinate question; its answer depended entirely on the possibility of
the Numidians being induced to accept any other monarch.
It must have required but a brief experience of the war to convince
Bestia and his council that a Numidian kingdom without the recognition
of Jugurtha as king was almost unthinkable, unless Rome was prepared to
enter on an arduous and harassing war for the piecemeal conquest of the
land or (a task equally difficult) for the purpose of securing the
person of an elusive monarch, who could take every advantage of the
natural difficulties of his country and could find a refuge and ready
assistance in every part of his dominions. The tentative approaches of
Jugurtha, who negotiated while he fought, were therefore admitted both
by the consul and by Scaurus, who inevitably dominated the diplomatic
relations of the war. That Jugurtha sent money as well as proposals at
the hands of his envoys, was a fact subsequently approved by a Roman
court of law, and deserves such credence as can be attached to a verdict
which was the final phase of a political agitation. That Bestia was
blinded by avarice and lost all sense of his own and his country's
honour, that Scaurus's sense of respectability and distrust of Jugurtha
went down before the golden promises of the king,[935] were beliefs
widely held, and perhaps universally, professed, by the democrats who
were soon thundering at the doors of the Curia--by men, that is, who did
not understand, or whose policy led them to profess misunderstanding of,
the problem in statecraft, as dishonouring in some of its aspects as
such problems usually are, which was being faced by a general and a
statesman who were pursuing a narrow and traditional but very
intelligible line of policy. The policy was indeed sufficiently ugly
even had there been no suspicion of personal corruption; its ugliness
could be tested by the fact that even the sanguine and cynical Jugurtha
could hardly credit the extent of the good fortune revealed to him by
the progress of the negotiations. At first his diplomatic manoeuvres had
been adopted simply as a means of staying the progress of hostilities,
of gaining a breathing space while he renewed his efforts at influencing
opinion in the imperial city. But when he saw that the very agents of
war were willing to be missionaries of peace, that the avengers sent out
by an injured people were ready for conciliation before they had
inflicted punishment, he concentrated his efforts on an immediate
settlement of the question.[936] It was necessary for the enemy of the
Roman people to pass through a preliminary stage of humiliation before
he could be recognised as a friend; it was all the more imperative in
this case since a number of angry people in Rome were clamouring for
Jugurtha's punishment. It was also necessary to arrange a plan by which
the humiliation might be effected with the least inconvenience to both
parties. An armistice had already been declared as a necessary
preliminary to effective negotiations for a surrender. This condition of
peace rendered it possible for Jugurtha to be interviewed in person by a
responsible representative of the consul.[937] Both the king and the
consul were in close touch with one another near the north-western part
of the Roman province, and Jugurtha was actually in possession of Vaga,
a town only sixty miles south-west of Utica. The town, in spite of its
geographical position, was an appanage[938] of the Numidian kingdom, and
the pretext under which Bestia sent his quaestor to the spot, was the
acceptance of a supply of corn which had been demanded of the king as a
condition of the truce granted by the consul. The presence of the
quaestor at Vaga was really meant as a guarantee of good faith, and
perhaps he was regarded as a hostage for the personal security of
Jugurtha.[939] Shortly afterwards the king rode into the Roman camp and
was introduced to the consul and his council. He said a few words in
extenuation of the hostile feeling with which his recent course of
action had been received at Rome, and after this brief apology asked
that his surrender should be accepted. The conditions, it appeared, were
not for the full council; they were for the private ear of Bestia and
Scauras alone.[940] With these Jugurtha was soon closeted, and the final
programme was definitely arranged, On the following day the king
appeared again before the council of war; the consul pretended to take
the opinion of his advisers, but no clear issue for debate could
possibly be put before the board; for the gist of the whole proceedings,
the recognition of the right of Jugurtha to retain Numidia, was the
result of a secret understanding, not of a definite admission that could
be blazoned to the world. There was some formal and desultory
discussion, opinions on the question of surrender were elicited without
any differentiation of the many issues that it might involve, and the
consul was able to announce in the end that his council sanctioned the
acceptance of Jugurtha's submission.[941] The council, however, had
deemed it necessary that some visible proof, however slight, should be
given that a surrender had been effected; for it was necessary to convey
to the minds of critics at home the impression that some material
advantage had been won and that Jugurtha had been humiliated. With this
object in view the king was required to hand over something to the Roman
authorities. He kept his army, but solemnly transferred thirty
elephants, some large droves of cattle and horses, and a small sum of
money--the possessions, presumably, which he had ready at hand in his
city of Vaga--to the custody of the quaestor of the Roman army.[942] The
year meanwhile was drawing to a close, and the consul, now that peace
had been restored, quitted his province for Rome to preside at the
magisterial elections.[943] The army still remained in the Roman
province or in Numidia, but the cessation of hostilities reduced it to a
state of inaction which augured ill for its future discipline should it
again be called upon to serve.
