The Jugurthine War

Wrongly does the human race complain of its own nature — that, weak and short-lived, it is governed by chance rather than by virtue. For on the contrary, when you reflect, you would find nothing greater nor more excellent, and that it is industry, rather than force or time, that human nature lacks. But the guide and commander of mortal life is the mind. When it advances toward the glory of virtue by the road of virtue, it is abundantly strong and potent and renowned, and has no need of fortune; for fortune can neither give nor wrench from any man his probity, his industry, and the other good arts. But if, caught by base desires, it has sunk into sloth and the pleasures of the body, after using a ruinous indulgence for a little while, once through neglect strength, time, and talent have run to waste, the weakness of nature is blamed: each man shifts his own fault onto circumstances. But if men had as much care for good things as the zeal with which they pursue what is another’s and profits nothing — much of it even perilous and ruinous — they would not be ruled by chance more than they ruled it, and would advance to such greatness that in place of mortals they would become eternal in glory.

For just as the human race is composed of body and soul, so all our affairs and all our pursuits follow the nature, some of the body, some of the mind. And so a splendid face, great riches, and besides them bodily strength and all else of this kind soon slip away; but the surpassing deeds of the intellect, like the soul, are immortal. In the end, of the goods of body and of fortune there is an end as there was a beginning, and all that has risen sets, and all that has grown grows old: the mind, uncorrupted, eternal, ruler of the human race, drives all things and holds them, and is not itself held. The more, then, is the perversity of those to be wondered at who, given over to the joys of the body, pass their lives in luxury and idleness, but let the intellect — than which there is nothing better or larger in the nature of mortals — grow numb through neglect and sloth, especially when there are so many and so various arts of the mind by which the highest renown is won.

But of these, magistracies and military commands — in short, all care of public affairs — seem to me least to be desired in this age, since neither is honor given to virtue, nor are those who came by it through fraud thereby any safer or any more honorable. For to rule one’s fatherland or one’s kinsmen by force, though you may have the power and may correct their faults, is nevertheless oppressive, especially since all changes of affairs portend slaughter, flight, and other deeds of an enemy. But to strain in vain, and by wearing oneself out to gain nothing but hatred, is the height of madness — unless perhaps some shameful and ruinous lust holds a man to make a present of his own honor and freedom to the power of a few.

But of the other pursuits that are practiced by the intellect, the record of deeds done is among the most useful. Of its worth, because many have spoken, I think it should be passed over — and at the same time, lest anyone suppose through presumption that I am exalting my own pursuit by praising it. And I believe there will be men who, because I have resolved to pass my life far from public affairs, will fasten the name of idleness on a labor of mine so great and so useful — certainly those to whom canvassing the plebs and seeking favor by banquets seems the highest industry. But if they will consider in what times I attained office, and what sort of men could not gain the same, and afterward what kinds of men have come into the Senate, they will surely judge that I changed the purpose of my mind from merit rather than from sloth, and that greater profit will come to the commonwealth from my leisure than from others’ busyness. For I have often heard that Quintus Maximus, Publius Scipio, and besides them the illustrious men of our state were wont to say that, whenever they gazed on the masks of their ancestors, their spirit was kindled most fiercely to virtue. Surely it was not that the wax or the figure had such force in itself, but that by the memory of deeds done this flame grew in the breasts of excellent men, and was not quieted before their own virtue had equaled the renown and glory of those before them. But on the contrary, who is there in all this present age of such morals who does not contend with his forebears in riches and in spending rather than in probity and industry? Even new men, who before were wont to outstrip the nobility by virtue, now strive after commands and honors by stealth and by brigandage rather than by good arts — as though the praetorship and the consulship and all else of this kind were in themselves bright and magnificent, and were not reckoned according to the virtue of those who hold them. But I have run on too freely and too far, out of disgust and weariness at the morals of the state. Now I return to my undertaking.

I am about to write of the war that the Roman people waged with Jugurtha, king of the Numidians: first, because it was great and savage and of shifting victory; next, because then for the first time a stand was made against the arrogance of the nobility — a struggle that threw into confusion all things divine and human, and advanced to such a pitch of frenzy that civil passions found their end only in war and the laying waste of Italy. But before I unfold the beginning of such a matter, I shall go back over a few things, so that the whole may be more and more illuminated and laid open for the understanding. In the Second Punic War, when Hannibal, leader of the Carthaginians, had worn down the resources of Italy more than any other since the greatness of the Roman name, Masinissa, king of the Numidians, having been received into friendship by Publius Scipio — who afterward had from his valor the surname Africanus — had performed many brilliant feats of arms. For these, when the Carthaginians had been conquered and Syphax taken, whose empire in Africa was great and broad, the Roman people gave as a gift to the king all the cities and lands they had seized by force. And so the friendship of Masinissa remained good and honorable to us. But the end of his reign and of his life was one and the same. Then Micipsa his son obtained the kingdom alone, his brothers Mastanabal and Gulussa being carried off by disease. He begot Adherbal and Hiempsal, and Jugurtha, the son of his brother Mastanabal — whom Masinissa, because he was born of a concubine, had left in private station — he kept at home with the same care as his own sons.

As soon as he came of age, strong in body, handsome in face, but by far most powerful in intellect, he did not give himself over to be corrupted by luxury or idleness, but, as is the custom of that nation, he rode, he hurled the javelin, he contended with his fellows in the foot-race; and though he outstripped them all in glory, he was nonetheless dear to all. Besides, he spent most of his time in hunting, and was the first, or among the first, to strike the lion and the other wild beasts: he did the most, and of himself spoke the least. Although at first Micipsa had been glad of these things, judging that Jugurtha’s valor would be a glory to his kingdom, yet when he understood that the young man was growing greater and greater, while his own age was spent and his children small, deeply troubled by the matter he turned many things over in his mind. He was terrified by the nature of mortals, greedy of power and headlong to glut the craving of the spirit; besides, by the ripeness of his own and his children’s years, which carries off sidewise even men of moderate sort by the hope of plunder; and to this was added the ardor of the Numidians, kindled toward Jugurtha — from which, should he kill such a man by treachery, he was anxious lest some rising or war should break out.

Hemmed in by these difficulties, when he saw that a man so welcome to his people could be crushed neither by force nor by ambush — for Jugurtha was ready of hand and grasping after military glory — he resolved to expose him to dangers and in that way to try his fortune. And so in the Numantine War, when Micipsa was sending the Roman people auxiliaries of horse and foot, hoping that either by the display of his valor or by the enemy’s savagery Jugurtha would easily fall, he set him over the Numidians whom he was sending into Spain. But the thing turned out far otherwise than he had reckoned. For Jugurtha, being of an energetic and keen intellect, once he had come to know the nature of Publius Scipio, then the Romans’ commander, and the ways of the enemy, by much labor and much care, and besides by obeying most modestly and often going to meet dangers, had in a short time risen to such renown that he was deeply dear to our men and a great terror to the Numantines. And indeed — which is hardest of all — he was both vigorous in battle and good in counsel; of which the one is wont, out of foresight, to breed fear, the other, out of boldness, rashness. And so the commander handled nearly all his hard tasks through Jugurtha, counted him among his friends, and embraced him more and more from day to day, since neither his counsel nor any undertaking of his was ever in vain. To this were added a generous spirit and a shrewdness of intellect, by which he had bound to himself in close friendship many of the Romans.

At that time there were in our army a good many men, new and noble, to whom riches were preferable to the good and the honorable — factious at home, powerful among the allies, more notable than honorable — who fired Jugurtha’s no small spirit by promising that, if king Micipsa should die, he would hold the rule of Numidia alone: in himself was the greatest valor; at Rome everything was for sale. But after Numantia had been destroyed and Publius Scipio had resolved to dismiss the auxiliaries and return home himself, having given Jugurtha gifts and praised him magnificently before the assembly, he led him into his headquarters and there privately advised him to cultivate the friendship of the Roman people publicly rather than privately, and not to grow used to bribing any man: it was dangerous to buy from a few what belonged to the many. If he would remain in his own arts, glory and a kingdom would come to him of their own accord; but if he pressed on too hastily, he would fall headlong by his own money.

Having so spoken, he dismissed him with a letter to deliver to Micipsa. Its purport was this: "The valor of your Jugurtha in the Numantine War was by far the greatest, which thing I know for certain is a joy to you. To us he is dear for his deserts; that he may be the same to the Senate and people of Rome, we shall strive with all our power. For your part, in the name of our friendship, I congratulate you. You have a man worthy of yourself and of his grandsire Masinissa." And so the king, when from the commander’s letter he learned that what he had heard by report was so, moved both by the man’s valor and by his favor, bent his own purpose and set about overcoming Jugurtha by kindnesses; and at once he adopted him and in his will appointed him heir equally with his sons. But himself a few years later, worn out by disease and age, when he understood that the end of his life was at hand, is said to have spoken words of this sort with Jugurtha, in the presence of his friends and kinsmen and likewise of his sons Adherbal and Hiempsal:

"When you were a small boy, Jugurtha — your father lost, without hope, without means — I received you into my kingdom, supposing that I should be no less dear to you than to my own children, had I begotten any, for my kindnesses. Nor has the thing proved me false. For — to pass over your other great and notable deeds — most recently, returning from Numantia, you honored me and my kingdom with glory, and by your valor made the Romans, from our friends, our closest friends. In Spain the name of our family was renewed. In the end — the hardest thing among mortals — by glory you conquered envy. Now, since nature is bringing the end of my life, by this right hand, by the faith owed to the kingdom, I charge and entreat you to hold dear these who are your kin by birth and, by my kindness, your brothers, and not to choose to attach to yourself strangers rather than to keep those joined to you by blood. It is not armies nor treasuries that are the safeguards of a kingdom, but friends — whom you can neither compel by arms nor purchase with gold: they are won by service and by faith. And who is a closer friend than brother to brother? Or what stranger will you find faithful, if you have been an enemy to your own? For my part, I hand over to you a kingdom firm, if you prove good, but feeble, if bad. For by concord small things grow, by discord the greatest fall apart. But before these others, Jugurtha, it falls to you — who are the elder in age and in wisdom — to see that nothing turn out otherwise. For in every contest he who is the more powerful, even if he suffers wrong, yet, because he can do more, is thought to do it. And you, Adherbal and Hiempsal, revere and observe such a man as this, imitate his valor, and strive that I be not seen to have taken better children than I begot."

To this Jugurtha, although he understood that the king had spoken feigned things and was himself revolving far otherwise in his mind, answered graciously, as the occasion required. Micipsa a few days later dies. After they had performed the funeral rites magnificently in the royal manner, the princes came together into one place to settle among themselves all their affairs. But Hiempsal, who was the youngest of them, fierce by nature and already before this scornful of Jugurtha’s low birth, because on his mother’s side he was of unequal stock, seated himself at Adherbal’s right hand, that Jugurtha should not be the middle of the three — which among the Numidians is counted a place of honor. Then, however, worn down by his brother, he was with difficulty drawn over to the other side, to yield to Jugurtha’s age. There, when they were debating much about the administration of the realm, Jugurtha among other matters throws out that all the acts and decrees of the last five years ought to be rescinded, for in that time Micipsa, worn out by his years, had been of little force in mind. Then Hiempsal in turn answered that this pleased him, for it was within these last three years that Jugurtha himself had come into the kingdom by adoption. That word sank into Jugurtha’s breast more deeply than anyone had reckoned. And so from that time, troubled by anger and fear, he set himself to plot, to prepare, and to hold in his mind only those things by which Hiempsal might be taken by treachery. When these went forward too slowly and his fierce spirit was not soothed, he resolved to accomplish his undertaking by whatever means.

At the first meeting of the princes, which I have recorded above, on account of their dissension it had been resolved to divide the treasuries and to fix the boundaries of the realm for each. And so a time is appointed for both matters, but the earlier one for the distributing of the money. Meanwhile the princes withdrew, one to one place, another to another, near the treasuries. But Hiempsal, in the town of Thirmida, happened to be using the house of a man who had been Jugurtha’s nearest lictor and had always been dear and welcome to him. This man, offered to him by chance as an instrument, Jugurtha loads with promises and drives to go, as if to visit his own house, and to prepare counterfeit keys to the gates — for the true ones used to be carried back to Hiempsal — but, when the matter should require, he himself would come with a great band. The Numida carries out the commands in a short time and, as he had been taught, by night brings Jugurtha’s soldiers in. They, after they had burst into the house, scattered to seek the king, killing some as they slept, others as they ran to meet them, ransacking the hidden places, breaking open what was shut, filling all with uproar and tumult, when meanwhile Hiempsal is found hiding in the hut of a serving-woman, to which at the first, panicked and ignorant of the place, he had fled. The Numidians, as they had been ordered, carry his head back to Jugurtha.

The report of so great a crime is in a short time spread abroad through all Africa. Fear seizes Adherbal and all who had been under Micipsa’s rule. The Numidians split into two factions: the greater number follow Adherbal, but the better men for war that other. And so Jugurtha arms as great forces as he can, joins cities to his sway, some by force, others by their own will, and prepares to command all Numidia. Adherbal, although he had sent envoys to Rome to inform the Senate of his brother’s murder and of his own fortunes, yet, relying on the multitude of his soldiers, was making ready to contend in arms. But when the matter came to a trial, defeated, he fled from the field into the Province, and from there hastened to Rome. Then Jugurtha, his designs accomplished, when he was master of all Numidia, in his leisure turning his deed over in his mind, began to fear the Roman people, and against its anger he had hope nowhere but in the greed of the nobility and in his own money. So within a few days he sends envoys to Rome with much gold and silver, charging them first to glut his old friends with gifts, then to acquire new ones — in short, not to delay in procuring by lavishing whatever they could. But when the envoys came to Rome and, according to the king’s instruction, sent great gifts to his connections and to others whose authority at that time held sway in the Senate, so great a change came over them that, from the greatest ill-will, Jugurtha passed into the favor and good graces of the nobility. Some led by hope, others by reward, they strove by canvassing the senators one by one to keep any heavier measure from being passed against him. And so, when the envoys were confident enough, on an appointed day the Senate is granted to both parties. Then Adherbal, we are told, spoke in this manner:

"Conscript fathers, Micipsa my father, dying, charged me to hold that only the administration of the kingdom of Numidia was mine, but that its right and sovereignty lay with you; meanwhile that I should strive to be of the utmost service to the Roman people at home and in war, and should reckon you in the place of kinsmen, in the place of marriage-connections: if I did this, in your friendship I should have an army, riches, the bulwarks of my kingdom. While I was turning over these precepts of my father, Jugurtha — the most criminal man of all that the earth sustains — in contempt of your sovereignty drove me, the grandson of Masinissa and from my birth an ally and friend of the Roman people, out of my kingdom and all my fortunes. And I, conscript fathers, since I was to come into such depths of misery, could wish that I might ask aid of you for my own services rather than for those of my ancestors — and above all that benefits were owed me by the Roman people which I had no need of; and next, if they had to be sought, that I might use them as my due. But since probity is not safe of itself, and it was not in my hands what sort of man Jugurtha would be, I have fled to you, conscript fathers, to whom — which is the most wretched thing for me — I am forced to be a burden before I am of use. Other kings have either been received into your friendship when conquered in war, or in their own doubtful straits have sought your alliance; our family established friendship with the Roman people in the Carthaginian war, at a time when your faith was more to be sought than your fortune. Do not suffer their offspring, conscript fathers — do not suffer me, the grandson of Masinissa — to beg aid of you in vain. If I had no cause for obtaining it beyond my pitiable fortune — that I, a little before a king mighty in birth, in fame, and in resources, am now disfigured by woes, helpless, and wait upon the wealth of strangers — yet it would befit the majesty of the Roman people to ward off wrong and not to suffer any man’s kingdom to grow by crime. But I am cast out of those territories which the Roman people gave to my ancestors, from which my father and grandfather, together with you, drove out Syphax and the Carthaginians. Your gifts have been wrenched from me, conscript fathers; in the wrong done to me, you yourselves are scorned. Alas, wretched me! To this, my father Micipsa, have your kindnesses come — that the man you made equal with your own children and partner in your kingdom should be of all men the destroyer of your stock? Shall my family then never be at rest? Shall we forever be tossed in blood, in steel, in flight? While the Carthaginians stood unbroken, we suffered all manner of cruelties with reason: the enemy at our flank, you our friends far off, all our hope in arms. After that plague was driven out of Africa, we passed our days in gladness and peace, since we had no enemy — unless perhaps one you had bidden us face. But behold, all at once, Jugurtha, lifting himself up in intolerable boldness, in crime and arrogance, after killing my brother and his own kinsman, first made that brother’s kingdom the spoil of his crime; then, when he could not catch me by the same wiles — me looking for nothing less than force or war within your sovereignty, as you see — he made me an exile from fatherland and home, helpless and buried in miseries, so that I am safer anywhere than in my own kingdom. I used to think, conscript fathers, as I had heard my father declare, that those who diligently cultivated your friendship undertook much toil, but were of all men the most secure. What lay in our family’s power, it performed — to be at your side in all your wars; that we be safe in peace lies in your hands, conscript fathers. Our father left us two brothers; a third, Jugurtha, he thought his kindnesses would bind to us. One of them has been murdered; from the impious hands of the other I myself scarcely escaped. What am I to do? Or to what refuge, unhappy, shall I above all turn? All the safeguards of my house are extinguished. My father, as was inevitable, gave way to nature. My brother — by one whom it least became — has had his life torn from him by crime. My relations by marriage, my friends, my other kinsmen, one disaster has crushed one, another another: taken by Jugurtha, some have been nailed to the cross, others thrown to the beasts, a few, to whom life was left, shut up in darkness, with grief and mourning drag out a life heavier than death. If all that I have lost, or that from dear has been made hostile, were yet unharmed, still, if any evil befell me unforeseen, I should call on you, conscript fathers, to whom, by the greatness of your empire, the right and the wrongs of all men ought to be a care. But now, an exile from fatherland and home, alone and lacking all that is honorable, where shall I turn or whom shall I appeal to? To nations or to kings, all of whom are hostile to our family because of your friendship? Can I go anywhere where there are not many hostile monuments of my forefathers? Or can any man pity us who was once your enemy? Lastly, Masinissa schooled us, conscript fathers, to cultivate none but the Roman people, to take up no new alliances, no new treaties: in your friendship would be defenses for us abundantly great; should the fortune of this empire be changed, we must perish along with it. By valor and by the will of the gods you are great and rich, all things are favorable and obedient to you: the more easily may you take thought for the wrongs of your allies. This alone I dread — that private friendship with Jugurtha, too little known, may carry some men sidewise. These, I hear, strain with all their might to canvass and to wear you down one by one, that you decide nothing about an absent man with his cause unheard; that I make up my words and feign flight, when I might have stayed in my kingdom. Would that I might see that man, by whose impious deed I have been flung into these miseries, feigning these same things — and that at last, whether among you or among the immortal gods, care for human affairs may arise: so that he who is now fierce and famous through his crimes, racked by every ill, may pay heavy penalties for his impiety toward our father, for the murder of my brother, and for my miseries. Now, now, brother dearest to my soul, though life was torn from you untimely and by the hand from which it least should have come, yet I think your lot is to be rejoiced at rather than mourned. For you lost, along with your life, not a kingdom but flight, exile, beggary, and all these woes that press on me. But I, unhappy, hurled from my father’s kingdom into such great evils, offer a spectacle of human fortune, uncertain what to do — whether to avenge your wrongs while I myself stand in need of aid, or to take thought for a kingdom whose power of life and death hangs on the resources of others. Would that death were an honorable end to my fortunes, and that I might not be seen to live despised, if, worn out by ills, I gave way to wrong. Now neither is it pleasant to live nor lawful to die without dishonor. Conscript fathers, by yourselves, by your children and your parents, by the majesty of the Roman people, succor me in my wretchedness, go to meet the wrong, do not suffer the kingdom of Numidia, which is yours, to rot away through the crime and the bloodshed of our family."

After the king made an end of speaking, Jugurtha’s envoys, relying more on bribery than on their cause, reply in few words: Hiempsal had been killed by the Numidians for his savagery; Adherbal, making war of his own accord, after being beaten was complaining because he had not been able to do the wrong. Jugurtha asked of the Senate that they think him no other than he had been known at Numantia, and not set the words of an enemy before his own deeds. Then both parties withdraw from the senate-house. The Senate is at once consulted. The partisans of the envoys, and besides a great part of the Senate corrupted by favor, made light of Adherbal’s words and exalted the valor of Jugurtha with praises; with their influence, their voice, in short by every means, they labored for another’s crime and shame as though for their own glory. But on the other side a few, to whom the good and the right were dearer than riches, advised that aid be brought to Adherbal and the death of Hiempsal severely avenged; but of them all, most of all Aemilius Scaurus, a man noble, energetic, factious, greedy for power, for honor, and for riches, but cunningly hiding his own vices. He, when he saw the king’s bribery notorious and shameless, fearing — as is usual in such a case — that the polluted license might kindle ill-will, held his spirit back from its accustomed lust.

Yet there prevailed in the Senate that party which set price or favor above truth. A decree is passed that ten commissioners should divide between Jugurtha and Adherbal the kingdom which Micipsa had held. The chief of this commission was Lucius Opimius, a man of mark and then powerful in the Senate, because as consul, after Gaius Gracchus and Marcus Fulvius Flaccus had been killed, he had exercised the victory of the nobility over the plebs most savagely. Although Jugurtha had counted him at Rome among his enemies, yet he received him most attentively, and by giving and promising much brought it about that Opimius set the king’s advantage before his own fame, his faith — in short, before all his interests. Attacking the rest of the commissioners in the same way, he wins most of them over; to a few, faith was dearer than money. In the division, the part of Numidia that borders on Mauretania, richer in soil and in men, is handed to Jugurtha; the other part, more notable in appearance than in use, with more harbors and more adorned with buildings, Adherbal took for his own.

The matter seems to require that I set out in a few words the lie of Africa and touch on those nations with whom we have had war or friendship. But of the regions and peoples that, by reason of heat or ruggedness, and likewise the deserts, are less frequented, I could not easily tell what has been established for certain. The rest I shall dispatch in the fewest words. In the division of the earth, most have set Africa as a third part; a few hold that there are only Asia and Europe, and that Africa lies within Europe. Its bounds are: on the west the strait of our sea and the Ocean; on the side of the rising sun a sloping expanse, which place the inhabitants call Catabathmos. The sea is savage, without harbors; the soil fruitful in grain, good for cattle, barren of trees; in sky and earth a scarcity of water. The race of men is sound in body, swift, enduring of toil; and old age undoes most of them, save those who have perished by steel or by beasts, for disease seldom masters any; and besides, there are very many animals of a noxious kind. But what mortals held Africa at the beginning, and who came afterward, or in what way they mingled among themselves — although it differs from the account that holds most men, yet, as it was interpreted for us from the Punic books said to be king Hiempsal’s, and as the dwellers of that land think the matter to stand, I shall tell in the fewest words. But the credit for it shall rest with its authors.

Africa at the first was held by the Gaetulians and the Libyans, rough and uncultivated, whose food was the flesh of wild beasts and the fodder of the ground, as for cattle. They were governed neither by custom nor by law nor by any man’s command: wandering and scattered, they had for dwellings the places to which night had driven them. But after Hercules died in Spain — as the Africans suppose — his army, composed of various nations, having lost its leader, and with many on every side seeking commands for themselves, in a short time broke apart. From that number the Medes, the Persians, and the Armenians, carried over by ship into Africa, took the regions nearest to our sea, but the Persians more toward the Ocean; and these used the inverted hulls of their ships for huts, because there was neither timber in the fields nor the means of buying or bartering from the Spaniards: the great sea and an unknown tongue barred exchange. These little by little mingled the Gaetulians with themselves through intermarriage, and, because in their frequent trials of land they had sought now these places, now those, they called themselves Numidians. And to this day the dwellings of the rustic Numidians, which they call mapalia, oblong, with curving sides, are roofed like the keels of ships. But to the Medes and the Armenians the Libyans attached themselves — for these dwelt nearer the African sea, while the Gaetulians ranged more under the sun, not far from the heats — and these early on had towns; for, divided from Spain only by a strait, they had set up an exchange of goods between themselves. Their name the Libyans gradually corrupted, in their barbarous tongue calling them Mauri instead of Medes. But the fortunes of the Persians quickly grew, and afterward, under the name of Numidians, because of their multitude they parted from their kin and took possession of those places which, next to Carthage, are called Numidia. Then each people, relying on the other, brought their neighbors under their sway by arms or by fear, and won themselves name and glory — more those who had pressed on to our sea, because the Libyans are less warlike than the Gaetulians. In the end, the lower part of Africa was for the most part possessed by the Numidians; all the conquered passed into the race and name of their rulers.

Afterward the Phoenicians, some to lessen the multitude at home, part of them — the common people and others greedy for revolution stirred by desire of empire — founded Hippo, Hadrumetum, Leptis, and other cities on the sea-coast; and these, soon much grown, were some a protection, others an ornament to their mother-cities. For of Carthage I think it better to be silent than to say too little, since time warns me to hasten elsewhere. So, near the Catabathmos — the place that divides Egypt from Africa — as one follows the sea, the first city is Cyrene, a colony of the Theraeans, and then in order the two Syrtes and, between them, Leptis; then the altars of the Philaeni, the place the Carthaginians held as the boundary of their empire toward Egypt, and after that other Punic cities. The rest of the regions, as far as Mauretania, the Numidians hold; nearest to Spain are the Moors. Above Numidia, we are told, are the Gaetulians, some in huts, others ranging more wildly as nomads; beyond them are the Aethiopians, and then the lands scorched by the fires of the sun. So in the Jugurthine war the Roman people administered through magistrates most of the Punic towns and the territories the Carthaginians had latterly held; the greater part of the Gaetulians, and the Numidians as far as the river Mulucha, were under Jugurtha; over all the Moors king Bocchus ruled, knowing nothing of the Roman people but the name, and to us likewise, before, unknown in war or in peace. Of Africa and its inhabitants enough has been said for the matter’s need.

After the kingdom was divided and the commissioners had left Africa, and Jugurtha saw that, against the fear in his mind, he had won the prize of his crime — holding it for certain, as he had heard from his friends at Numantia, that at Rome everything was for sale, and at the same time fired by the promises of those he had a little before loaded with gifts — he set his mind on the kingdom of Adherbal. He himself was keen and warlike; the man he was after was quiet, unwarlike, of placid temper, ripe for wrong, fearing rather than to be feared. And so all at once he invades his borders with a great band, takes many men together with cattle and other plunder, sets fire to the buildings, and rides in hostile fashion with his cavalry against most places; then with his whole multitude he turns back into his own kingdom, supposing that Adherbal, stung by resentment, would avenge his wrongs by force, and that this would be the ground of a war. But Adherbal, because he judged himself no match in arms, and relied on the friendship of the Roman people more than on the Numidians, sent envoys to Jugurtha to complain of the injuries. And though these brought back insulting words, yet he resolved to bear anything rather than take up war, because the earlier attempt had turned out badly. Nor for that was Jugurtha’s craving any less, since in his mind he had already seized the whole of Adherbal’s kingdom. And so not, as before, with a band of marauders, but with a great army got together, he began to wage war and openly to seek the rule of all Numidia. And wherever he went, he laid waste cities and fields, drove off plunder, raised his own men’s spirit and the enemy’s terror.

Adherbal, when he understood that it had come to this — that the kingdom must either be given up or kept by arms — of necessity gathers forces and goes out to meet Jugurtha. Meanwhile, not far from the sea, near the town of Cirta, the two armies took up position; and because it was the close of day, the battle was not begun. But when much of the night had passed, in the still-dim light Jugurtha’s soldiers, at a given signal, fall upon the enemy’s camp, and rout and scatter them, some half-asleep, others as they were taking up their arms. Adherbal with a few horsemen flees to Cirta, and had there not been a multitude of toga-clad Romans, who kept the pursuing Numidians from the walls, the war begun that day between the two kings would have been begun and finished in a single day. So Jugurtha invests the town and sets about storming it with mantlets and towers and engines of every kind, hastening above all to forestall the coming of the envoys whom, he had heard, Adherbal had sent to Rome before the battle was fought. But after the Senate heard of their war, three young men are sent as envoys into Africa, to approach both kings and announce, in the name of the Senate and people of Rome, their will and judgment that they withdraw from arms and settle their disputes by law rather than by war: thus it was worthy both of them and of the Romans.

The envoys come in haste into Africa, the more so because at Rome, while they were making ready to set out, it was being rumored that the battle had been fought and Cirta besieged; but that report was a mild one. Jugurtha, when he had heard their address, replied that to him nothing was greater or dearer than the authority of the Senate. From his youth he had so striven as to win the approval of every best man; by valor, not by knavery, he had pleased Publius Scipio, that greatest of men; for the same qualities he had been adopted into the kingdom by Micipsa, not for any want of children. But the more good and vigorous deeds he had done, the less could his spirit endure a wrong. Adherbal had treacherously plotted against his life; when he discovered it, he had gone to meet the crime. The Roman people would do neither rightly nor well, if they barred him from the law of nations. In short, he would soon send envoys to Rome about the whole matter. So the two parties part. The chance to address Adherbal was not given.

Jugurtha, when he judged they had left Africa, and because by the nature of the ground he could not take Cirta by arms, surrounds the walls with a rampart and a ditch, raises towers, and strengthens them with garrisons; besides, by day and night he keeps making trial, by force or by guile; to the defenders of the walls he holds out now rewards, now terror; he rouses his own men with exhortation to valor; in short, intent on all things, he makes everything ready. Adherbal, when he understands that all his fortunes are set at the last extremity, his enemy implacable, no hope of aid, and that for want of necessities the war could not be drawn out, chose from those who had fled with him to Cirta two of the most active; these, by many promises and by working on their pity for his plight, he prevails upon to make their way by night through the enemy’s works to the nearest sea, and from there to Rome.

The Numidians in a few days accomplish his orders. Adherbal’s letter is read out in the Senate, the purport of which was this: "It is not by my own fault that I send to you so often to beg, conscript fathers, but the violence of Jugurtha drives me, whom so great a lust to destroy me has seized that he holds neither you nor the immortal gods in his mind, and craves my blood above all things. And so for five months now I, an ally and friend of the Roman people, am held besieged in arms; neither the kindnesses of my father Micipsa nor your decrees aid me; whether I am harder pressed by steel or by famine, I cannot tell. To write more of Jugurtha my own fortune discourages me, and already before this I have found that there is little faith for the wretched; except that I understand he aims higher than I, and does not hope at once for your friendship and for my kingdom. Which of the two he counts the graver is hidden from no one. For at the first he murdered my brother Hiempsal, and then drove me from my father’s kingdom. Those wrongs were ours, indeed; they are nothing to you. But now it is your kingdom he holds by arms; me, whom you set as ruler over the Numidians, he keeps shut up and besieged; how much he has made of the envoys’ words, my own perils declare. What is left but your force, by which he might be moved? For I, for my part, could wish that both these things which I now write and those which I complained of before in the Senate were idle, rather than that my misery should give credit to my words. But since I was born to be a show of Jugurtha’s crimes, I do not now pray to be spared death or sufferings, only the rule of my enemy and the torment of my body. Of the kingdom of Numidia, which is yours, take thought as you please; but snatch me from impious hands, by the majesty of your empire, by the faith of friendship, if any memory of my grandsire Masinissa abides with you."

When this letter had been read, there were those who advised that an army be sent into Africa and Adherbal aided as soon as might be; that meanwhile a resolution be taken about Jugurtha, since he had not obeyed the envoys. But by those same partisans of the king it was striven with the utmost effort that no such decree be passed. So the public good, as commonly happens in most affairs, was overcome by private favor. Yet there are sent into Africa men of mature age, noble, who had held high honors. Among them was Marcus Scaurus, of whom we have spoken above, a man of consular rank and then chief of the Senate. They, because the matter was in ill repute, and at the entreaty of the Numidians, embarked on the third day. Then, soon landing at Utica, they send a letter to Jugurtha: that he come as quickly as possible to the Province, for they had been sent to him by the Senate. He, when he heard that famous men, whose authority he had heard was strong at Rome, had come against his undertaking, was at first torn between fear and lust and pulled this way and that: he feared the Senate’s anger, if he did not obey the envoys; but his mind, blind with greed, hurried him toward the crime he had begun. In his greedy nature the worse counsel won. So, surrounding Cirta with his army, he strives with all his force to break in, hoping above all that, the enemy’s force divided, he might find his chance of victory by violence or by guile. When it falls out otherwise, and he cannot accomplish what he intended — to seize Adherbal before he met the envoys — lest by lingering longer he provoke Scaurus, whom he most feared, he came with a few horsemen into the Province. And although in the Senate’s name grave threats were proclaimed because he did not desist from the siege, yet, after much speech spent, the envoys departed in vain.

After these things were heard at Cirta, the Italians, by whose valor the walls were defended, trusting that, once a surrender was made, they would go unharmed because of the greatness of the Roman people, advise Adherbal to hand over himself and the town to Jugurtha, bargaining from him for his life alone; for the rest, the Senate would see to it. But he, though he reckoned all things preferable to Jugurtha’s faith, yet, because the power to compel lay with those same men if he opposed them, makes the surrender as the Italians had advised. Jugurtha first tortures Adherbal to death, then kills all the grown Numidians and the traders without distinction, as each came armed in his way.

After this was learned at Rome and the matter began to be debated in the Senate, those same agents of the king, by interrupting and often by favor, sometimes by wrangling, by dragging out the time, kept softening the atrocity of the deed. And had not Gaius Memmius, tribune of the plebs elect, a keen man and hostile to the power of the nobility, taught the Roman people that the design was, through a few factious men, to pardon Jugurtha’s crime, surely all the ill-will would have melted away in the prolonging of the deliberations: so great was the force of the king’s favor and money. But when the Senate, from consciousness of its fault, feared the people, by the Sempronian law Numidia and Italy were decreed as provinces to the consuls to come; the consuls declared were Publius Scipio Nasica and Lucius Calpurnius Bestia; to Calpurnius fell Numidia, to Scipio Italy. Then an army to be carried into Africa is enrolled; pay and the other things that would serve the war are voted.

But Jugurtha, when the news came against his hope — since it had stuck fast in his mind that at Rome everything was for sale — sends his son, and with him two of his intimates, as envoys to the Senate, and charges them, as he had those he had sent after Hiempsal’s murder, to assail all men with money. When these were drawing near Rome, the Senate was consulted by Bestia whether it was their pleasure to receive Jugurtha’s envoys within the walls, and they decreed that, unless they had come to surrender the kingdom and the king himself, they should leave Italy within the next ten days. The consul orders this announced to the Numidians by the Senate’s decree. So, their business unaccomplished, they go off home. Meanwhile Calpurnius, his army made ready, takes as his legates noble and factious men, by whose authority he hoped that whatever he did amiss would be screened. Among them was Scaurus, of whose nature and bearing we have spoken above. For in our consul there were many good qualities of mind and of body, all of which greed kept fettered: enduring of toil, keen of intellect, provident enough, not ignorant of war, most steadfast against dangers and against ill-will. But the legions were carried across through Italy to Regium, and from there to Sicily, and so from Sicily into Africa. And so Calpurnius at the outset, his supplies in hand, entered Numidia vigorously, and took many men and several towns by fighting.