The agreement itself must have seemed to its authors a triumph of
diplomacy. They had secured peace with but an inconsiderable loss of
honour; they had saved Rome from a long, difficult and costly war,
whilst a modicum of punishment might with some ingenuity be held to have
been inflicted on Jugurtha. They must have been astounded by the chorus
of execration with which the news of the compact was received at
Rome.[944] Nor indeed can any single reason, adequate in itself and
without reference to others, be assigned for this feeling of hostility.
First, there was the idle gossip of the public places and the
clubs--gossip which, in the unhealthy atmosphere of the time, loved to
unveil the interested motives which were supposed to underlie the public
actions of all men of mark, and which exhibited moderation to an enemy
as the crowning proof of its suspicions. Secondly there was the feeling
that had been stirred in the proletariate at Rome. The question of
Jugurtha, little as they understood its merits, was still to them the
great question of the hour, a matter of absorbing interest and
expectation. Their feelings had been harrowed by the story of his
cruelties, their fears excited by rumours of his power and intentions.
They had roused the senate from its lethargy and forced that illustrious
body to pursue the great criminal; they had seen a great army quitting
the gates of Rome to execute the work of justice; their relatives and
friends had been subjected to the irksome duties of the conscription.
Everywhere there had been a fervid blaze of patriotism, and this blaze
had now ended in the thinnest curl of smoke. But to the masses the
imagined shame of the Jugurthine War had now become but a single count
in an indictment. The origin of the movement was now but its stimulus;
as is the case with most of such popular awakenings, the agitation was
now of a wholly illimitable character. The one vivid element in its
composition was the memory of the recent past. It was easy to arouse the
train of thought that centred round the two Gracchan movements and the
terrible moments of their catastrophe. The new movement against the
senate was in fact but the old movement in another form. The senate had
betrayed the interests of the people; now it was betraying the interests
of the empire; but to imagine that the form of the indictment as it
appealed to the popular mind was even so definite as this, is to credit
the average mind with a power of analysis which it does not, and
probably would not wish to, possess. It is less easy to gauge the
attitude of the commercial classes in this crisis. Their indignation at
the impunity given to Jugurtha after the massacre of the merchants at
Cirta is easily understood; but with this class sentiment was wont to be
outweighed by considerations of interest, and the preservation of peace
in Numidia, and consequently of facilities for trade, must have been the
end which they most desired. But perhaps they felt that the only peace
which would serve their purposes was one based on a full reassertion of
Roman prestige, and perhaps they knew that Jugurtha, the reawakener of
the national spirit of the Numidians, would show no friendship to the
foreign trader. They must also have seen that, whatever the prospects of
the mercantile class under Jugurtha's rule might be, the convention just
concluded could not be lasting. Their own previous action had determined
its transitory character. By their support of the agitation awakened by
Memmius they had created a condition of feeling which could not rest
satisfied with the present suspected compromise. But if satisfaction was
impossible, a continuance of the war was inevitable. They had before
them the prospect of continued unsettlement and insecurity in a fruitful
sphere of profit; and they intended to support the present agitation by
their influence in the Comitia and, if necessary, by their verdicts in
the courts, until a strong policy had been asserted and a decisive
settlement attained.
Even before the storm of criticism had again gathered strength, there
was great anxiety in the senate over the recent action in Numidia. That
body could doubtless read between the lines and see the real motives of
policy which had led up to the present compact; they could see that the
agreement was a compromise between the views of two opposing sections of
their own house; and they must have approved of it in their hearts in so
far as it expressed the characteristic objection of the senate as a
whole to imperil the security of their imperial system, perhaps even to
expose the frontiers of their northern possessions now threatened by
barbarian hordes, through undertaking an unnecessary war in a southern
protectorate. But none the less they saw clearly the invidious elements
in the recent stroke of diplomacy, the combination of inconsistency and
dishonesty exhibited in the comparison between the magnificent
preparations and the futile result--a result which, as interpreted by
the ordinary mind, made its authors seem corrupt and the senate look
ridiculous. Their anxiety was increased by the fact that an immediate
decision on their part was imperative. Were they to sanction what had
been done, or to refuse to ratify the decision of the consul?[945]
The latter was of itself an extreme step, but it was rendered still more
difficult by the fact that every one knew that Bestia would never have
ventured on such a course had he not possessed the support of
Scaurus.[946] To frame a decision which must be interpreted to mean a
vote of lack of confidence in Scaurus, was to unseat the head of the
administration, to abandon their ablest champion, perhaps to invite the
successful attacks of the leaders of the other camp who were lying in
wait for the first false step of the powerful and crafty organiser.