But when Jugurtha through envoys began to tempt him with money and to show the difficulty of the war he was waging, his spirit, sick with greed, was easily turned. Moreover Scaurus is taken as partner and steward of all his counsels, who, although at the first, when most of his faction had been corrupted, he had assailed the king most fiercely, yet by the greatness of the bribe was dragged from the good and honorable into the crooked. But Jugurtha at first was buying only a delay of the war, supposing that meanwhile he would bring something about at Rome by price or by favor. But afterward, when he learned that Scaurus shared in the business, raised to the highest hope of recovering peace, he resolved to treat in person with them about all the terms. But meanwhile, as a pledge of good faith, Sextius the quaestor is sent by the consul into Vaga, a town of Jugurtha’s. The pretext of this was the receiving of grain, which Calpurnius had openly demanded of the envoys, since a truce was being kept during the delay of the surrender. And so the king, as he had arranged, came into the camp, and, having spoken a few words before the council about the odium of his deed and that he be received in surrender, settles the rest in secret with Bestia and Scaurus. Then on the next day, the opinions being canvassed as it were in a hotchpotch, he is received in surrender. But, as had been commanded before the council, thirty elephants, much cattle and many horses, with a small weight of silver, are handed over to the quaestor. Calpurnius sets out for Rome to hold the elections. In Numidia and in our army peace was kept.

After report had spread abroad the deeds done in Africa and in what manner they had been managed, at Rome, through all places and gatherings, the consul’s act was being canvassed. Among the plebs there was heavy ill-will; the senators were anxious: whether to approve so great a scandal or to overturn the consul’s decree was little settled. And most of all the power of Scaurus — because he was said to be the author and partner of Bestia — hindered them from the true and the good. But Gaius Memmius, of whose freedom of spirit and hatred of the nobility’s power we have spoken above, amid the Senate’s hesitation and delays kept urging the people in public meetings to vindication, warning them not to abandon the commonwealth, not to abandon their own freedom, displaying many proud and cruel deeds of the nobility; in short, intent in every way, he kept firing the spirit of the plebs. And since at that time the eloquence of Memmius was famous and powerful at Rome, I have thought it fitting to set down in full one speech out of so many, and I shall report by preference those things which, after Bestia’s return, he set forth in a public meeting in words of this kind:

"Many things deter me from you, Quirites — did not my zeal for the commonwealth overcome them all: the resources of the faction, your own submissiveness, the absence of any justice, and above all that there is more peril than honor in innocence. For it irks me indeed to tell how in these last fifteen years you have been the plaything of a few men’s arrogance, how foully and how unavenged your defenders have perished, how your spirit has been corrupted by cowardice and sloth — you who, even now, do not rise up against enemies within your reach, and even now fear those to whom you ought to be a terror. But although these things are so, yet my spirit drives me to go and meet the power of the faction. At the least I shall make trial of that liberty which was handed down to me by my father. But whether I do it in vain or to good purpose lies in your hands, Quirites. Nor do I urge you, as your ancestors often did, to go armed against wrongs. There is no need of force, no need of secession; of their own accord, by their own ways, they must go headlong to ruin. When Tiberius Gracchus was killed — whom they alleged was making himself a king — inquisitions were held against the Roman plebs; after the slaughter of Gaius Gracchus and Gaius Fulvius, many men of your order likewise were put to death in the prison: of each massacre not law, but their own caprice, made the end. But grant that to restore the plebs to its rights was the making of a kingship; let whatever cannot be avenged without the blood of citizens be held lawfully done. In former years you grieved in silence that the treasury was plundered, that kings and free peoples paid tribute to a few nobles, that with those same men lay both the highest glory and the greatest riches. Yet they counted it too little to have carried through such deeds unpunished, and so at last the laws, your majesty, all things divine and human, have been handed over to the enemy. And those who did these things are neither ashamed nor sorry, but parade magnificently before your faces, flaunting their priesthoods and consulships, some their triumphs — as though they held these things for an honor and not for plunder. Slaves bought with money do not endure the unjust commands of their masters; do you, Quirites, born to empire, bear servitude with a calm spirit? But who are these men who have seized the commonwealth? The most criminal of men, with bloody hands, of monstrous greed, the most harmful and at once the most arrogant, to whom faith, honor, piety — in short, all things honorable and dishonorable — are a source of gain. Part of them hold the killing of tribunes of the plebs, others unjust inquisitions, most of them the slaughter wrought upon you, as their safeguard. Thus the worse each has done, the safer he is. They have shifted the fear owed to their own crime onto your cowardice — men whom one and the same lust, one and the same hatred, one and the same fear has herded into one. But this, among the good, is friendship; among the wicked, faction. But if you had as much care for liberty as they are inflamed for domination, surely the commonwealth would not be laid waste as it now is, and your favors would lie with the best men, not with the most reckless. Your ancestors, to win their rights and to establish their majesty, twice in secession seized the Aventine under arms; will you not strive with all your might for the liberty you received from them? And so much the more fiercely, as it is a greater disgrace to lose what has been won than never to have won it at all. Someone will say: ’What, then, do you advise?’ That those who have betrayed the commonwealth to the enemy be punished — not by hand nor by force, which is more unworthy for you to do than for them to suffer, but by inquisitions and by the evidence of Jugurtha himself. If he has surrendered, surely he will be obedient to your commands; but if he scorns them, then you will judge what sort of peace or surrender that is, from which there have come to Jugurtha impunity for his crimes, to a few powerful men the greatest riches, and to the commonwealth losses and disgrace. Unless perhaps even now the surfeit of their domination does not yet hold you, and those times please you more than these — when kingdoms, provinces, laws, rights, courts, wars and peaces, in short all things divine and human, were in the hands of a few; while you, that is, the Roman people, unconquered by your enemies, masters of all nations, thought it enough to keep your lives. For who of you dared refuse servitude? And I, although I count it most shameful for a man to have taken a wrong unavenged, yet would with a calm spirit suffer you to pardon these most criminal men, since they are citizens, were not mercy doomed to fall into ruin. For with them — such is their wantonness — it is too little to have done evil unpunished, unless thereafter the license of doing it be torn away; and for you an everlasting anxiety will remain, when you understand that you must either be slaves or keep your liberty by force. For of faith or of concord what hope is there? They wish to be masters, you to be free; they to do wrongs, you to forbid them; in short, they use our allies as enemies, and enemies as allies. Can there be peace or friendship in minds so opposed? Therefore I warn and exhort you not to let so great a crime go unpunished. It is no peculation of the treasury that has been committed, no money wrenched from the allies by force — which, grave though they are, are by now through habit counted as nothing; but to the bitterest enemy the authority of the Senate has been betrayed, your empire has been betrayed; at home and in the field the commonwealth has been put up for sale. Unless these things are looked into, unless the guilty are punished, what will be left but that we live as subjects to those who did them? For to do whatever one pleases with impunity — that is to be a king. Nor do I urge you, Quirites, to prefer that your fellow-citizens have done wrong rather than right, but not, by pardoning the bad, to go about the ruin of the good. Besides, in a commonwealth it is far better to be forgetful of a kindness than of an injury: the good man only grows the more sluggish when you neglect him, but the bad man the more shameless. Besides, if there be no wrongs, you will not often stand in need of aid."

By saying these things and others of the kind often in the assembly, Memmius persuades the people that praetor/">Lucius Cassius, who was then praetor, be sent to Jugurtha and bring him to Rome under pledge of the public faith, so that by the king’s evidence the offenses of Scaurus and of the rest whom he was charging with taking money might more easily be laid bare. While these things are done at Rome, those who had been left in Numidia in command of the army by Bestia, following the manner of their commander, committed very many and most shameful deeds. There were those who, bribed with gold, handed elephants back to Jugurtha, others who sold deserters, part who drove off plunder from people at peace: so great a force of greed had entered their minds, like a wasting plague. But Cassius the praetor — the bill of Gaius Memmius being carried and all the nobility struck with dismay — sets out to Jugurtha, and persuades him, fearful and from his conscience distrustful of his cause, that, since he had surrendered himself to the Roman people, he should not choose to make trial of its force rather than of its mercy. Besides, he pledges his own private faith, which the king reckoned of no less worth than the public: such at that time was the repute of Cassius.

And so Jugurtha, against royal dignity, in the most pitiable garb he could, came with Cassius to Rome. And although in himself there was great force of spirit, strengthened by all those by whose power or crime he had done all that we have said above, he procures Gaius Baebius, tribune of the plebs, at a great price, that by his effrontery he might be shielded against right and against all wrongs. But Gaius Memmius, having called an assembly — though the plebs was hostile to the king, and part bade him be led to prison, part that, unless he disclosed the partners of his crime, punishment be exacted of him in the manner of the ancestors as of an enemy — consulting dignity rather than anger, calms their agitation and softens their spirits, and at last gives assurance that the public faith would remain inviolate through him. After, when silence began, Jugurtha being brought forward, he makes his speech, recounts the king’s deeds at Rome and in Numidia, sets out his crimes against his father and his brothers. With whose help and by whose agents he had done these things, although the Roman people knew, yet it wished to have made plainer from him. If he disclosed the truth, great hope was placed for him in the faith and clemency of the Roman people; but if he kept silent, he would not save his partners, but would ruin himself and his own hopes.

Then, when Memmius made an end of speaking and Jugurtha was bidden to answer, Gaius Baebius, tribune of the plebs — whom we said above had been corrupted with money — bids the king be silent; and although the multitude that was present at the assembly, vehemently inflamed, sought to terrify him with shouting, with looks, often with a rush forward, and with all the other things that anger loves to do, yet effrontery won. So the people, made a mockery, departs from the assembly; the spirits of Jugurtha and Bestia and the rest whom that inquiry harried mount high.

There was at that time at Rome a certain Numidian named Massiva, son of Gulussa, grandson of Masinissa, who, because in the quarrel of the kings he had been against Jugurtha, after Cirta was surrendered and Adherbal killed had gone off a fugitive from his fatherland. To him Spurius Albinus, who in the year after Bestia was holding the consulship with Quintus Minucius Rufus, urges that, since he was of the stock of Masinissa, and ill-will together with fear pressed hard on Jugurtha for his crimes, he should seek the kingdom of Numidia from the Senate. The consul, greedy to wage war, preferred that everything be stirred up rather than grow stale. To himself had fallen the province of Numidia, to Minucius Macedonia. When Massiva began to push these things, and Jugurtha had not protection enough among his friends — because conscience hindered one, ill fame and fear another — he orders Bomilcar, his nearest and most trusted, to procure by a price, as he had brought off many things, men to lie in wait for Massiva, and most secretly; but if that went forward too little, to kill the Numidian by whatever means. Bomilcar promptly carries out the king’s commands, and through men skilled in such business explores Massiva’s journeys and goings-out, in short all his places and times. Then, when the matter required, he sets his ambush. And so one of that number who had been readied for the killing assails Massiva a little too rashly. He cuts him down, but, himself caught, at the urging of many and chiefly of the consul Albinus, turns informer. Bomilcar, his companion, who had come to Rome under the public faith, is made a defendant, more by what was fair and good than by the law of nations. But Jugurtha, caught red-handed in so great a crime, did not cease to struggle against the truth until he perceived that the ill-will of the deed was beyond his favor and his money. And so, although in the earlier proceeding he had given fifty of his friends as sureties, yet, consulting his kingdom rather than his sureties, he sends Bomilcar secretly into Numidia, fearing lest a fear of obeying him should fall upon his remaining subjects, if punishment were exacted of that one. And he himself a few days later set out for the same place, bidden by the Senate to leave Italy. But after he had gone out from Rome, it is said that, looking back often in silence, he at last said: "A city for sale, and ripe to perish, if it finds a buyer."

Meanwhile Albinus, the war renewed, hastens to carry into Africa supply, pay, and the other things that would serve the soldiers; and he himself set out at once, that before the elections — a time not far off — he might finish the war by arms or by surrender or in whatever way. But Jugurtha, on the contrary, dragged everything out and made now these, now other grounds of delay; he promised surrender and then feigned fear; he gave way to the pressing foe and a little after, lest his own men lose heart, pressed in turn: so, now by the delay of war, now of peace, he made a mockery of the consul. And there were those who then thought Albinus not ignorant of the king’s design, and did not believe that, after such great haste, the war was so easily drawn out by sloth rather than by guile. But when, the time slipping by, the day of the elections drew near, Albinus, leaving his brother Aulus in the camp as propraetor, withdrew to Rome.

At that time at Rome the commonwealth was being savagely shaken by tribunician seditions. Publius Lucullus and Lucius Annius, tribunes of the plebs, were striving, against the resistance of their colleagues, to prolong their magistracy, and this dissension was blocking the whole year’s elections. Brought into hope by this delay, Aulus — whom we have said was left in the camp as propraetor — either to finish the war or by the terror of the army to wring money from the king, calls the soldiers in the month of January out of their winter quarters into the field, and by great marches, in the harsh winter, comes to the town of Suthul, where the king’s treasures were. And though, both by the cruelty of the season and the strength of the place, it could neither be taken nor besieged — for around the wall, set on the edge of a sheer mountain, a muddy flat had been made a marsh by the winter rains — yet, whether for the sake of pretense, to add fear to the king, or blind with greed to gain the town’s treasures, he pushes forward mantlets, throws up a mound, and hurries the other works that would serve his undertaking.

But Jugurtha, having marked the legate’s emptiness and inexperience, slyly swells his folly, keeps sending suppliant envoys, while he himself, as if shunning battle, leads his army through wooded places and bypaths. At last by the hope of a compact he drove Aulus to leave Suthul and, as though he were giving way, to follow him into hidden regions: so his misdeeds were the more concealed. Meanwhile, through cunning men, day and night he kept tampering with the army, bribing centurions and squadron-leaders, some to desert, others at a given signal to abandon their post. When he has arranged these things to his mind, in the dead of night, all at once, with a multitude of Numidians he surrounds the camp of Aulus. The Roman soldiers, struck by the unwonted tumult, some seize their arms, others hide themselves, part rally the terrified, all is panic on every side. The enemy’s force was great, the sky darkened with night and cloud, the danger double; in short, whether to flee or to stay were safer was in doubt. But of that number whom we said a little before were corrupted, one cohort of Ligurians, with two squadrons of Thracians and a few common soldiers, went over to the king, and the centurion of the first rank of the Third Legion gave the enemy a place to enter through the rampart he had been given to defend, and through it all the Numidians burst in. Our men, in foul flight, most having flung away their arms, seized the nearest hill. Night and the plunder of the camp kept the enemy from using their victory. Then Jugurtha on the next day in a parley speaks with Aulus: although he held him and his army shut in by famine and steel, yet he, mindful of the chances of mortal things, if Aulus made a treaty with him, would send all unharmed under the yoke; besides, that within ten days he leave Numidia. Which terms, though they were grave and full of disgrace, yet, because they were bartered against the fear of death, as it had pleased the king, so the peace is agreed.

But when these things were learned at Rome, fear and grief invaded the state: part grieved for the glory of the empire, part, unused to the affairs of war, feared for their liberty; all were hostile to Aulus, and most of all those who had often been distinguished in war, because, under arms, he had sought safety by disgrace rather than by the hand. For these reasons the consul Albinus, fearing ill-will and then peril from his brother’s fault, consulted the Senate about the treaty, and yet meanwhile enrolled reinforcements for the army, summoned auxiliaries from the allies and the Latin name, in short hurried in every way. The Senate decrees, as was fitting, that without its own and the people’s order no treaty could be made. The consul, hindered by the tribunes of the plebs from carrying off with him the forces he had prepared, sets out in a few days into Africa; for the whole army, as had been agreed, withdrawn from Numidia, was wintering in the Province. When he came there, although he burned in spirit to pursue Jugurtha and to heal his brother’s ill repute, having come to know the soldiers — whom, besides their flight, license and wantonness had corrupted once discipline was dissolved — out of the state of things he judged that he should attempt nothing.

Meanwhile at Rome, Gaius Mamilius Limetanus, tribune of the plebs, promulgates a bill to the people, that inquiry be made into those by whose counsel Jugurtha had disregarded the Senate’s decrees, and who had taken money from him in embassies or commands, who had handed over elephants and deserters, likewise who had made compacts of peace or war with the enemy. Against this bill, partly those conscious of guilt, others fearing dangers from party-hatred, since they could not openly resist without confessing that those and like things pleased them, were secretly preparing obstacles through friends, and above all through men of the Latin name and the Italian allies. But it is past belief to relate how intent the plebs was, and with what force it ordered the bill — more from hatred of the nobility, for whom those evils were being prepared, than from care for the commonwealth: so great was the passion in the parties. And so, the rest struck with fear, Marcus Scaurus, whom we have shown above to have been Bestia’s legate, amid the joy of the plebs and the rout of his own party, while the state was still trembling, when under the Mamilian bill three commissioners of inquiry were being chosen, had brought it about that he himself was created one of that number. But the inquiry was conducted harshly and violently, on the rumor and caprice of the plebs: as often the nobility, so at that time the plebs, had been seized with insolence by its prosperity.

But the practice of parties and factions, and thereafter of all evil arts, had arisen at Rome a few years before, out of leisure and an abundance of those things that mortals count first. For before Carthage was destroyed, the Roman people and Senate handled the commonwealth between them calmly and with restraint, and there was no contest among the citizens for glory or for mastery: fear of the enemy held the state to its good arts. But when that dread had departed from their minds, then — as you would expect — those things that prosperity loves, wantonness and arrogance, came on. And so the leisure they had longed for in adversity, once they had got it, proved harsher and more bitter. For the nobility began to turn their rank, and the people their liberty, into license, each man to draw and drag and snatch for himself. So all things were torn apart into two parties, and the commonwealth, which had been the middle ground, was rent asunder. But the nobility was the stronger by its faction; the strength of the plebs, loosened and scattered in its multitude, could do less. By the will of a few all things were managed in war and at home; in the same hands were the treasury, the provinces, the magistracies, the glories and the triumphs; the people were ground down by military service and by want; the spoils of war the commanders plundered with a few. Meanwhile the parents or small children of the soldiers, as each lived next to a more powerful neighbor, were driven from their homes. Thus with power did avarice, without measure or restraint, invade, defile, and lay waste to all things, holding nothing weighed or sacred, until it flung itself headlong. For as soon as men were found among the nobility who set true glory above unjust power, the state began to be shaken, and civil dissension to arise like an upheaval of the earth.

For after Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus, whose forefathers in the Punic and other wars had added much to the commonwealth, began to claim liberty for the plebs and to lay bare the crimes of the few, the nobility — guilty, and therefore alarmed — opposed the Gracchan measures, now through the allies and the Latin name, now through the Roman knights, whom the hope of partnership had drawn away from the plebs; and first Tiberius, then a few years later Gaius treading the same path — the one a tribune, the other a commissioner for the founding of colonies — together with Marcus Fulvius Flaccus they had slain with the sword. And the Gracchi, to be sure, in their craving for victory had a temper not restrained enough. But for a good man it is better to be beaten than to overcome injustice by an evil precedent. So the nobility, using that victory after its own lust, put many mortals to death by the sword or by exile, and for the time to come added to itself more of fear than of power. This is the thing that for the most part has brought great states to ruin, while the one side wishes to conquer the other by any means and to avenge itself too bitterly on the conquered. But were I to discourse on the zeal of parties and the morals of the whole state in detail, or in proportion to the greatness of the theme, time would fail me sooner than the matter. Wherefore I return to my undertaking.

After the treaty of Aulus and the shameful flight of our army, the consuls-designate Metellus and Silanus had divided the provinces between them, and Numidia had fallen to Metellus — a keen man, and, though set against the popular party, of a reputation nonetheless even and unblemished. As soon as he entered upon his magistracy, reckoning all else to be shared with his colleague, he bent his mind to the war he was to wage. And so, distrusting the old army, he set about enrolling soldiers, summoning auxiliaries from every quarter, preparing arms, weapons, horses, and the rest of the gear of war, and besides supplies in abundance — in short, everything that is wont to be of use in a war of shifting fortune and of many wants. Moreover, toward accomplishing these things the Senate by its authority, the allies and the Latin name, and kings by sending help unasked, in the end the whole state strove with the utmost zeal. And so, when all things had been prepared and ordered to his mind, he set out for Numidia, amid the high hope of the citizens — both for his good arts and, most of all, because against riches he bore a spirit unconquered; for it was through the avarice of the magistrates that before this time our strength in Numidia had been crushed and the enemy’s increased.

But when he came into Africa, the army handed over to him by the proconsul Spurius Albinus was sluggish and unwarlike, patient of neither danger nor toil, readier with the tongue than the hand, a plunderer of the allies and itself the plunder of the enemy, kept without command or restraint. And so to the new commander more anxiety came from their bad morals than aid or good hope from the number of his men. Yet Metellus resolved — though the delay of the elections had cut short the season for the summer campaign, and he supposed the citizens’ minds intent on the outcome — not to touch the war before he had forced the soldiers to toil after the discipline of their forefathers. For Albinus, stricken by the disaster of his brother Aulus and the army, after he had resolved not to leave the province, kept his soldiers for most of the summer season that he was in command in a standing camp, except when the stench or the want of fodder compelled him to change his ground. But the camp was neither fortified, nor were watches set in soldierly fashion; as each man pleased, he stayed away from the standards; the sutlers, mingled with the soldiers, wandered day and night, and straying they laid the fields waste, stormed the farmhouses, and vying with one another drove off plunder of cattle and slaves, and bartered these with the merchants for imported wine and other such things; besides, they sold the grain given out at public cost and bought their bread from day to day; in short, whatever reproaches of sloth and luxury can be told or imagined, all of them were in that army, and more besides.

But in that difficulty I find that Metellus was a great and wise man no less than in dealing with the enemy: so great was the temperance with which he held a middle course between currying favor and savagery. For first, by edict, he took away the supports of sloth: that no one in the camp should sell bread or any other cooked food; that the sutlers should not follow the army; that no soldier, spearman or common ranker, should keep in camp or on the march a slave or a beast of burden; and to the rest he set a strict limit. Moreover he shifted camp daily by crosswise marches, fortified it with rampart and ditch just as if the enemy were at hand, set frequent watches and went the rounds of them himself with his lieutenants; likewise on the march he was present now in the van, now in the rear, often in the middle, that no one should leave his rank, that they should advance close-packed about the standards, that the soldier should carry his own food and arms. So by forbidding faults rather than by punishing them he soon braced the army up.

Meanwhile Jugurtha, when he learned by messengers what Metellus was doing, and was at the same time made surer from Rome of the man’s incorruptibility, lost confidence in his cause and then at last attempted to make a true surrender. And so he sends envoys to the consul with suppliant tokens, who should ask only for his own life and his children’s and surrender all else to the Roman people. But Metellus had already learned before, from trial of them, that the race of the Numidians was faithless, of a fickle disposition, greedy of revolution. And so he approaches the envoys severally, apart from one another, and sounding them little by little, when he had found them ripe for his purpose, by many promises persuades them to hand Jugurtha over to him — alive for choice, or, if that should go but poorly, slain. But openly he bids such answers be carried to the king as would suit his wish. Then he himself, within a few days, with an army intent and braced for war, advances into Numidia, where, against the face of war, the huts were full of men, and cattle and farmers were in the fields. From the towns and the clustered huts the king’s prefects came out to meet him, ready to give grain, to carry supplies — in short, to do whatever was commanded. None the less for that did Metellus march, but just as if the enemy were at hand, with his column fortified, scouting all things far and wide; those signs of surrender he believed were for show, and that a place was being sought for an ambush. And so he himself was among the foremost with the light-armed cohorts, and a chosen band of slingers and archers besides; in the rear Gaius Marius, his lieutenant, had charge with the cavalry; on either flank he had parceled out the auxiliary horse among the tribunes of the legions and the prefects of the cohorts, so that, mingled with them, the light infantry might beat off the enemy’s cavalry wherever they should come on. For in Jugurtha there was so great cunning, and so great a knowledge of the ground and of soldiering, that it was held uncertain whether he was the more dangerous absent or present, waging peace or war.

Not far from the route by which Metellus was advancing there was a town of the Numidians named Vaga, the busiest market for wares in the whole kingdom, where many men of Italian stock had been used to dwell and to trade. Here the consul — both to make trial of the place, if they would suffer it, and for its advantages — set a garrison. Besides, he ordered grain and the other things that would serve the war to be brought together, judging, as the situation advised, that the throng of traders would both help the army with supplies and be a bulwark for what was already prepared. In the midst of these affairs Jugurtha, more pressingly now, kept sending suppliant envoys, begging for peace, surrendering to Metellus everything save his own life and his children’s. These too, like the former ones, the consul, having enticed them to treachery, would send home; the peace the king asked he neither refused nor promised, and amid these delays awaited the envoys’ promises.

When Jugurtha set Metellus’s words beside his deeds and perceived that he was being tried by his own arts — since peace was being announced to him in words, but in fact the war was most bitter, his greatest city estranged, his territory known to the enemy, the loyalty of his subjects sounded out — compelled by the necessity of things, he resolved to fight it out in arms. And so, having explored the enemy’s route, drawn into hope of victory by the advantage of the ground, he prepares forces as great as he can of every kind and by hidden by-paths gets ahead of Metellus’s army. There was in that part of Numidia which Adherbal had held at the partition a river rising from the south, named the Muthul, from which a mountain stood off some twenty miles, of even extent, waste by nature and untilled by man. But from the middle of it there rose, as it were, a hill, stretching out beyond measure, clothed with wild olive and myrtle and other kinds of trees that grow in a dry and sandy soil. The plain between, however, was desert from want of water, except for the places near the river; these, planted with copses, were thronged with cattle and farmers.

And so on that hill, which we have shown stretched out athwart the line of march, Jugurtha took his stand with his line thinned out. Over the elephants and part of the foot he set Bomilcar, and instructed him what to do. He himself stationed his men nearer the mountain with all the cavalry and his picked infantry. Then, going round the several squadrons and companies, he warns and entreats them that, mindful of their old valor and victory, they defend themselves and their kingdom from the avarice of the Romans: their contest would be with men whom before they had conquered and sent under the yoke; the leader in them was changed, not the spirit; whatever it befits a commander to provide had all been provided for his own — the higher ground, that they might join battle as men who knew their business against the ignorant, not as fewer against more, nor as raw troops against better soldiers. Therefore let them be ready and intent, at the signal given, to fall upon the Romans: that day would either confirm all their toils and victories, or be the beginning of their greatest miseries. Besides this, man by man, as he had raised each by money or by honor for some feat of arms, he reminds him of his own kindness and holds that very man up before the rest; in the end, each according to his nature, by promising, by threatening, by entreating, he rouses one man one way, another another — while meanwhile Metellus, unaware of the enemy, descending from the mountain with his army, catches sight of them. At first he was in doubt what the unfamiliar sight might mean — for among the brushwood the horses and Numidians had taken their place, not quite hidden by the lowness of the trees and yet uncertain what it was, obscured both by the nature of the ground and by craft, they and their standards alike — then, the ambush soon recognized, he halted the column a little while. There, the ranks changed about, on the right flank, which was nearest the enemy, he drew up his line with triple reserves, distributed slingers and archers among the companies, placed all his cavalry on the wings, and, with a few words as the time allowed having exhorted the soldiers, led the line down into the plain as he had drawn it up, with the front ranks turned sideways.

But when he perceived that the Numidians stayed quiet and did not come down from the hill, fearing that from the season of the year and the want of water his army might be undone by thirst, he sent ahead Rutilius, his lieutenant, with light cohorts and part of the cavalry to the river, to seize a place for a camp beforehand, reckoning that the enemy with repeated charges and flanking skirmishes would delay his march, and, since they had no faith in their arms, would try the weariness and thirst of his soldiers. Then he himself, according to the matter and the ground, just as he had come down from the mountain, advanced little by little, kept Marius behind the front, and was himself with the cavalry of the left wing, who on the march had been made the leading men. But Jugurtha, when he sees that the rear of Metellus’s column had passed beyond his own foremost men, seizes with a guard of about two thousand foot the mountain at the point where Metellus had come down, lest perchance, if his adversaries gave way, it should serve them for a retreat and afterward for a stronghold. Then suddenly, the signal given, he falls upon the enemy. Some of the Numidians cut down the rear, part assail the left and the right, fiercely they close in and bear down, in every place they throw the Roman ranks into confusion. Of these, even those who with firmer spirit had faced the enemy were baffled by the uncertain battle, themselves only wounded from afar, and had no chance to strike back or to come to close quarters. Trained beforehand by Jugurtha, the horsemen, when a squadron of the Romans had begun to pursue, would not draw off in a mass or to one point, but each one as far apart as he could in a different direction. Thus, being superior in number, if they could not deter the enemy from pursuit, they would surround them, scattered, from the rear or the flanks; but if the hill offered a better chance for flight than the plain, then indeed the horses of the Numidians, used to it, easily made their escape among the brushwood, while the roughness and strangeness of the ground held our men back.

But the face of the whole business was shifting, uncertain, foul, and pitiable: scattered from their own, part gave way, others pursued; they kept neither standards nor ranks; where peril had caught each man, there he made his stand and beat it off; arms and weapons, horses and men, enemies and fellow-citizens mingled together; nothing was done by counsel or command, chance ruled all. And so much of the day had worn on, while still the outcome was in doubt. At last, when all were faint with toil and heat, Metellus, when he sees the Numidians press less hard, gradually draws his soldiers together into one body, restored the ranks, and posted four legionary cohorts against the enemy’s foot. A great part of these had sat down, weary, on the higher ground. At the same time he begged and exhorted his soldiers not to fail nor to suffer a fleeing enemy to conquer: they had no camp nor any stronghold to which they might withdraw in retreat; in their arms lay everything. But not even Jugurtha meanwhile was quiet: he went about, exhorting; he renewed the battle, and himself with picked men tried everything; he came to the aid of his own, pressed the enemy where they wavered, and where he had found them firm, held them off by fighting at a distance.

In this manner the two commanders, men of the highest stamp, contended with each other — themselves equals, but unequal in their resources. For Metellus had the valor of his soldiers, but the ground against him; Jugurtha had all else in his favor except his soldiers. At last the Romans, when they understand that they have no refuge and that no chance of fighting is granted them by the enemy — and now it was evening — escape up the slope opposite, as had been ordered. Their position lost, the Numidians were routed and put to flight; a few perished; most were saved by their speed and by a country unknown to the enemy. Meanwhile Bomilcar, whom we said above had been set by Jugurtha over the elephants and part of the foot, when Rutilius had passed him by, leads his men little by little down into level ground; and while the lieutenant hastens on to the river to which he had been sent ahead, he, quiet as the matter required, arranges his line and does not cease to scout what the enemy was doing on every side. After he learned that Rutilius had now encamped and was free of care, and at the same time that the shouting from Jugurtha’s battle was swelling, fearing that the lieutenant, learning of it, would come to the aid of his struggling fellows, he extends more widely the line that, distrusting the valor of his soldiers, he had drawn up close so as to block the enemy’s route, and in that array advances toward Rutilius’s camp.

The Romans suddenly notice a great mass of dust; for the field, planted with copses, blocked the view. And at first, supposing that the dry ground was being stirred by the wind, afterward, when they see it stay even and, as the line moved, draw nearer and nearer, the matter understood, in haste they take up arms and halt before the camp, as had been ordered. Then, when it had come nearer, on both sides they charge with a great shout. The Numidians held back only so long as they thought help lay in the elephants; after they see them tangled in the branches of the trees and so scattered and surrounded, they take to flight, and most of them, casting away their arms, by the help of the hill or of the night, which was now at hand, get off unhurt. Four elephants were taken, the rest, forty in all, killed. But the Romans, though worn and weary with the march and the work of the camp and the battle, nevertheless, because Metellus delayed longer than expected, went out to meet him drawn up and intent; for the cunning of the Numidians allowed nothing slack or remiss. And at first, in the dark of night, when they were not far from one another, the noise — as of enemies approaching — caused on either side both fear and uproar at once; and through ignorance a pitiable deed was almost committed, had not horsemen, sent ahead from both sides, scouted the matter. And so in place of fear suddenly joy succeeds: the soldiers gladly call to one another, tell and hear what was done, each carries his own brave deeds to the sky. For human affairs are so constituted: in victory even cowards may boast, while adversity disparages even the good.

Metellus, staying four days in the same camp, restores the wounded with care, rewards after the custom of the service those who had deserved well in the battles, praises them all in assembly and gives thanks, and exhorts them to bear an equal spirit toward what remained, which were light matters: enough had now been fought for victory; the labors that were left would be for plunder. Yet meanwhile he sent deserters and other suitable men to scout where in the world Jugurtha was or what he was about, whether he was with a few or had an army, how he bore himself in defeat. But the king had withdrawn into wooded places, fortified by nature, and there was gathering an army greater in number of men but dull and feeble, a tiller of field and flock rather than of war. This came about for the reason that, except for the royal horsemen, no Numidian of them all follows the king from a flight: where each man’s spirit carries him, thither they depart, nor is that counted a disgrace in soldiering — such are their ways. And so Metellus, when he sees that the king’s spirit was still fierce, that the war was being renewed which could not be waged except at the king’s pleasure, and besides that his contest with the enemy was unequal — for they were beaten with less loss than his own men won — resolved that the war must be waged not by battles nor in line but in another fashion. And so he proceeds into the richest parts of Numidia, lays waste the fields, takes and burns many forts and towns fortified carelessly or held without a garrison, orders the grown men killed, and all else to be the soldiers’ plunder. From that terror many mortals were given to the Romans as hostages; grain and the other things that would serve were furnished in plenty; wherever the matter required, a garrison was set. These doings frightened the king far more than the battle his men had fought ill; for one whose every hope lay in flight was compelled to pursue, and one who had not been able to defend his own ground, to wage war on another’s. Nevertheless, out of what he had, he takes the plan that seemed best: he orders the army for the most part to wait in the same places; he himself with picked horsemen follows Metellus, and by night-marches and untrodden ways, unrecognized, suddenly falls upon the Romans as they straggle. Most of them fall unarmed, many are taken, no single one of them all gets away untouched; and the Numidians, before help could come from the camp, withdrew, as they had been ordered, to the nearest hills.