Again, as in the discussion which had followed the fall of Cirta, the
debates in the senate dragged on and there was a prospect of the
question being indefinitely shelved--a result which, when the popular
agitation had cooled, would have meant the acceptance of the existing
state of things. Again the stimulus to greater rapidity of decision was
supplied by Memmius. The leader of the agitation was now invested with
the tribunate, and his position gave him the opportunity of unfettered
intercourse with the people. His Contiones were the feature of the
day,[947] and these popular addresses culminated in the exhortation
which he addressed to the crowd after the return of the unhappy Bestia.
His speech[948] shows Memmius to be both the product and the author of
the general character which had now been assumed by this long continued
agitation on a special point. The golden opportunity had been gained of
emphasising anew the fundamental differences of interest between the
nobility and the people, of reviewing the conduct of the governing class
in its continuous development during the last twenty years,[949] of
pointing out the miserable consequences of uncontrolled power,
irresponsibility and impunity. For the purpose of investing an address
with the dignity and authority which spring from distant historical
allusion, of brightening the prosaic present with something of the
glamour of the half-mythical past, even of flattering his auditors with
the suggestion that they were the descendants and heirs of the men who
had seceded to the Aventine, it was necessary for a popular orator to
touch on the great epoch of the struggle between the orders. But
Memmius, while satisfying the conditions of his art by the introduction
of the subject, uses it only to point the contrast between the epoch
when liberty had been won and that wherein it had been lost, or to
illustrate the uselessness of such heroic methods as the old secessions
as weapons against a nobility such as the present which was rushing
headlong to its own destruction. More important was the memory of those
recent years which had seen the life of the people and of their
champions become the plaything of a narrow oligarchy. The judicial
murders that had followed the overthrow of the Gracchi, the spirit of
abject patience with which they had been accepted and endured, were the
symbol of the absolute impunity of the oligarchy, the source of their
knowledge that they might use their power as they pleased. And how had
they used it? A general category of their crimes would be misleading; it
was possible to exhibit an ascending scale of guilt. They had always
preyed on the commonwealth; but their earlier depredations might be
borne in silence. Their earlier victims had been the allies and
dependants of Rome; they had drawn revenues from kings and free peoples,
they had pillaged the public treasury. But they had not yet begun to put
up for sale the security of the empire and of Rome itself. Now this last
and monstrous stage had been reached. The authority of the senate, the
power which the people had delegated to its magistrate, had been
betrayed to the most dangerous of foes; not satisfied with treating the
allies of Rome as her enemies, the nobility were now treating her
enemies as allies.[950] And what was the secret of the uncontrolled
power, the shameless indifference to opinion that made such misdeeds
possible? It was to be found partly in the tolerance of the people--a
tolerance which was the result of the imposture which made ill-gained
objects of plunder--consulships, priesthoods, triumphs--seem the proof
of merit. But it was to be found chiefly in the fact that co-operation
in crime had been raised to the dignity of a system which made for the
security of the criminal. The solidarity of the nobility, its very
detachment from the popular interest, was its main source of strength.
It had ceased even to be a party; it had become a clique--a mere faction
whose community of hope, interest and fear had given it its present
position of overweening strength.[951] This strength, which sprang from
perfect unity of design and action, could only be met and broken
successfully by a people fired with a common enthusiasm. But what form
should this enthusiasm assume? Should an adviser of the people advocate
a violent resumption of its rights, the employment of force to punish
the men who have betrayed their country? No! Acts of violence might
indeed be the fitting reward for their conduct, but they are unworthy
instruments for the just vengeance of an outraged people. All that we
demand is full inquiry and publicity. The secrets of the recent
negotiations shall be probed. Jugurtha himself shall be the witness. If
he has surrendered to the Roman people, as we are told, he will
immediately obey your orders; if he despises your commands, you will
have an opportunity of knowing the true nature of that peace and that
submission which have brought to Jugurtha impunity for his crimes, to a
narrow ring of oligarchs a large increase in their wealth, to the state
a legacy of loss and shame.