Meanwhile at Rome great joy arose when Metellus’s doings were learned — that he bore himself and his army after the manner of the forefathers; that on unfavorable ground he had nonetheless been victor by valor; that he held the enemy’s territory; that he had forced Jugurtha, made grand by Albinus’s sloth, to set his hope of safety in the wilderness or in flight. And so the Senate, for these things happily done, decrees thanksgivings to the immortal gods; the state, before anxious and troubled about the war’s outcome, kept glad festival; the fame of Metellus was brilliant. Therefore the more intently he strove for victory, hastening in every way, yet taking care nowhere to give the enemy an opening, remembering that envy follows after glory. Thus the more renowned he was, the more anxious he was; and after Jugurtha’s ambush he no longer plundered with his army let loose; when there was need of grain or fodder, the cohorts with all the cavalry would mount guard; part of the army he led himself, the rest Marius led. But the country was laid waste more by fire than by plunder. In two places not far apart they pitched their camps; where there was need of force, all were at hand; otherwise, that flight and terror might spread the wider, they operated apart. At that time Jugurtha would follow along the hills, seeking a time or a place for battle; where he had heard the enemy would come, he would foul the fodder and the springs of water, of which there was scarcity; now he would show himself to Metellus, now to Marius; he would try the rearmost on the march and at once fall back to the hills; again he would threaten these, then those; he would neither give battle nor allow rest, only hold the enemy back from his purpose.

When the Roman commander sees himself worn down by tricks and that no chance of fighting was offered by the enemy, he resolved to assault a great city — the citadel of the kingdom in the quarter where it lay — named Zama, reckoning, as the business demanded, that Jugurtha would come to the aid of his struggling people and that there would be a battle there. But the king, taught by deserters what was being prepared, by great marches gets ahead of Metellus. He exhorts the townsmen to defend the walls, adding to their help the deserters — a kind that, of the king’s forces, was the firmest, because it could not play false; besides, he promises that he himself will be at hand in time with an army. Having so arranged matters, he withdraws into the most hidden places he could find; and a little after, when Marius had been sent to Sicca to forage with a few cohorts — the town which, first of all, had revolted from the king after the bad battle — thither the king himself goes by night with picked horsemen, and, as the Romans were already coming out, makes battle at the gate, and at the same time with a loud voice exhorts the people of Sicca to surround the cohorts from the rear: fortune was giving them the chance of a brilliant deed; if they did it, he would afterward pass his life in his kingdom, and they in liberty without fear. And had not Marius hastened to advance the standards and get clear of the town, assuredly all or the greater part of the people of Sicca would have changed their allegiance: with so great fickleness do the Numidians bear themselves. But the soldiers of Jugurtha, upheld for a little while by the king, after the enemy press with greater force, depart in flight with the loss of a few.

Marius came to Zama. That town, set in a plain, was fortified more by art than by nature, wanting nothing needful, rich in arms and men. And so Metellus, his preparations made to suit the time and the place, surrounded all the walls with his army, and orders his lieutenants where each should have charge. Then, the signal given, on all sides at once a huge shout arises; nor does that thing frighten the Numidians: fierce and intent, without uproar they hold their ground; the battle is begun. The Romans, each according to his nature, part fight from afar with bullet or stones, others come up and now undermine the wall, now attack it with ladders, eager to make the fight hand to hand. Against these the townsmen rolled rocks down on the nearest, hurled stakes and javelins, and besides pitch mixed with sulphur and pine, all ablaze. But not even those who had stayed at a distance had fear of mind enough to keep them safe; for most of them the darts shot from engines or by hand were wounding; and in equal danger, but in unequal repute, were the brave and the cowards.

While the fight goes thus at Zama, Jugurtha unexpectedly attacks the enemy’s camp with a great band; those on guard being slack and expecting anything rather than a battle, he bursts in at the gate. But our men, struck by the sudden fear, take counsel each after his own character; some flee, some take up arms; a great part were wounded or killed. But of the whole multitude not more than forty, mindful of the Roman name, formed a knot and seized a place a little higher than the rest, and from there could not be driven off by the greatest force, but the weapons thrown at them from afar they threw back, and, few among many, missed the less; but if the Numidians came nearer, there indeed they showed their valor, and cut them down, routed them, and put them to flight with the utmost force. Meanwhile Metellus, while he was pressing the matter most keenly, heard the enemy’s shout at his back; then, his horse turned about, he perceived that the flight was being made toward him — which showed them to be his own people. And so he sent all the cavalry in haste to the camp, and at once Gaius Marius with the cohorts of the allies; and weeping, by their friendship and by the commonwealth he implores him not to let any disgrace remain upon a victorious army, nor the enemy go off unpunished. He in a short time accomplishes the charge. But Jugurtha, hindered by the camp’s defenses — while some were flung headlong over the rampart, others in their haste blocked one another in the narrows — withdrew, with the loss of many, into fortified ground. Metellus, the business unfinished, when night was at hand, returns with his army to the camp.

And so on the next day, before he went out to the assault, he orders all the cavalry to range before the camp on the side from which the king’s approach was, parcels out the gates and the nearest places among the tribunes; then he himself proceeds to the town and, as on the day before, attacks the wall. Meanwhile Jugurtha out of hiding suddenly falls upon our men: those posted nearest are for a little while terrified and thrown into disorder; the rest quickly come up. Nor could the Numidians have held out longer, had not their foot, mingled with the horse, done great slaughter in the encounter. Relying on these, they did not, as is the way in a cavalry fight, pursue and then give way, but charged with horses head-on, entangled and threw the line into confusion: so, with their light-armed foot, they all but gave the enemy over beaten.

At the same time at Zama the fight was waged with great force. Wherever each lieutenant or tribune had charge, there men strove most keenly, nor did one place his hope in another more than in himself; and the townsmen did likewise: they assaulted or made ready in every place, more eager to wound one another than to shield themselves; the shout, mingled with exhortation, gladness, and groaning, and likewise the din of arms, was borne up to the sky; weapons flew on both sides. But those who were defending the walls, whenever the enemy had only a little slackened the fight, watched intently the cavalry battle. These you might mark, as Jugurtha’s fortunes went, now glad, now afraid; and, as though they could be heard or seen by their own, some warned, others exhorted, or made signs with the hand, or strained with their bodies, swaying this way and that as if dodging or hurling weapons. When this became known to Marius — for he had charge in that quarter — he purposely acted more gently and feigned despair of the matter, suffering the Numidians without uproar to watch the king’s battle. Thus, while they were held fast by zeal for their own, suddenly with great force he attacks the wall. And now the soldiers, gone up by the ladders, had nearly gained the top, when the townsmen run together and hurl down stones, fire, and besides other weapons. Our men at first held firm; then, when one ladder and another were shattered, those who had stood upon them were dashed down, the rest got away as best they could, a few unhurt, the greater part undone by wounds. At last on both sides night broke off the battle.

Metellus, after he sees the attempt vain — that the town was not being taken, that Jugurtha would make no fight except from ambush or on his own ground, and that the summer was now spent — withdraws from Zama, and in those cities which had revolted to him and were sufficiently fortified by site or by walls he sets garrisons. The rest of the army he stations for wintering in the province that lies nearest Numidia. Nor does he grant that season, after the manner of others, to rest or luxury, but, since by arms the war went forward too little, he prepares to lay snares for the king through his friends and to use their treachery in place of arms. And so he approaches Bomilcar — who had been at Rome with Jugurtha and thence, after sureties were given, had secretly fled the trial for the murder of Massiva — with many promises, because through his very great friendship with the king he had the very greatest means of deceiving him. And first he brings it about that he comes to him in secret for a conference; then, his faith pledged that, if he should hand Jugurtha over alive or slain, the Senate would grant him impunity and all his goods, he easily persuades the Numidian — a man both of faithless nature and fearing that, if peace were made with the Romans, he himself might by its terms be given up to punishment.

He, as soon as it was opportune, approaches Jugurtha — anxious and bewailing his fortunes — warns him and, weeping, entreats him to provide at last for himself and his children and the Numidian nation, which had deserved so well: in every battle they had been beaten, the land laid waste, many mortals taken and slain, the resources of the kingdom shattered; often enough now had both the valor of the soldiers and fortune been tried; let him beware lest, while he hung back, the Numidians look to themselves. By these and other like words he drives the king’s mind toward surrender. Envoys are sent to the commander, to say that Jugurtha would do what was commanded and would give himself and his kingdom into his protection without any condition. Metellus orders all of the senatorial order to be summoned in haste from winter quarters; of these and of others whom he judged fit he holds a council. So, after the custom of the forefathers, by the council’s decree he demands of Jugurtha through envoys two hundred thousand pounds of silver, all his elephants, and a quantity of horses and arms. When these things had been done without delay, he orders all the deserters to be brought in chains. The greater part of them were brought, as had been ordered; a few, as soon as the surrender began, had gone off to king Bocchus in Mauretania. And so Jugurtha, when he had been stripped of arms, men, and money, while he himself was being summoned to Tisidium to receive his orders, again began to bend his mind and, out of an evil conscience, to fear what he deserved. At last, many days spent in hesitation — now, from weariness of his ill fortunes, counting all things preferable to war, now turning over with himself how heavy a fall it was from a kingdom into slavery — having lost many great safeguards to no purpose, he takes up war afresh. And at Rome the Senate, consulted about the provinces, had decreed Numidia to Metellus.

About the same time at Utica it chanced that, as Gaius Marius was sacrificing to the gods with victims, the soothsayer told him that great and marvelous things were portended: therefore let him do what he had in mind, trusting to the gods, and try fortune as often as he could; all would fall out prosperously. But him, already before this, a vast longing for the consulship was goading, toward the gaining of which — except for the antiquity of his family — all else was in abundance: industry, probity, great knowledge of war, a spirit huge in war and modest at home, master of lust and of riches, greedy only of glory. But he, born and reared his whole boyhood at Arpinum, as soon as his age could bear soldiering, exercised himself in doing service, not in Greek eloquence nor in the refinements of the city: so among good arts his nature, kept whole, soon came to ripeness. And so, when first he sought the military tribunate from the people, though most did not know his face, by his deeds he was easily made known and declared by all the tribes. Then from that magistracy he won himself another, and after that another, and always in his offices so bore himself that he was held worthy of a greater than he was holding. Yet, such a man up to that time — for afterward he was flung headlong by ambition — he did not dare to reach for the consulship. Even then the plebs gave the other magistracies, but the nobility passed the consulship from hand to hand among themselves. No new man was so renowned or of deeds so outstanding but he was held unworthy of that honor, and that honor, as it were, polluted by him.

And so when Marius sees the soothsayer’s words pointing the same way to which the longing of his spirit was urging him, he asks Metellus for his discharge, that he might stand for office. Although in Metellus valor, glory, and the other things good men wish for were abundant, yet there was in him a scornful spirit and a pride, the common malady of the nobility. And so at first, moved by the unwonted thing, he wondered at the plan, and as in friendship advised him not to begin so crooked a thing nor to bear a spirit above his fortune: not all things were to be coveted by all men; his own lot ought to please him well enough; in short, let him beware of asking of the Roman people what might rightly be denied him. After he had said these things and others like them, and Marius’s mind was not bent, he answered that, as soon as the public business allowed, he would do what he asked. And afterward, when he kept demanding the same, he is said to have told him not to hurry to be off: he would stand for the consulship soon enough together with his own son. He at that time was serving there in his father’s tent, about twenty years old. This thing had violently inflamed Marius, both for the honor he was aiming at and against Metellus. So by longing and by anger — the worst of counselors — he went to work; he abstained from no deed or word that might only court favor; the soldiers over whom he had charge in winter quarters he held under a looser command than before; among the traders, of whom there was a great multitude at Utica, he spoke of the war at once slanderously and grandly: if half the army were granted him, within a few days he would have Jugurtha in chains; the war was being drawn out on purpose by the commander, because the man, empty and of kingly pride, took too much joy in command. All these things seemed the firmer to them because by the long duration of the war they had ruined their household estates, and to an eager mind nothing is done quickly enough.

There was besides in our army a certain Numidian named Gauda, son of Mastanabal, grandson of Masinissa, whom Micipsa had named in his will as second heir, worn out by diseases and for that cause a little impaired in mind. To him, when he asked, after the manner of kings, that Metellus set a chair beside his own, and likewise afterward a squadron of Roman horse for a guard, Metellus had denied both: the honor, because it belonged only to those whom the Roman people had called kings; the guard, because it would be an insult to them, if Roman knights were handed over as henchmen to a Numidian. This man, in his vexation, Marius approaches and exhorts to seek, with his help, the penalty for the insults done to the commander. The man, too feeble in mind through his diseases, he exalts with flattering speech: that he was a king, a great man, the grandson of Masinissa; that if Jugurtha were taken or killed he would have the rule of Numidia without delay; and that this could come to pass the sooner, if he himself were sent as consul to that war. And so he urges both him and the Roman knights, soldiers and traders — some he himself, most the hope of peace impels — to write to their connections at Rome harshly about Metellus’s conduct of the war, and to demand Marius as commander. Thus the consulship was sought for him by many men with most honorable canvassing. At the same time, in that season, the plebs, having routed the nobility by the Mamilian law, was exalting new men. So all things went forward for Marius.

Meanwhile Jugurtha, after he gives up surrender and begins the war, prepared all things with great care, hastened: he gathered an army; the states that had revolted from him he sought to win back, by terror or by holding out rewards; he fortified his own positions; arms, weapons, and the rest, which he had lost in the hope of peace, he repaired or bought; he enticed the slaves of the Romans and tried even with money the very men who were in the garrisons; in short, he suffered nothing to be untouched or at rest, he set all things astir. And so the people of Vaga, where Metellus at the outset, while Jugurtha was suing for peace, had set a garrison, worn down by the king’s entreaties, and not before alienated in goodwill — the leading men of the city conspire together. For the common crowd, as is most often the case, and most of all among the Numidians, was of a fickle nature, seditious and given to discord, greedy of revolution, hostile to quiet and ease. Then, having settled matters among themselves, they fix upon the third day, because that, being festal and kept throughout all Africa, promised sport and license rather than dread. But when the time came, they invite the centurions and the military tribunes, and the prefect of the town himself, Titus Turpilius Silanus, each one to his own house. All of these, except Turpilius, they butcher amid the feasting; afterward they fall upon the soldiers, straggling and unarmed, since on such a day and without command. The plebs does the same — part taught by the nobility, others spurred by zeal for such things, men to whom, ignorant of the deeds and the design, the uproar itself and revolution were pleasing enough.

The Roman soldiers, made uncertain by the sudden fear, and ignorant what they should best do, fell into panic. The citadel of the town, where the standards and shields were, was held by a garrison of the enemy; the gates, shut beforehand, forbade flight; besides, the women and children from the roofs of the buildings flung down, vying with one another, stones and whatever else the place afforded. So the double peril could neither be guarded against, nor could the bravest hold out against the weakest kind: alike good and bad, the strenuous and the unwarlike, were butchered unavenged. In that so great cruelty — the Numidians most savage and the town shut up on every side — the prefect Turpilius alone of all the Italians got away untouched. Whether this came about through the pity of his host, or by a compact, or by chance, we have not learned for certain; but, because in so great an evil a base life was dearer to him than an unblemished name, he seems a wicked man and one not to be sworn by.

Metellus, after he learns of the doings at Vaga, for a little while in grief withdrew from sight. Then, when anger and sorrow were mingled, he hastens with the utmost care to go and avenge the wrongs. The legion with which he was wintering, and as many Numidian horse as he could, he leads out light at the very setting of the sun, and on the next day, about the third hour, comes into a certain plain ringed about by slightly higher ground. There he tells the soldiers — weary with the length of the march and now refusing everything — that the town of Vaga was no more than a mile away, and that it became them to bear the rest of the toil with even mind, while they took vengeance for their fellow-citizens, the bravest of men and the most wretched; besides, he kindly holds the plunder out before them. So, their spirits roused, he orders the horsemen to go in front, wide-spaced, the foot to go as close-packed as possible and to hide their standards.

The people of Vaga, when they observed the army marching toward them, at first, as was the truth, thought it was Metellus and shut their gates; then, when they see that the fields were not being laid waste and that those who were first at hand were Numidian horsemen, supposing it Jugurtha again, with great joy they come out to meet it. The horse and foot, suddenly, at the signal given, some cut down the crowd that had poured out of the town, some hasten to the gates, part seize the towers: anger and the hope of plunder availed more than weariness. So the people of Vaga had only two days’ joy of their treachery; the city, great and wealthy, was given over wholly to punishment or to plunder. Turpilius, whom we showed above to have been prefect of the town and the one of them all to escape, was ordered by Metellus to plead his cause; after he clears himself too poorly, he was condemned and scourged and paid the penalty with his head; for he was a citizen of Latin standing.

About the same time Bomilcar — at whose urging Jugurtha had begun the surrender that he abandoned out of fear — being suspected by the king, and himself suspecting him, longed for revolution, sought a stratagem for the king’s destruction, and wore out his mind day and night. At last, trying everything, he joins to himself as partner Nabdalsa, a man of noble birth, of great wealth, renowned and welcome to his countrymen, who was wont for the most part to lead the army apart from the king and to dispatch all the business that was left over to Jugurtha when he was weary or bound by greater matters; from which he had won glory and wealth. And so, by the counsel of both, a day is fixed for the ambush; the rest it was resolved to arrange on the spot, as the matter should require. Nabdalsa set out for the army, which he had been ordered to keep among the winter quarters of the Romans, lest the land be laid waste with the enemy unpunished. When he, struck by the greatness of the deed, did not come at the appointed time, and fear was hindering the business, Bomilcar — at once eager to accomplish what he had begun and anxious through his partner’s fear, lest he abandon the old plan and seek a new one — sends him letters by faithful men, in which he accuses the man’s softness and sloth, calls to witness the gods by whom he had sworn, and warns him not to turn Metellus’s rewards into his own ruin: Jugurtha’s destruction was at hand; the only question now was whether he should perish by his own valor or by Metellus’s; therefore let him reckon within himself whether he preferred the rewards or the torture.

But when these letters were brought, Nabdalsa happened to be resting, his body wearied, upon a couch; and when he had learned Bomilcar’s words, at first care, then, as is usual with a troubled mind, sleep took him. He had a certain Numidian, a steward of his affairs, faithful and welcome, and privy to all his counsels save the latest. When this man heard that letters had been brought, and, as was the custom, supposing there was need of his service or his wit, he went into the tent, and, while the other slept, took the letter, carelessly laid on the pillow above his head, and read it through; then, the plot quickly understood, he goes off to the king. Nabdalsa, awakened a little after, when he neither found the letter and learned the whole affair, as it had been done, from deserters, at first tried to pursue the informer; when that was vain, he approaches Jugurtha to placate him; he says that what he himself had meant to do had been forestalled by his client’s treachery; weeping, he entreats him, by their friendship and by his own past faithful service, not to hold him suspect of so great a crime.

To this the king answered mildly, otherwise than he bore it in his heart. Bomilcar and many others, whom he had found to be partners in the plot, being put to death, he had smothered his anger, lest some rising should arise out of the affair. Nor after that time was any day or night quiet for Jugurtha: he trusted no place, no mortal, no hour enough; he feared citizen and enemy alike; he looked round on all things and started in fear at every noise; he would rest by night now in one place, now in another, often against the dignity of a king; sometimes, roused from sleep, he would snatch up arms and raise an uproar: so by terror was he driven as if by madness.

And so Metellus, when he learned from deserters of Bomilcar’s fate and the disclosure of the plot, again prepares and hastens everything as for a fresh war. Marius, who kept pressing about his departure, he sends home, thinking a man at once unwilling and aggrieved little fit for his service. And at Rome the plebs, when the letters that had been sent about Metellus and Marius were known, had received the news of both with willing minds. To the commander the nobility, which before had been an honor, was now a cause of ill-will; to the other, the lowliness of his birth had added favor. But in either case the zeal of parties tempered judgment more than the men’s own good or bad qualities. Besides, the seditious magistrates stirred up the crowd, arraigned Metellus on a capital charge in all their assemblies, and magnified Marius’s valor beyond the truth. At last the plebs was so kindled that all the artisans and country folk, whose substance and credit lay in their hands, left their work and thronged about Marius and counted their own needs after his honor. So, the nobility struck down, after many generations the consulship is entrusted to a new man. And afterward the people, asked by the tribune of the plebs Titus Manlius Mancinus whom they wished to wage the war with Jugurtha, in full assembly ordered Marius. But shortly before, the Senate had decreed Numidia to Metellus: that decree came to nothing.

At the same time Jugurtha, having lost his friends — of whom he had killed most himself, while the rest in their fear had fled, part to the Romans, others to king Bocchus — since the war could not be waged without helpers, and he thought it dangerous to try the faith of new men amid such great treachery of the old, went about wavering and uncertain. Neither circumstance nor plan nor any man pleased him enough: he changed his routes and his officers from day to day; now he marched against the enemy, now into the wastes; often he set his hope in flight and a little after in arms; he doubted whether he should trust less the valor or the faith of his countrymen: so, wherever he had turned, things were against him. But amid these delays Metellus suddenly shows himself with his army. The Numidians were made ready and drawn up by Jugurtha as the time allowed; then battle is begun. In the part where the king was present at the fight, there they contended for a while; all the rest of his soldiers were driven off and routed at the first encounter. The Romans gained the standards and the arms and a fair number of prisoners; for in nearly all battles the Numidians’ feet were a surer protection than their arms.

In that flight Jugurtha, now more deeply distrusting his cause, with the deserters and part of his cavalry made for the wastes, and then came to Thala, a great and wealthy town, where most of his treasures lay, and much of the rich array of his sons’ upbringing. When these things were learned by Metellus, although he had learned that between Thala and the nearest river, over a space of fifty miles, the ground was arid and waste, nevertheless, in the hope of finishing the war if he gained that town, he undertakes to surmount all the hardships and to conquer nature itself. And so he orders all the pack-animals to be lightened of their loads, except for ten days’ grain, and only water-skins and other vessels fit for water to be carried. Besides, he gathers from the fields as much tame cattle as he can, and loads on them vessels of every kind, but mostly wooden ones collected from the huts of the Numidians. Moreover he orders the neighboring people, who had given themselves up to Metellus after the king’s flight, each to carry as much water as he could; he names the day and the place where they should be ready; he himself loads his beasts from the river, which we said above was the nearest water to the town: so equipped, he sets out for Thala. Then, when they had come to the place he had appointed for the Numidians, and the camp was pitched and fortified, suddenly so great a force of water is said to have been sent down from the sky that it alone was enough and more for the army. Besides, the supply was larger than they had hoped, because the Numidians, like most in a new surrender, had strained to do their duty. But the soldiers used the rain rather out of religion, and that thing added much to their spirits, for they believed themselves a care to the immortal gods. Then on the next day, contrary to Jugurtha’s expectation, they reach Thala. The townsmen, who had believed themselves protected by the roughness of the country, struck by the great and unwonted thing, none the less briskly made ready for war; our men did the same.

But the king, believing that nothing was now left undone by Metellus — since by his industry he had conquered all things, arms and weapons, places and seasons, in the end nature herself that commands all else — fled by night from the town with his children and a great part of his money. Nor afterward did he stay in any place more than a single day or a single night; he pretended to hurry for business, but in truth he feared treachery, which he thought he could escape by speed: for such designs are formed at leisure and out of opportunity. But Metellus, when he sees the townsmen intent on the fight, and the town fortified at once by works and by its site, surrounds the walls with rampart and ditch. Then in the two places his means showed most suitable he drives forward the mantlets, throws up a mound over them, and on the mound sets towers to guard the work and the workmen; against these the townsmen hasten and prepare; in short, on neither side was anything left undone. At last the Romans, worn out by much earlier toil and battle, forty days after they had come there, got possession of the town only; all the plunder had been ruined by the deserters. For these, when they see the wall struck by the rams and their fortunes shattered, carry the gold and silver and the other things that are counted first into the royal house. There, loaded with wine and feasting, they ruin those things, and the house, and themselves, with fire; and the penalties they had feared from the enemy if conquered, those they paid, of their own will.

But just as Thala was taken, envoys had come from the town of Leptis to Metellus, begging him to send thither a garrison and a prefect: a certain Hamilcar, a man of noble birth and factious, was bent on revolution, against whom neither the orders of the magistrates nor the laws availed; unless he made haste in this, their own safety and his allies would be in the utmost peril. For the people of Leptis, from the very beginning of the Jugurthine War, had sent to the consul Bestia and afterward to Rome, to ask for friendship and alliance. Then, when they had obtained these, they always remained good and faithful, and had readily done all that was commanded by Bestia, Albinus, and Metellus. And so they easily obtained from the commander what they asked. Four cohorts of Ligurians were sent there, and Gaius Annius as prefect.

That town was founded by Sidonians, who, we are told, being fugitives on account of civil discords, came by ship into those parts; but it lies between the two Syrtes, which take their name from the thing itself. For there are two gulfs near the farther end of Africa, unequal in size, alike in nature; the parts of them nearest the land are very deep, the rest, as chance has had it, some deep, others shallow in a storm. For when the sea has begun to be high and to rage with the winds, the waves drag mud and sand and huge rocks: so the face of the place changes together with the winds. The Syrtes are named from the dragging. Of that community the language only has been altered by intermarriage with the Numidians; its laws and way of life are for the most part Sidonian, which they kept the more easily because they passed their lives far from the king’s rule. Between them and the thickly settled part of Numidia lay many and waste tracts.

But since by the affairs of the Leptitani we have come into those regions, it seems not unworthy to record an excellent and marvelous deed of two Carthaginians; the place has put me in mind of the matter. At the time when the Carthaginians held sway over most of Africa, the Cyrenaeans too were great and wealthy. The land between was sandy, of one aspect; there was neither river nor mountain to mark off their boundaries. This thing held them in a great and long war with each other. After on both sides armies, and likewise fleets, had often been routed and put to flight, and each had worn the other down somewhat, fearing lest soon some third party should fall upon victors and vanquished alike, both being spent, during a truce they make a compact: that on a fixed day envoys should set out from home; the place where they met each other, that should be held the common boundary of the two peoples. And so from Carthage two brothers were sent, whose name was Philaeni; these hastened to press on their way; the Cyrenaeans went more slowly. Whether this came of sloth or of chance, I have not well learned. But in those parts a storm is wont to delay a man no otherwise than at sea. For when, over the level ground bare of growth, a wind has risen and stirred the sand from the soil, it is driven with great force and fills the mouth and the eyes: so, the view hindered, the journey is delayed. After the Cyrenaeans see that they are somewhat behind, and, for the matter botched, fear punishment at home, they accuse the Carthaginians of having set out from home before the time, throw the affair into confusion — in short, they would have anything rather than go off beaten. But when the Phoenicians sought another condition, only an equal one, the Greeks gave the Carthaginians the choice: either, at the boundaries they were claiming for their people, they should be buried alive there, or, on the same condition, the Greeks would advance to whatever place they wished. The Philaeni, the condition approved, gave up themselves and their lives for the commonwealth: so they were buried alive. The Carthaginians consecrated altars to the brothers Philaeni on that spot, and other honors were appointed for them at home. Now I return to my subject.

After Thala was lost, Jugurtha, thinking nothing firm enough against Metellus, set out through the great wastes with a few men and came to the Gaetuli, a wild and uncultured race of men, and at that time ignorant of the Roman name. Their multitude he gathers into one body and little by little accustoms them to keep ranks, to follow standards, to obey command, and likewise to do the other duties of soldiers. Besides, the nearest friends of king Bocchus he brings over to zeal for himself by great gifts and greater promises, and with these for helpers, working on the king, he drives him to begin war against the Romans. This was the easier and readier because Bocchus, at the beginning of this war, had sent envoys to Rome to ask a treaty and friendship — a thing most opportune for the war now begun, which a few men had blocked, blind with avarice, whose custom it was to sell all things honorable and dishonorable. And already before this a daughter of Jugurtha had married Bocchus; but that tie is counted slight among the Numidians and Mauri, because each man, according to his means, has as many wives as he can — some ten, others more, but the kings the more so. Thus the heart is pulled apart by the multitude: none holds the place of consort, all alike are cheap.

And so to a place that pleased both, the armies come together. There, faith given and received, Jugurtha kindles the spirit of Bocchus with a speech: the Romans were unjust, of bottomless avarice, the common enemy of all; they had the same cause of war with Bocchus that they had with himself and with other nations — the lust of ruling, to which all kingdoms are hateful; now himself, a little before the Carthaginians, likewise king Perseus, and hereafter whoever should seem most wealthy, would be an enemy to the Romans. By these and other such words they resolve on a march to the town of Cirta, because there Metellus had stored his plunder, his captives, and his baggage. So Jugurtha reckoned that, if the city were taken, the enterprise would be worth the pains, or, if the Roman came to the aid of his men, they would contend in battle. For, cunning, he hastened only this — to spoil Bocchus’s peace, lest by working delays the king should prefer anything other than war.

The commander, after he learned of the kings’ alliance, does not — rashly, and as he had often been wont to do now that Jugurtha was beaten — offer a chance of fighting in every place. But not far from Cirta, his camp fortified, he awaits the kings, thinking it better, now that the Mauri had come on as a new enemy, to make the fight at his convenience, once he had taken their measure. Meanwhile he is informed by letter from Rome that the province of Numidia had been given to Marius; for he had heard before that he was made consul. Struck by these things beyond what was good or seemly, he could neither hold back his tears nor govern his tongue — a man outstanding in other arts, he bore his grief too softly. This thing some turned to arrogance, others said that a good nature had been kindled by the insult, many that it was because a victory already won was being torn from his hands. To us it is well enough known that he was tormented more by Marius’s honor than by his own injury, and would not have borne it so anxiously, if the province taken from him had been handed to any other than Marius.

And so, hindered by that grief, and because it seemed folly to manage another man’s business at his own peril, he sends envoys to Bocchus, to demand that he not become an enemy of the Roman people without cause: he had now a great opportunity of joining alliance and friendship, which was better than war; and although he trusted in his own resources, yet he ought not to exchange the certain for the uncertain. Every war is easily begun, but most hardly laid down; its beginning and its end were not in the same man’s power; to begin was permitted even to any coward, but it was given up only when the victors willed. Therefore let him look to himself and his kingdom, and not mix his own flourishing fortunes with the ruined fortunes of Jugurtha. To these things the king speaks mildly enough: he desired peace, but pitied the fortunes of Jugurtha; if the same opportunity were granted to him, all would come together. Again the commander sends messengers against the demands of Bocchus; he approves some, refuses others. In this way, with messengers often sent and sent back by both, the time wears on, and, by Metellus’s will, the war is dragged out untouched.

But Marius, as we said above, made consul by an eager plebs, after the people ordered him the province of Numidia — already before this hostile to the nobility — now pressed them hard and fiercely; now he hurt them singly, now all together; he kept saying that he had taken the consulship as spoils from those men, conquered, and other things besides, grand for himself and galling to them. Meanwhile he held first the things the war required: he demanded a supplement for the legions, summoned auxiliaries from peoples and kings, and besides called up from Latium and the allies every bravest man, most known to him from service, a few by repute, and by canvassing pressed even men who had served out their terms to set out with him. Nor did the Senate, though hostile to him, dare to refuse him about any matter. Indeed it had even gladly decreed the supplement, because military service was thought against the plebs’s will, and Marius would lose either the means of war or the favor of the crowd. But that hope was vain: so great a longing to go with Marius had seized most men. Each pictured himself growing rich with plunder, returning home a victor, and drew other things of this kind through their minds; and Marius had roused them not a little by his speech. For after all that he had demanded was decreed, wishing to enroll soldiers, both to exhort them and, as was his custom, to harry the nobility, he called an assembly of the people. Then he discoursed in this manner:

“I know, Quirites, that most men do not seek command from you by the same arts by which they hold it once they have gained it: at first they are industrious, suppliant, modest, then they pass their lives in sloth and arrogance. But to me the contrary seems right: for by how much the whole commonwealth is worth more than a consulship or a praetorship, by so much the greater should be the care with which it is administered than that with which these are sought. Nor does it escape me how great a task I take on with your very great favor. To prepare a war and at the same time spare the treasury; to force into service those whom you would not wish to offend; to manage all things at home and abroad — and to do this among the envious, the obstructive, the factious — is, Quirites, harder than men suppose. And besides: if others fall short, their ancient nobility, the brave deeds of their forebears, the resources of kinsmen and connections, their many clients — all these stand by them for protection; for me all my hopes rest in myself, which I must guard by valor and integrity; for all else is feeble. This too I understand, Quirites: that the faces of all are turned upon me; that the fair and the good favor me — since my good deeds tell for the commonwealth — while the nobility seeks an opening to attack. The more keenly therefore must I strain, that you be not deceived and that they come to nothing. From boyhood to this present age I have so lived that I hold all toils and dangers familiar. What I did before your favors without pay, to abandon now that I have received my wage — that, Quirites, is no part of my purpose. For those men it is hard to be temperate in their powers who feigned themselves honest out of ambition; for me, who have spent my whole life in the noblest arts, to do well has now passed from habit into nature. You bade me wage war with Jugurtha — a thing the nobility bore most ill. I beg you, weigh it in your minds: would it be better to change this, and send against this or any like business some man out of that pack of nobles, a man of ancient lineage and many masks and no campaigns — so that, of course, in so great a matter, knowing nothing, he should tremble and bustle and take some man of the people for a prompter of his duty? So it most often happens that the man whom you have bidden to command seeks for himself another commander. And I know men, Quirites, who after they were made consuls began to read the deeds of our forebears and the Greeks’ precepts of war: men who put things backwards; for though to hold office comes later in time, in the thing itself and in practice it comes first. Compare now, Quirites, with their arrogance me, a new man. What they are wont to hear or read of, part of it I have seen, part I have done myself; what they have learned from books, I have learned by soldiering. Now judge for yourselves whether deeds or words are worth more. They despise my newness, I their cowardice; to me my fortune is cast up, to them their disgraces. Though I reckon the nature of all men one and common, yet the bravest is the noblest. And if it could now be asked of the fathers of Albinus or of Bestia whether they would rather I or those men had been born of them, what do you think they would answer but that they wished the best possible children? But if they rightly look down on me, let them look down likewise on their own forebears, whose nobility, like mine, began from valor. They envy me my honor: then let them envy my toil, my integrity, and my dangers too, since it was through these that I won it. But men corrupted by pride so pass their lives as though they scorned your honors; and they so seek them as though they had lived honorably. Surely they are deceived who look at once for things most opposite, the pleasure of sloth and the rewards of valor. And even when they speak before you or in the Senate, in most of their oration they exalt their ancestors: by recalling their brave deeds they think themselves the more illustrious. The contrary is true. For the more glorious those men’s lives, the more shameful is these men’s sloth. And assuredly it is so: the glory of ancestors is, as it were, a light to their posterity, and suffers neither their good nor their bad to lie hidden. Of this light I confess my lack, Quirites; but — what is far more glorious — I may speak of my own deeds. Now see how unjust they are. What they claim for themselves out of another’s valor, that they will not grant me out of my own — and that, of course, because I have no masks, and because my nobility is new; which surely it is better to have founded than, once received, to have corrupted. I am not unaware that, should they choose to answer me, they would have an eloquent and well-turned speech in abundance. But since, amid your very great favor, they tear both me and you with abuse in every place, I did not think it right to keep silent, lest anyone take my forbearance for a guilty conscience. For me, in the judgment of my own mind, no speech can do harm: since true things must needs speak well of me, and the false my life and character refute. But since your counsels are blamed — yours, who laid on me the highest honor and the greatest task — consider again and again whether you should repent of them. I cannot, to win confidence, parade the masks or the triumphs or the consulships of my forebears; but, if the matter require, I can show spears, a banner, trappings, and other military gifts, and besides scars on the front of my body. These are my masks, this my nobility — not left me by inheritance, as theirs to them, but won by my own very many toils and dangers. My words are not artfully arranged: I care little for that. Valor shows itself well enough of itself; it is they who have need of art, to cloak base deeds with speech. Nor have I learned Greek letters: I had little wish to learn them, since in their teachers they had availed nothing toward valor. But those things far the best for the commonwealth I have learned: to strike the enemy, to keep guard, to fear nothing but a base name, to bear winter and summer alike, to rest on the ground, to endure at one and the same time want and toil. By these precepts I shall exhort my soldiers, nor shall I keep them stinted and myself in plenty, nor make my glory of their toil. This is useful, this is a citizen’s command. For when you live softly yourself, but force your army by punishment, that is to be a master, not a commander. By doing these things and others like them your forebears made themselves and the commonwealth renowned. Trusting in them, the nobility — itself unlike them in character — despises us their emulators, and demands of you all honors, not from desert, but as though owed. But those most arrogant men go far astray. Their ancestors left them all that they could: riches, masks, an illustrious memory of themselves; valor they did not leave, nor could they: it alone is neither given as a gift nor received. They call me sordid and of uncouth manners, because I set out a banquet with too little skill and keep no actor and no cook of higher price than a bailiff. This I am glad to confess, Quirites. For from my father and from other holy men I learned thus: that elegance befits women, toil befits men; that for all good men there ought to be more of glory than of riches; that arms, not furniture, are their adornment. Why then do they not always do what pleases them, what they hold dear? Let them love, let them drink; where they spent their youth, there let them pass their age, in banquets, given over to the belly and the basest part of the body; the sweat, the dust, and the rest let them leave to us, to whom those things are sweeter than feasts. But it is not so. For when the basest of men have disgraced themselves with vices, they go to snatch away the rewards of the good. Thus most unjustly do luxury and sloth, the worst of arts, no way harm those who practice them, while they are the ruin of the guiltless commonwealth. Now, since I have answered them as far as my own character — not their disgraces — demanded, I shall speak a little about the commonwealth. First of all, Quirites, be of good heart about Numidia. For all that until now has shielded Jugurtha you have removed: avarice, inexperience, and arrogance. Next, there is an army there that knows the ground, but, by Hercules, more strenuous than fortunate. For a great part of it has been worn away by the avarice or rashness of its leaders. Wherefore you who are of military age, strive with me and take up the cause of the commonwealth, and let no one be seized by fear from the disaster of others or the arrogance of commanders. I myself, on the march and in battle, will be present with you, your counselor alike and the partner of your danger, and will bear myself and you in all things alike. And surely, with the gods aiding, all things are ripe: victory, plunder, praise. And were these doubtful or far off, still it would become all good men to come to the aid of the commonwealth. For no one has been made immortal by cowardice, nor has any parent prayed that his children be eternal, but rather that they should pass their lives good and honorable. I would say more, Quirites, if words added valor to the timid; for the strenuous I think enough has been said.”

After delivering a speech of this kind, Marius, when he sees the plebs’s spirits roused, loads ships in haste with supplies, pay, arms, and other useful things, and bids the lieutenant Aulus Manlius set out with these. He himself meanwhile enrolls soldiers, not after the manner of the forefathers nor from the property classes, but as each man’s wish was, the head-count for the most part. This some recorded as done from a lack of good men, others through the consul’s ambition, because by that class he had been honored and advanced, and to a man seeking power the most needy is the most serviceable, one to whom his own goods are not dear — since they are none — and all things seem honorable that bring a price. And so Marius, having set out for Africa with a number somewhat greater than had been decreed, in a few days is carried to Utica. The army is handed over to him by the lieutenant Publius Rutilius; for Metellus had fled the sight of Marius, lest he see what, heard of, his mind had not been able to bear.

But the consul, the legions and auxiliary cohorts filled out, sets out into a fertile country laden with plunder; all that is taken there he gives to the soldiers; then he attacks forts and towns too little fortified by nature or by men, and fights many battles, but light ones, in various places. Meanwhile the new soldiers came into battle without fear, saw the fleeing taken or killed, the bravest the safest, that by arms freedom, fatherland, parents, and all else were shielded, that glory and riches were won. So in a short space the new and the old grew together, and the valor of all became equal. But the kings, when they learned of Marius’s coming, withdrew in different directions into difficult places. So it had pleased Jugurtha, who hoped that the enemy, once scattered, could be fallen upon, since the Romans, like most men, with fear removed, would be the looser and the more unguarded.

Metellus meanwhile, having set out for Rome, is received, against his hope, with the gladdest spirits, dear alike to plebs and fathers after the ill-will had passed. But Marius, busily and prudently, attended alike to his own affairs and the enemy’s: he learned what was for the good or the ill of each, scouted the kings’ routes, forestalled their plans and ambushes, suffered nothing slack on his own side nor safe on theirs. And so both the Gaetuli and Jugurtha, as they drove off plunder from our allies, he often attacked and routed on the march, and stripped the king himself of his arms not far from the town of Cirta. When he found these things only glorious and not such as to finish the war, he resolved to surround one by one the cities which by their men or their site were most useful to the enemy and against himself: thus Jugurtha would either be stripped of his garrisons, if he allowed it, or would contend in battle. For Bocchus had often sent messengers to him: that he wished the friendship of the Roman people; that he should fear nothing hostile from him. Whether he feigned this, that he might fall the heavier for being unlooked-for, or, from a fickleness of nature, was wont to exchange peace and war, has not been well ascertained.

But the consul, as he had resolved, approached the fortified towns and forts, and partly by force, others by fear or by holding out rewards, won them away from the enemy. And at first he attempted moderate things, thinking Jugurtha would come to grips for the sake of guarding his people. But when he learned that he was far off and intent on other business, it seemed the time to attempt greater and harder things. There was, amid vast wastes, a great and strong town named Capsa, of which Hercules the Libyan was recorded as founder. Its citizens were held under Jugurtha free from tribute, under a light rule, and for that most faithful, fortified against an enemy not only by walls and arms and men, but much more by the roughness of the country. For except for the parts near the town, all else was waste, untilled, wanting in water, infested with serpents, whose force, like that of all wild beasts, is the fiercer for lack of food. Besides, the very nature of serpents, ruinous in itself, is kindled by thirst more than by anything else. A very great longing to gain it had seized Marius, both for the use of the war and because the thing seemed hard, and because Metellus had taken the town of Thala with great glory, not unlike it in site and fortification — except that at Thala there were several springs not far from the walls, while the people of Capsa used one only, and that a running water within the town, and for the rest rainwater. This was borne the more easily there, and in all that part of Africa which, far from the sea, lived in a wilder fashion, because the Numidians for the most part fed on milk and the flesh of wild beasts and sought neither salt nor other provocatives of the palate: their food was against hunger and thirst, not for lust or luxury.

And so the consul, all things explored — trusting, I believe, in the gods; for against such great difficulties he could not provide enough by counsel, since he was tried even by a scarcity of grain, because the Numidians attend to the pasturage of cattle rather than to plowland, and whatever had grown they had carried, by the king’s order, into fortified places, while the land was dry and empty of crops at that season, for it was the end of summer — nevertheless equips himself, for the means at hand, providently enough. All the cattle that in the previous days had been plunder he assigns to the auxiliary horsemen to drive; he bids the lieutenant Aulus Manlius go with light cohorts to the town of Laris, where he had stored his pay and supplies, and says that he himself, plundering as he went, would come thither in a few days. So, his design hidden, he proceeds to the river Tanais.

But on the march he had distributed the cattle daily to the army by centuries and likewise by squadrons, in equal shares, and saw to it that skins should be made from the hides; at once he eased the scarcity of grain and prepared, while all were unaware, what would soon be of use. At last, on the sixth day, when they came to the river, a very great supply of skins had been made. There, the camp pitched with a light fortification, he bids the soldiers take food and be ready to go out at the very setting of the sun, all their baggage thrown away, and to load themselves and the beasts with water only. Then, when it seemed time, he goes out from the camp, and, the whole night spent in marching, he halted; he does the same the next night; then on the third, long before the coming of light, he came into a hilly place no more than two miles’ distance from Capsa, and there, as secretly as he can, waits with all his forces. But when day began and the Numidians, fearing nothing hostile, had gone out of the town in numbers, suddenly he orders all the cavalry, and with them the swiftest foot, to make at a run for Capsa and beset the gates; then he himself, intent, follows in haste and does not let the soldiers plunder. When the townsmen learned this — the situation desperate, the fear huge, the evil unforeseen, and besides part of the citizens outside the walls in the enemy’s power — they were forced to make surrender. But the town was burned, the grown Numidians killed, all the rest sold, the plunder divided among the soldiers. This deed, against the law of war, was committed not from the consul’s avarice or wickedness, but because the place was useful to Jugurtha and hard of access for us, and the race of men fickle, faithless, and before checked neither by kindness nor by fear.

After Marius had accomplished so great a thing without any loss of his own, great and renowned before, he began to be held greater and more renowned. All his ill-considered measures were drawn over to valor: the soldiers, kept under a moderate command and at the same time made wealthy, exalted him to the sky; the Numidians feared him more than a mortal; in short all, allies and enemies, believed that he had either a divine mind, or that all things were portended at the gods’ nod. But the consul, when that matter turned out well, proceeds to other towns, takes a few against the resistance of the Numidians, more, deserted because of the miseries of the Capsans, he ruins with fire: all places are filled with mourning and slaughter. At last, master of many places, and of most with his army unbloodied, he undertakes another matter, not of the same harshness as the Capsans’ but no less difficult. For not far from the river Muluccha, which divided the kingdom of Jugurtha from that of Bocchus, there was, amid the rest of the plain, a rocky mountain, wide enough for a moderate fort, rising to an immense height, with a single very narrow approach left; for the whole was by nature, as if by work and design, sheer. This place Marius, because the king’s treasures were there, set himself to take by the utmost force. But that matter was managed better by chance than by counsel. For the fort had men and arms enough, and a great store of grain, and a spring of water; the place was unfit for mounds and towers and other engines; the path of the garrison was very narrow, sheer on either side. The mantlets were driven up with huge peril, and in vain; for when they had advanced a little, they were ruined by fire or by stones. The soldiers could neither stand to guard the work, because of the unevenness of the ground, nor ply it among the mantlets without danger: the best fell or were wounded, and fear was increased in the rest.

But Marius, many days and labors spent, anxiously turned over in his mind whether to give up the attempt, since it was vain, or to await fortune, which he had often used with success. And while many days and nights he revolved this, seething, by chance a certain Ligurian, a common soldier of the auxiliary cohorts, having gone out from camp to fetch water, not far from the side of the fort that was turned away from the fighters, noticed snails creeping among the rocks; and while he sought one and another, then more, in his zeal for gathering them, little by little he got out nearly to the top of the mountain. When he perceived the solitude there, in the way of human nature a longing to do the difficult turned his mind elsewhere. And by chance in that place a great holm-oak had grown up among the rocks, only a little bent at first, then twisted and grown upward, whither the nature of all growing things carries them. Pushing himself now by its branches, now by the jutting rocks, the Ligurian came onto the level of the fort, because all the Numidians were intent on the fighters. Having explored all that he judged would soon be of use, he returns by the same way, not heedlessly, as he had climbed, but trying and looking round at everything. And so he goes in haste to Marius, tells him what was done, urges him to attempt the fort on the side by which he himself had climbed, and promises himself a guide of the road and the danger. Marius sent some of those present with the Ligurian to test his promise. Of these, as each man’s nature was, so they reported the thing hard or easy; the consul’s spirit, however, was a little raised. And so out of his store of trumpeters and horn-blowers he chose five of the swiftest, and with them four centurions to be a guard, and bids all obey the Ligurian, and appoints the next day for the business.

But when, from the instruction, the time seemed right, all being prepared and arranged, he proceeds to the place. But those who were to climb, taught beforehand by their guide, had changed their arms and gear: their heads and feet bare, that the look-out and the foothold over the rocks might be the easier; on their backs swords and shields, but those Numidian ones, of hide, for lightness’ sake and at once that they might clatter the less when struck. So the Ligurian, going before, bound with cords the rocks and any roots that jutted out with age, by which the soldiers, lifted, might climb the more easily; sometimes he raised with his hand those made fearful by the strangeness of the way; where the ascent was a little rougher, he sent each man before him unarmed, then followed himself with their arms; what seemed doubtful to the climb he was the first to try, and, climbing up and down the same spots again and again, then at once stepping aside, he gave the rest courage. And so, long and much wearied, at last they reach the fort, deserted on that side, because all, as on other days, were facing the enemy. Marius, when from messengers he learned what the Ligurian had done — although all day he had kept the Numidians intent on the fight — then indeed, having exhorted his soldiers, and himself going out beyond the mantlets, the tortoise formed, advanced, and at the same time terrified the enemy from afar with engines and archers and slingers. But the Numidians, having often before overthrown the Romans’ mantlets and likewise burned them, did not shelter themselves behind the fort’s walls, but spent day and night before the wall, reviled the Romans and flung madness in Marius’s teeth, threatened our soldiers with Jugurtha’s slavery, and in their good fortune were fierce. Meanwhile, while all, Romans and enemies, were intent on the fight — with great force on both sides, these contending for glory and dominion, those for their safety — suddenly behind them the trumpets sound; and first the women and children, who had come out to look on, flee, then each who was nearest the wall, at last all, armed and unarmed. When this happened, the more keenly the Romans pressed on, routed and merely wounded most, then went over the bodies of the slain, eager for glory, vying to make for the wall, and not one of them all let plunder delay him. So Marius’s rashness, by chance set right, found glory out of fault.

But while this matter is being done, Lucius Sulla the quaestor came into camp with a great body of horse, whom he had been left at Rome to gather from Latium and the allies. But since the affair has put me in mind of so great a man, it seems fitting to say a few words of his nature and his way of life. For we shall not speak of Sulla’s deeds in another place, and Lucius Sisenna, who treated of those matters the best and most carefully of all, seems to me to have spoken with too little freedom of tongue. So Sulla was a noble of patrician stock, of a family now nearly extinct through the sloth of its forebears, learned in Greek and Latin letters alike and most thoroughly, of a huge spirit, greedy of pleasures but greedier of glory; in leisure he lived luxuriously, yet pleasure never delayed him from his business — except that in the matter of a wife he might have taken more honorable counsel; eloquent, shrewd, and easy in friendship; for the cloaking of his designs a depth of mind past belief; a lavish giver of many things and most of all of money. And to him, the most fortunate of all men before his victory in the civil war, fortune was never above his industry, and many doubted whether he were the braver or the luckier. For as to what he did afterward, I am uncertain whether it shames or wearies me more to set it forth.

So Sulla, as has been said above, after he came into Africa and into Marius’s camp with the cavalry, untrained before and ignorant of war, became in a few seasons the most skillful of all. Besides, he addressed the soldiers kindly, granted favors to many who asked, to others of his own accord; he received them unwillingly, but repaid them more quickly than a debt of borrowed money; he himself sought repayment from no one, but rather labored that as many as possible should owe him; he jested and was in earnest with the lowliest; on the works, on the march, and at the watches he was much present; nor meanwhile, as crooked ambition is wont, did he hurt the good name of the consul or of any good man, only he suffered no other to be before him in counsel or in hand, and outstripped most. By these arts and ways he soon became most dear to Marius and to the soldiers.

But Jugurtha, after he had lost the town of Capsa and other fortified places at once useful to him, and great wealth, sends messengers to Bocchus: that he should bring his forces into Numidia as soon as possible; the time for giving battle was at hand. When he learned that he hung back and weighed in doubt the reasons of war and peace, again, as before, he corrupted his nearest men with gifts, and to the Moor himself he promises a third part of Numidia, if either the Romans were driven out of Africa or the war were settled with his own boundaries untouched. Lured by that reward, Bocchus joins Jugurtha with a great multitude. So, the army of both joined, they fall upon Marius — now setting out for winter quarters — with scarce a tenth part of the day remaining, reckoning that the night, now at hand, would be a defense to themselves if beaten and, if they conquered, no hindrance, because they knew the ground, while to the Romans either chance would be the harder in the dark. And so at the same moment the consul learned from many men of the enemy’s coming, and the enemy themselves were at hand; and before the army could be drawn up or gather its baggage — in short, before it could receive any signal or command — the Mauri and Gaetuli horsemen, not in line nor in any fashion of battle, but in troops, as chance had clumped each, charge into our men. All these, in panic from the sudden fear, and yet mindful of their valor, either took up arms or defended others taking them up from the enemy; part mounted their horses and went to meet the enemy; the fight became more like brigandage than a battle. Without standards, without ranks, horse and foot mingled, one gave way, another was cut down; many, fighting most keenly against those before them, were surrounded from behind; neither valor nor arms protected them enough, because the enemy were more in number and poured round on every side. At last the Roman veterans and recruits — and on that account knowing war — wherever the ground or chance had joined any of them, formed a circle, and so, sheltered and drawn up on all sides at once, withstood the enemy’s force.