It was on this happily constructed dilemma that Memmius acted when he
brought his positive proposal before the people. It was to the effect
that the praetor Lucius Cassius Longinus should be sent to Jugurtha and
bring him to Rome on the faith of a safe conduct granted by the State;
Jugurtha's revelations were to be the key by which the secret chamber of
the recent negotiations was to be unlocked, with the desired hope of
convicting Scaurus and all others whose contact with the Numidian king,
whether in the late or in past transactions,[952] had suggested their
corruption. The object of this mission had been rapidly regaining the
complete control of Numidia, which had been momentarily shaken by the
Roman invasion. The presence of the Roman army, some portion of which
was still quartered in a part of his dominions, was no check on his
activity; for the absence of the commander, the incapacity and
dishonesty of the delegates whom he had left in his place, and the
demoralising indolence of the rank and file, had reduced the forces to a
condition lower than that of mere ineffectiveness or lack of discipline.
The desire of making a profit out of the situation pervaded every grade.
The elephants which had been handed over by Jugurtha, were mysteriously
restored; Numidians who had espoused the cause of Rome and deserted from
the army of the king--loyalists whom, whatever their motives and
character, Rome was bound to protect--were handed back to the king in
exchange for a price;[953] districts already pacified were plundered by
desultory bands of soldiers. The Roman power in Numidia was completely
broken when Cassius arrived and revealed his mission to the king. The
strange request would have alarmed a timid or ignorant ruler; Jugurtha
himself wavered for a moment as to whether he should put himself
unreservedly into the power of a hostile people; but he had sufficient
imagination and familiarity with Roman life to realise that the
principles of international honour that prevailed amongst despotic
monarchies were not those of the great Republic even at its present
stage, and he professed himself encouraged by the words of the amiable
praetor that "since he had thrown himself on the mercy of the Roman
people, he would do better to appeal to their pity than to challenge
their might".[954] His guide added his own word of honour to that of the
Republic, and such was the repute of Cassius that this assurance helped
to remove the momentary scruples of the king. Once he was assured of
personal safety, Jugurtha's visit to Rome became merely a matter of
policy, and his rapid mind must have surveyed every issue depending on
his acceptance or refusal before he committed himself to so doubtful a
step. His real plan of action is unfortunately unknown; for we possess
but the barest outline of these incidents, and we have no information on
the really vital point whether communications had reached him from his
supporters in the capital, which enabled him to predict the course
events would take if he obeyed the summons of Cassius. Had such
communications reached him, he might have known that the projected
investigation would be nugatory. But a failure in the purpose for which
he was summoned could convey no benefit to Jugurtha or his supporters;
it would simply incense the people and place both the king, and his
friends amongst the nobility, in a worse position than before. The
course of action, by turns sullen, shifty and impudent, which he pursued
at Rome, must have been due to the exigencies of the moment and the
frantic promptings of his frightened friends; for it could scarcely have
appealed to a calculating mind as a procedure likely to lead to fruitful
results. Its certain issue was war; but war could be had without the
trouble of a journey to Rome. He had but to stay where he was and
decline the people's request, and this policy of passive resistance
would have the further merit of saving his dignity as a king. It may
seem strange that he never adopted the bold but simple plan of standing
up in Rome and telling the whole truth, or at least such portions of the
truth as might have satisfied the people. It was a course of action that
might have secured him his crown. Doubtless if his transactions with
Roman officials had been innocent, the truth, if he adhered to it, might
not have been believed; but, if his evidence was damning, the people
might well have been turned from the insignificant question "Who was to
be King of Numidia?" to the supreme task of punishing the traitors whom
he denounced. But we have no right to read Jugurtha's character by the
light of the single motive of a self-interest which knew no scruples. He
may have had his own ideas of honour and of the protection due to a
benefactor or a trusty agent. Self-interest too might in this matter
come to the aid of sentiment; for it was at least possible that the
popular storm might spend its fury and leave the nobility still holding
their ground. So far as we with our imperfect knowledge can discern,
Jugurtha could have had no definite plan of action when he consented to
take the journey to Rome. But he had abundant prospects, if even he
possessed no plan. His presence in the capital was a decided advantage,
in so far as it enabled him to confer with his leading supporters, and
to attend to a matter affecting his dynastic interests which we shall
soon find arousing the destructive energy which was becoming habitual to
his jealous and impatient mind.
When Jugurtha appeared in Rome under the guidance of Cassius, he had
laid aside all the emblems of sovereignty and assumed the sordid garb
that befitted a suppliant for the mercy of the sovereign people.[955] He
seemed to have come, not as a witness for the prosecution, but as a
suspected criminal who appeared in his own defence. He was still keeping
up the part of one whom the fortune of war had thrown absolutely into
the power of the conquering state--a part perhaps suggested by the
friendly Cassius, but one that was perfectly in harmony with the
pretensions of Bestia and Scaurus. But the heart beneath that miserable
dress beat high with hope, and he was soon cheered by messages from the
circle of his friends at Rome and apprised of the means which had been
taken to baffle the threatened investigation,[956] The senate had, as
usual, a tribune at its service. Caius Baebius was the name of the man
who was willing to play the part, so familiar to the practice of the
constitution, of supporter of the government against undue encroachments
on its power and dignity, or against over-hasty action by the leaders of
the people. The government undoubtedly had a case. It was contrary to
all accepted notions of order and decency that a protected king should
be used as a political instrument by a turbulent tribune. Memmius had
impeached no one and had given no notice of a public trial; yet he
intended to bring Jugurtha before a gathering of the rabble and ask him
to blacken the names of the foremost men in Rome. It was exceedingly
probable that the grotesque proceeding would lead to a breach of the
peace; the sooner it was stopped, the better; and, although it was
unfortunately impossible to prevent Memmius from initiating the drama by
bringing forward his protagonist, the law had luckily provided means for
ending the performance before the climax had been reached. It was
believed that the sound constitutional views of Baebius were
strengthened by a great price paid by Jugurtha,[957] and, if we care to
believe one more of those charges of corruption, the multitude of which
had not palled even on the easily wearied mind of the lively Roman, it
is possible to imagine that the implicated members of the senate, in
whose interest far more than in that of Jugurtha Baebius was acting, had
persuaded the king that it was to his advantage to make the gift.
The eagerly awaited day arrived, on which the scandal-loving ears of the
people were to be filled to the full with the iniquities of their
rulers, on which their long-cherished suspicions should be changed to a
pleasantly anticipated certainty. Memmius summoned his Contio and
produced the king. Even the suppliant garb of Jugurtha did not save him
from a howl of execration. From the tribunal, to which he had been led
by the tribune, he looked over a sea of angry faces and threatening
hands, while his ears were deafened by the roar of fierce voices, some
crying that he should be put in bonds, others that he should suffer the
death of the traitor if he failed to reveal the partners of his
crimes.[958] Memmius, anxious for the dignity of his unusual proceedings
which were being marred by this frantic outburst, used all his efforts
to secure order and a patient hearing, and succeeded at length in
imposing silence on the crowd--a silence which perhaps marked that
psychological moment when pent up feeling had found its full expression
and passion had given way to curiosity. The tribune also vehemently
asserted his intention of preserving inviolate the safe conduct which
had been granted by the State. He then led the king forward[959] and
began a recital of the catalogue of his deeds. He spared him nothing;
his criminal activity at Rome and in Numidia, his outrages on his
family--the whole history of that career, as it continued to live in the
minds of democrats, was fully rehearsed. He concluded the story, which
he assumed to be true, by a request for the important details of which
full confirmation was lacking. "Although the Roman people understood by
whose assistance and ministry all this had been done, yet they wished to
have their suspicions finally attested by the king. If he revealed the
truth, he could repose abundant hope on the honour and clemency of the
Roman people; if he refused to speak, he would not help the partners of
his guilt, but his silence would ruin both himself and his future."
Memmius ceased and asked the king for a reply; Baebius stepped forward
and ordered the king to be silent.[960] The voice of Jugurtha could
legally find utterance only through the will of the magistrate who
commanded; it was stifled by the prohibition of the colleague who
forbade. The people were in the presence of one of those galling
restraints on their own liberty to which the jealousy of the magistracy,
expressed in the constitutional creations of their ancestors, so often
led. Baebius was immediately subjected to the terrorism which Octavius,
his forerunner in tribunician constancy, had once withstood. The frantic
mob scowled, shouted, made rushes for the tribunal, and used every
effort short of personal assault which anger could suggest, to break the
spirit of the man who balked their will. But the resolution--or, as his
enemies said, the shamelessness[961]--of Baebius prevailed. The
multitude, tricked of its hopes, melted from the Forum in gloomy
discontent. It is said that the hopes of Bestia and his friends rose
high.[962] Perhaps they had lived too long in security to realise the
danger threatened by a disappointed crowd that might meet to better
purpose some future day; that had gained from the insulting scene itself
an embittered confirmation of its views, with none of the softening
influence which springs from a curiosity completely satiated; that, as
an assembly of the sovereign people, might at any moment avenge the
latest outrage which had been inflicted on its dignity.
Jugurtha had, perhaps through no fault of his own, sorely tried the
patience of the people on the one occasion on which, as a professed
suppliant, he had come into contact with his sovereign. He was now, on
his own initiative, to try it yet further, and to test it in a manner
which aroused the horror and resentment of many who did not share the
views of Memmius. The king was not the only representative of
Masinissa's house at present to be found in Rome. There resided in the
city, as a fugitive from his power, his cousin Massiva, son of Gulussa
and grandson of Masinissa. It is not known why this scion of the royal
house had been passed over in the regulation of the succession, although
it is easily intelligible that Micipsa, with two sons of his own, might
not have wished to increase the number of co-regents of Numidia by
recognising his brother's heirs, and would not have done so had he not
been forced by circumstances to adopt Jugurtha. During the early
struggles between the three kings, Massiva had attached himself to the
party of Hiempsal and Adherbal, and had thus incurred Jugurtha's enmity;
but he had continued to live in Numidia as long as there was any hope of
the continuance of the dual kingship. The fall of Cirta and the death of
Adherbal had forced him to find a refuge at Rome, where he continued to
reside in peace until fate suddenly made him a pawn in the political
game. At last there had arisen a definite section amongst the nobility
which found it to its interest to offer an active opposition to
Jugurtha's claims. The consuls who succeeded Bestia and Nasica, were
Spurius Albinus and Quintus Minucius Rufus. The latter had won the
province of Macedonia and the protection of the north-eastern frontier;
to the former had fallen Numidia and the conduct of affairs in Africa.
The fact that the senate had declared Numidia a consular province before
the close of the previous year, was the ostensible proof that they had
yielded to the pressure applied by Memmius and nominally at least
repudiated the pacification effected by Bestia and Scaurus. But the
rejection of this arrangement seems never to have been officially
declared; there was still a chance of the recognition of Jugurtha's
claims, and of the governor of Numidia being assigned the inglorious
function of seeing to the restoration of the king and then evacuating
his territory. Such a modest rôle did not at all harmonise with the
views of Albinus. He wished a real command and a genuine war; but it was
not easy to wage such a war as long as Jugurtha was the only candidate
in the field. Even if his surrender were regarded as fictitious and the
war were resumed on that ground, it was difficult to assign it an
ultimate object, since the senate had no intention of making Numidia a
province. But the object which would make the war a living reality could
be secured, if a pretender were put forward for the Numidian crown; and
such a pretender Albinus sought in the scion of Masinissa's race now
resident in Rome, whose birth gave him a better hereditary claim than
Jugurtha himself. The consul approached Massiva and urged him to make a
case out of the odium excited and the fears inspired by Jugurtha's
crimes, and to approach the senate with a request for the kingdom of
Numidia.[963] The prince caught at the suggestion, the petition was
prepared, and this new and unexpected movement began to make itself
felt. Jugurtha's fear and anger were increased by the sudden discovery
that his friends at Rome were almost powerless to help him. They could
not parade a question of principle when it came to persons; a kingdom in
Numidia was more easily defended than its king; every act of assistance
which they rendered plunged them deeper in the mire of suspicion; it was
a time to walk warily, for those who had no judge in their own
conscience found one in the keen scrutiny of a hostile world. But the
danger was too great to permit Jugurtha to relax his efforts through the
failure of his friends. He appealed to his own resources, which
consisted of the passive obedience of his immediate attendants and the
power of his purse. To Bomilcar his most trusted servant he gave the
mission of making one final effort with the gold which had already done
so much. Men might be hired who would lie in wait for Massiva. If
possible, the matter was to be effected secretly. If secrecy was
impossible, the Numidian must yet be slain. His death was deserving of
any risk. Bomilcar was prompt in carrying out his mission. A band of
hired spies watched every movement of Massiva. They learnt the hours at
which he left and returned to his home; the places he visited, the times
at which his visits were paid. When the seasonable hour arrived, the
ambush was set by Bomilcar. The elaborate precautions which had been
taken proved to have been thrown away; the assassin who struck the fatal
blow was no adept in the art of secret killing. Hardly had Massiva
fallen when the alarm was given and the murderer seized.[964] The men
who had an interest in Massiva's life were too numerous and too great to
make it possible for the act to sink to the level of ordinary street
outrages, or for the assassin caught red-handed to be regarded as the
sole author of the crime. The consul Albinus amongst others pressed the
murderer to reveal the instigator of the deed, and the senate must have
promised the immunity that was sometimes given to the criminal who named
his accomplices. The man named Bomilcar, who was thereupon formally
arraigned of the murder and bound over to stand his trial before a
criminal court. Even this step was taken with considerable hesitation,
for it was admitted that the safe-conduct which protected Jugurtha
extended to his retinue.[965] The king and his court were strictly
speaking extra-territorial, and the strict letter of international law
would have handed Bomilcar over for trial by his sovereign. But it was
felt that a departure from custom was a less evil than to allow such an
outrage to remain unpunished, and it was easier to satisfy the popular
conscience by finding Bomilcar guilty than to fix the crime on the man
whom every one named as its ultimate author. Jugurtha himself was
inclined for a time to acquiesce in this view; he regarded the trial of
his favourite as inevitable and furnished fifty of his own acquaintances
who were willing to give bail for the appearance of the accused. But
reflection convinced him that the sacrifice was unnecessary; his name
could not be saved by Bomilcar's doom, and no influence or wealth could
create even a pretence at belief in his own innocence. His standing in
Rome was gone, and this made him the more eager to consider his standing
as King of Numidia. If Bomilcar were sacrificed, his powerlessness to
protect the chief member of his retinue might shake the allegiance of
his own subjects.[966] He therefore smuggled his accused henchman from
Rome and had him conveyed secretly to Numidia. This, of all Jugurtha's
acts of perfidy perhaps the mildest and most excusable, in spite of the
awkward predicament in which it left the fifty securities, was the last
of the baffling incidents that had been crowded into his short sojourn
at Rome. His presence must have been an annoyance to every one. He had
exhausted his friends, had failed to serve the purposes of the
opposition leader, and had inspired in the senate memories and
anticipations which they were willing to forget. When that body ordered
him to quit Italy--it must have expressed the wish of every class.
Within a few days of Bomilcar's disappearance the king himself was
leaving the gates. It is said that he often turned and took a long and
silent look at the distant town, and that at last the words broke from
him "A city for sale and ripe for ruin, if only a purchaser can be
found!" [967]
The departure of Jugurtha implied the renewal of the war. The compact
made with Bestia and Scaurus had been tacitly, if not formally,
repudiated by the senate, and the fiction that Jugurtha had surrendered,
although it had played its part in the negotiations which brought him to
Rome, disappeared with the compact. Since, however, the right of
Jugurtha to retain Numidia, which was the objectionable element in the
late agreement, seems to have been implied rather than expressed, it may
have seemed possible to take the view that Jugurtha's surrender was
unconditional, and that the war was now the pursuit of an escaped
prisoner of Rome. Such a conception was absolutely worthless so far as
most of the practical difficulties of the task were concerned; for,
whether Jugurtha was an enemy or a rebel, he was equally difficult to
secure; but it may have had a considerable influence on the principles
on which the Numidian war was now to be conducted, and we shall find on
the part of Rome a growing disinclination to give Jugurtha the benefits
of those rules of civilised warfare of which she generally professed a
scrupulous observance in the letter if not in the spirit. The object of
the war was, through its very simplicity, extraordinarily difficult of
attainment. It was neither more nor less than the seizure of the person
of Jugurtha. Numidia had no common government and no unity but those
personified in its king, and the conquest of fragments of the country
would be almost useless until the king was secured. The hope of setting
up a rival pretender, whose recognition by Rome might have enabled
organisation to keep pace with conquest, had perished with the murder of
Massiva,[968] although it is very questionable whether the name even of
the son of the warlike Gulussa would have detached any of the military
strength of Numidia from a monarch who had stirred the fighting spirit
of the nation and was regarded as the embodiment of its manliest
traditions. The outlook of the consul Albinus, the new organiser of the
war on the Roman side, was indeed a poor one, and it was made still
poorer by the fact that a considerable portion of his year of office had
already lapsed, and the events of his campaign must of necessity be
crowded into the few remaining months of the summer and the early
autumn. Had there been any spirit of self-sacrifice in Roman commanders,
or any true continuity in Roman military policies, Albinus might have
set himself the useful task of organising victory for his successors;
yet he cannot be wholly blamed for the hope, wild and foolish as it
seems, of striking some decisive blow in the narrow time allowed
him.[969] The military operations of the war at this stage become almost
wholly subordinate to political considerations. Senate and consuls were
being swept off their feet and forced into a disastrous celerity or
superficiality of action by the growing tide of indignation which
animated commons and capitalists alike; and the feeling that something
decisive must be accomplished for the satisfaction of public opinion,
was supplemented by the lower but very human consideration that a
general must seem to have attained some success if he hoped to have his
command prolonged for another year. The senate, it is true, might have
insight enough to see that success in a war such as that in Numidia
could not be gauged by the brilliance of the results obtained; but how
were they to defend their verdict to the people unless they could point
to exploits such as would dazzle the popular eye? But although a
feverish policy seemed the readiest mode of escape from public suspicion
or inglorious retirement, it had its own particular nemesis, of which
Albinus seemed for the moment to be oblivious. To finish the war in a
short time meant to finish it by any means that came to hand. But, if a
striking victory did not surrender Jugurtha into the hands of his
conqueror--and even the most glorious victory did not under the
circumstances of the war imply the capture of the vanquished--what means
remained except negotiation and the voluntary surrender of the
king?[970] Such means had been employed by Bestia, and every one knew
now with what result. The policy of haste might breed more suspicion and
bitterness than the most desultory conduct of the campaign.
Albinus made rapid but ample preparation of supplies, money and
munitions of war, and hurried off to the scene of his intended
successes. The army which he found must have been in a miserable
condition, if we may judge by the state which the last glimpse of it
revealed; but his fixed intention of accomplishing something, no matter
what, must have rendered adequate re-organisation impossible, and he
took the field against Jugurtha with forces whose utter demoralisation
was soon to be put to a frightful test. The war immediately assumed that
character of an unsuccessful hunt, varied by indecisive engagements and
fruitless victories, which it was to retain even under the guidance of
the ablest that Rome could furnish. Jugurtha adhered to his inevitable
plan of a prolonged and desultory campaign over a vast area of country;
the size and physical character of his kingdom, the extraordinary
mobility of his troops, the credulity and anxious ambition of his
opponent, were all elements of strength which he used with consummate
skill. He retired before the threatening column; then, that his men
might not lose heart, he threw himself with startling suddenness on the
foe; at other times he mocked the consul with hopes of peace, entered
into negotiations for a surrender and, when he had disarmed his
adversary by hopes, suddenly drew back in a pretended access of
distrust. The futility of Albinus's efforts was so pronounced--a
futility all the more impressive from the intensity of his preparations
and his excessive eagerness to reach the field of action--that people
ignorant of the conditions of the campaign began again to whisper the
perpetual suspicion of collusion with the king.[971] The suspicion might
not have been avoided even by a commander who declined negotiation; but
Albinus's case had been rendered worse by his unsuccessful efforts to
play with a master of craft, and it was with a reputation greatly
weakened from a military, and slightly damaged from a moral, point of
view that he brought the campaign to a close, sent his army into winter
quarters, and left for Rome to preside at the electoral meetings of the
people.[972] The Comitia for the appointment of the consuls and the
praetors were at this time held during the latter half of the year, but
at no regular date, the time for their summons depending on the
convenience of the presiding consul and on his freedom from other and
more pressing engagements.[973] Albinus may have arrived in Rome during
the late autumn. Had he been able to get the business over and return to
Africa for the last month or two of the year, his conduct of the war
might have been considered ineffective but not disastrous, and the
senate might have been spared a problem more terrible than any that had
yet arisen out of its relations with Jugurtha. For Albinus, though
sanguine and unpractical, seems to have been reasonably prudent, and he
might have handed over an army, unsuccessful but not disgraced, and
recruited in strength by its long winter quarters, to the care of a more
fortunate successor. But, as it happened, every public department in
Rome was feeling the strain caused by a minor constitutional crisis
which had arisen amongst the magistrates of the Plebs. The sudden
revival of the people's aspirations had doubtless led to a certain
amount of misguided ambition on the part of some of its leaders, and the
tribunate was now the centre of an agitation which was a faint
counterpart of the closing scenes in the Gracchan struggles. Two
occupants of the office, Publius Lucullus and Lucius Annius, were
attempting to secure re-election for another year. Their colleagues
resisted their effort, probably on the ground that the conditions
requisite for re-election were not in existence, and this conflict not
merely prevented the appointment of plebeian magistrates from being
completed, but stayed the progress of the other elective Comitia as
well.[974] The tribunes, whether those who aimed at re-election or those
who attempted to prevent it, had either declared a justitium or
threatened to veto every attempt made by a magistrate of the people to
hold an electoral assembly; and the consequence of this impasse was
that, when the year drew to a close,[975] no new magistrates were in
existence and the consul Albinus was still absent from his
African command.
Unfortunately the absence of the proconsul, as Albinus had now become in
default of the appointment of a successor, did not have the effect of
checking the enterprise of the army. It was now under the authority of
Aulus Albinus, to whom his brother had delegated the command of the
province and the forces during his stay at Rome. The stimulus which
moved Aulus to action is not known. The unexpected duration of his
temporary command may have familiarised him with power, stimulated his
undoub |