Nor in that so hard a business was Marius terrified or of a more downcast spirit than before, but with his squadron, which he had got together from the bravest rather than the most familiar, he ranged everywhere, now succoring his struggling men, now charging the enemy where they had stood thickest; he took care for the soldiers by his own hand, since he could not command them all in their confusion. And now the day was spent, while yet the barbarians slackened nothing, and, as the kings had instructed, reckoning the night theirs, pressed on the more keenly. Then Marius takes counsel from the means at hand, and, that there might be a place of retreat for his men, seizes two hills near each other, of which one, too small for a camp, had a great spring of water, the other was useful, because, raised high in great part and sheer, it needed few defenses. But by the water he bids Sulla pass the night with the horse, while he himself little by little draws together into one his scattered men — the enemy being no less in confusion — then leads them all at full pace up the hill. So the kings, forced by the difficulty of the ground, are deterred from battle, nor yet do they let their men go far off, but, both hills ringed with their multitude, they settled, spread out. Then, with frequent fires made, the barbarians for most of the night, after their manner, rejoiced, exulted, made an uproar with their voices; and the leaders themselves, fierce because they had not fled, bore themselves as victors. But all this was easy for the Romans to see from the darkness and the higher ground, and was a great encouragement.

Most of all Marius, made confident by the enemy’s inexperience, orders the greatest silence to be kept, that not even the signals should sound, as they were wont through the watches. Then, when light was coming on, the enemy now wearied and a little before taken with sleep, suddenly he bids the watch, and likewise the trumpeters of the cohorts, the squadrons, and the legions, all together sound the signals, and the soldiers raise a shout and burst from the gates. The Mauri and Gaetuli, roused suddenly by the unknown and horrible sound, could neither flee nor take up arms nor do or foresee anything at all: so a tumult, dread, and terror, as if a madness, had seized them all — with the din and the shout, none coming to their aid, our men pressing on. At last all were routed and put to flight, their arms and most of their standards taken, and more were slain in that battle than in all before. For their flight was hindered by sleep and unwonted fear.

Then Marius, as he had begun, proceeds to winter quarters: for he had resolved to pass the season, because of the supply, in the seaboard towns; nor yet did victory make him slack or insolent, but he advanced in a square column just as in sight of the enemy. Sulla with the cavalry was on the far right; on the left part Aulus Manlius with the slingers and archers, and besides he had charge of the cohorts of Ligurians. At front and rear he had stationed the tribunes with light companies. The deserters, least prized and most knowing of the country, scouted the enemy’s route. At once the consul, as though no one had been set in charge, provided for all things, was present among all, praised and rebuked those who deserved it. Himself armed and intent, he likewise drove on the soldiers; and no otherwise than on the march, he fortified the camp, sent a cohort from the legions to keep watch at the gate, the auxiliary horse before the camp, and besides placed others above the rampart in the works, and went the rounds of the watches himself — not so much from distrust that what he had ordered would be done, as that the toil, made equal with the commander, might be borne willingly by the soldiers. And indeed Marius, at that time and others of the Jugurthine War, kept his army in check by shame rather than by punishment. This many said was done through ambition: that from boyhood he had held the hardship he was used to, and the other things the rest call miseries, for a pleasure; yet none the less the commonwealth was as well and honorably served as by the most savage command.

And so at last, on the fourth day, not far from the town of Cirta, the scouts swiftly show themselves on every side at once, whereby it is understood that the enemy were at hand. But because, returning from different quarters, one from one side, all signified the same thing, the consul, uncertain in what manner to draw up his line, with no order changed and ready against all, waits where he was. So Jugurtha’s hope was cheated, who had divided his forces into four parts, reckoning that of them all some would come alike on the enemy’s rear. Meanwhile Sulla, whom the enemy had reached first, having exhorted his men, by squadrons and with horses packed as close as could be, himself and others charge the Mauri, while the rest, staying in place, shielded their bodies from the javelins flung from afar and cut down any who came to their hands. While the cavalry fight in this way, Bocchus with the foot, whom Volux his son had brought and who, delayed on the march, had not been present in the earlier fight, attacks the rearmost line of the Romans. Then Marius was among the foremost, because there Jugurtha was with most of his men. Then the Numidian, on learning of Bocchus’s arrival, secretly with a few turned to the foot. There in Latin — for he had learned to speak it at Numantia — he cries out that our men were fighting in vain, that a little before he had killed Marius with his own hand, and at the same time displays a sword smeared with blood, which in the fight he had bloodied briskly enough by killing a foot-soldier of ours. When the soldiers heard this, they are terrified more by the atrocity of the thing than by faith in the messenger; and at the same time the barbarians lift their spirits and press the more keenly on the dismayed Romans. And now they were a little short of flight, when Sulla, having routed those he had gone against, returning, charges the Mauri on the flank. Bocchus at once turns away. But Jugurtha, while he longs to uphold his men and to keep the victory now nearly won, is surrounded by the horsemen, and, all slain on right and left, alone among the enemy’s weapons, dodging, breaks out. And meanwhile Marius, the horsemen routed, runs up to the aid of his men, whom he had heard were now being driven. At last the enemy were everywhere routed. Then a horrible spectacle on the open plains: pursuing, fleeing, killing, capturing; horses and men struck down, and many, having taken wounds, could neither flee nor bear quiet, now straining up and at once falling; in the end all, as far as the eye could reach, was strewn with weapons, arms, corpses, and among them the ground stained with blood.

After this the consul, now without doubt the victor, came to the town of Cirta, whither at the outset, on setting out, he had aimed. There, on the fifth day after the barbarians had a second time fought ill, envoys come from Bocchus, who in the king’s words asked of Marius that he send to him two of his most trusty men: he wished to treat with them of his own and of the Roman people’s advantage. He at once bids Lucius Sulla and Aulus Manlius go. And although they went as men summoned, yet it pleased them to speak before the king, that they might either bend his disposition if it were averse, or, if he were eager for peace, kindle him the more strongly. And so Sulla — to whose eloquence, not his age, Manlius yielded — spoke a few words of this kind: “King Bocchus, it is a great joy to us that the gods have admonished so good a man as you at last to prefer peace to war, and not to defile yourself, the best of men, by mingling with Jugurtha, the worst of all, and at the same time to take from us a bitter necessity — to pursue alike you, who err, and that most wicked man. Besides, from the very beginning of its empire it has seemed better to the Roman people to seek friends than slaves, and they have thought it safer to rule the willing than the compelled. And for you no friendship is more opportune than ours: first because we are far off, wherein there is least cause of offense, but the same favor as if we were near; then because we have subjects in plenty, but of friends there have never been enough, neither for us nor for any man. And would that this had pleased you from the beginning: assuredly from the Roman people you would by this time have received many more goods than the ills you have suffered. But since fortune holds the most of human affairs, and it has pleased her that you should try both our force and our favor — now, when through her it is allowed, make haste, and, as you have begun, press on. You have many and timely means whereby the more easily to outweigh your errors by services. In the end, let this sink into your breast: that the Roman people has never been outdone in kindnesses. As for what it can do in war, you yourself know.” To this Bocchus mildly and kindly, and at the same time spoke a few words in excuse of his fault: that he had taken up arms not in a hostile spirit, but to guard his kingdom. For the part of Numidia from which he had driven Jugurtha by force was made his own by the law of war; he had not been able to suffer it to be laid waste by Marius. Besides, envoys sent before to Rome had been rebuffed from friendship. But he would let the old matters go, and now, if Marius allowed it, would send envoys to the Senate. Then, leave being granted, the barbarian’s mind was turned aside by his friends, whom Jugurtha, learning of the embassy of Sulla and Manlius and fearing what was being prepared, had corrupted with gifts.

Marius meanwhile, his army settled in winter quarters, sets out with light cohorts and part of the cavalry into a lonely region to besiege a royal tower, where Jugurtha had set all the deserters for a garrison. Then again Bocchus — whether reflecting on what had befallen him in two battles, or admonished by other friends whom Jugurtha had left uncorrupted — out of all the company of his connections chose five, whose faith was known and whose talents were of the strongest. These he orders to go as envoys to Marius and then, if it pleased, to Rome, and grants them leave to manage affairs and to settle the war in whatever way. They set out promptly for the Romans’ winter quarters; then, surrounded on the way and robbed by Gaetulian brigands, frightened and without dignity they flee to Sulla, whom the consul, setting out on his expedition, had left as propraetor. Them he treated, not as worthless enemies, as they had deserved, but carefully and liberally. By this the barbarians thought both the report of the Romans’ avarice false, and Sulla, for his munificence toward them, a friend. For even then largess was unknown to many; no one was thought munificent unless he was at the same time willing; all gifts were held to be of kindness. And so they disclose Bocchus’s instructions to the quaestor; at the same time they ask of him that he be their helper and adviser; they exalt in their speech the forces, the faith, the greatness of their king, and other things that they believed either useful or marks of goodwill. Then, Sulla having promised all, and taught in what way they should speak before Marius and likewise before the Senate, they wait there about forty days.

Marius, after he returned to Cirta with the business he had aimed at unfinished, and was informed of the envoys’ coming, bids both them and Sulla come from Utica, and likewise Lucius Bellienus the praetor from Utica, and besides all of the senatorial order from every side, with whom he learns Bocchus’s instructions. Leave is given to the envoys to go to Rome, and meanwhile a truce was asked of the consul. This pleased Sulla and most; a few decreed more fiercely, ignorant, of course, of human affairs, which, fleeting and unstable, are always changing to the adverse. But the Mauri, having obtained all they asked, three set out for Rome under the lead of Gnaeus Octavius Ruso, who as quaestor had carried the pay to Africa, while two return to the king. From these Bocchus gladly received, among the rest, most of all the kindness and zeal of Sulla. And at Rome to his envoys, after they had pleaded that the king had erred and slipped through the wickedness of Jugurtha, and sought friendship and a treaty, answer is made in this manner: “The Senate and people of Rome are wont to be mindful of a service and of an injury. But to Bocchus, since he repents, they forgive his faults: a treaty and friendship will be given, when he has earned them.”

These things known, Bocchus by letter asked of Marius that he send Sulla to him, at whose discretion the common business might be cared for. He was sent with a guard of horse and foot and Balearic slingers. Besides, archers went, and a Paelignian cohort with light-armed weapons, for the sake of hastening the journey; and these no less than with other arms were protected against the enemy’s weapons, because those are light. But on the journey, on the fifth day, Volux, son of Bocchus, suddenly showed himself on the open plains with no more than a thousand horsemen, who, going carelessly and in loose order, made to Sulla and all the rest both a number greater than the truth and a fear of an enemy. And so each man got himself ready, tried and made taut his arms and weapons; there was some fear, but more hope, since they were victors and against men whom they had often conquered. Meanwhile horsemen sent ahead to scout report the matter, as it was, peaceful.

Volux, coming up, addresses the quaestor and says that he had been sent by his father Bocchus to meet them and at once for a guard. Then for that day and the next they go together without fear. After the camp was pitched and it was evening, suddenly the Moor, with troubled face and frightened, runs up to Sulla and says that he had learned from scouts that Jugurtha was not far off; at the same time he begs and urges him to flee secretly with him by night. He with a fierce spirit denies that he fears a Numidian routed so many times: he trusted enough in the valor of his men; even if certain destruction were at hand, he would rather stay than, betraying those he was leading, by base flight spare a life that was uncertain and perhaps soon to perish of disease. But, advised by the same man to set out by night, he approves the plan; and at once he orders the soldiers to have dined in camp and fires to be made as many as possible, then at the first watch to go out in silence. And now, all wearied with the night march, Sulla was measuring out a camp together with the rising of the sun, when the Mauri horsemen report that Jugurtha had settled about two miles ahead. When this was heard, then indeed a huge fear invades our men; they believed themselves betrayed by Volux and surrounded by an ambush. And there were those who said that vengeance should be taken by hand, and so great a crime not be left unpunished in him.

But Sulla, although he thought the same, yet keeps the Moor from harm. He exhorts his men to bear a brave spirit: often before, a few strenuous men had fought well against a multitude; the less they spared themselves in battle, the safer they would be; nor did it become anyone who had armed his hands to seek help from unarmed feet, or in the greatest fear to turn the bare and blind body to the enemy. Then, calling Jupiter the greatest to witness — that he might stand witness of the crime and treachery of Bocchus — he bids Volux, since he was doing hostile things, depart from the camp. He, weeping, begged him not to believe this: nothing had been done by guile, and rather by the cunning of Jugurtha, who, watching, had of course learned his route. But since he had no huge multitude, and his hopes and resources hung upon his father, he believed the man would dare nothing openly, when he, the son, was present as witness. Wherefore it seemed best to pass openly through the midst of his camp: he, whether the Mauri were sent ahead or left there, would go alone with Sulla. This plan, as in such a business, was approved; and at once setting out, because they had come unforeseen, with Jugurtha doubtful and hesitating, they pass through unhurt. Then in a few days they reached the place to which they had meant to go.

There a certain Numidian named Aspar was much and familiarly engaged with Bocchus, sent ahead by Jugurtha — after he had heard that Sulla was summoned — as an envoy and, by stealth, to spy out Bocchus’s plans; and besides Dabar, son of Massugrada, of the line of Masinissa, though on his mother’s side of unequal birth — for his father was sprung from a concubine — dear and welcome to the Moor for the many good qualities of his mind. Him Bocchus, having found faithful to the Romans in many earlier seasons, at once sends to Sulla to announce: that he was ready to do what the Roman people wished; that Sulla himself should choose the day, the place, and the time for a conference, and not be afraid of Jugurtha’s envoy; for he kept all things open with that man on purpose, that the common business might be carried on the more freely; for against his ambushes there had been no other way to guard. But I find that Bocchus, more from Punic faith than for the reasons he professed, held both the Romans and the Numidian at once with the hope of peace, and was wont to turn much over in his mind whether to hand Jugurtha to the Romans or Sulla to Jugurtha: that his inclination argued against us, his fear for us.

And so Sulla answered that he would speak a few things in Aspar’s presence, the rest secretly, with none or as few as possible present. At the same time he instructs them what should be answered to him. After they had met, as he had wished, he says that he had come, sent by the consul, to ask of him whether he would have peace or war. Then the king, as he had been instructed, bids him return after the tenth day, and says that he had as yet decided nothing, but on that day would answer. Then both withdrew to their own camps. But when most of the night had passed, Sulla is secretly summoned by Bocchus. By both only trusty interpreters are brought in, and besides Dabar as go-between, a holy man and agreeable to both. And at once the king begins thus:

“Never did I think it would come to pass that I, the greatest king in this land and of all I know, should owe gratitude to a private man. And by Hercules, Sulla, before I knew you I brought help to many who begged it, and to others unasked, myself needing no one. At this lessening — which others are wont to grieve over — I rejoice. Let it have been worth something to me to have once needed your friendship, than which nothing is dearer to my heart. You may prove it indeed. Arms, men, money — in short, whatever pleases your mind — take, use; and, as long as you live, never think the favor repaid: with me it will always stand whole; in short, you shall wish nothing in vain, as far as I know of it. For, as I reckon, it is less disgraceful for a king to be conquered by arms than by munificence. But of your commonwealth, whose agent you are sent here, hear a few words. War on the Roman people I neither made nor ever wished made; but my borders against armed men I guarded with arms. That I let go, since it so pleases you: wage the war you will with Jugurtha. The river Muluccha, which lay between me and Micipsa, I will not cross, nor suffer Jugurtha to enter it. Besides, if you ask anything worthy both of me and of you, you shall not go off rebuffed.”

To this Sulla, for himself, spoke briefly and modestly, of peace and of the common interests much. At last he makes plain to the king that the Senate and people of Rome, since they had prevailed the more by arms, would hold what he promised for no favor; he must do something that should seem to have profited them rather than himself. And that this was ready to hand, since he had Jugurtha in his power. If he handed him over to the Romans, very much would be owed to him; friendship, a treaty, and the part of Numidia he now sought would then come of their own accord. The king at first kept refusing: kinship, marriage-tie, and besides a treaty stood in the way; moreover he feared lest, by using an unsteady faith, he should turn away the hearts of his people, to whom both Jugurtha was dear and the Romans hateful. At last, worn down by repeated urging, he softens, and promises to do everything according to Sulla’s will. But for the feigning of a peace — of which the Numidian, weary of war, was most greedy — they settle what seemed useful. So, the deceit composed, they part.

But the king on the next day addresses Aspar, Jugurtha’s envoy, and says that he had learned from Sulla, through Dabar, that the war could be ended on terms: wherefore let him seek out his own king’s mind. He, glad, sets out for Jugurtha’s camp. Then, taught the whole matter by Jugurtha, with a hurried march he returns after the eighth day to Bocchus and reports to him that Jugurtha desired to do all that was commanded, but trusted Marius too little; often before, peace agreed upon with Roman commanders had come to nothing. But if Bocchus wished the interest of both and a ratified peace, let him see to it that all should come together into one conference, as if about peace, and there hand Sulla over to him. When he had such a man in his power, then would a treaty be made by order of the Senate or the people; nor would a noble man be left in the enemy’s power not through his own cowardice, but for the sake of the commonwealth.

These things the Moor, long turning them over with himself, at last promised; but whether he hesitated by guile or in truth, I have not well learned. For the most part the wills of kings, as they are vehement, so are they unstable, often at odds with themselves. Afterward, the time and place appointed for the coming together to confer about peace, Bocchus now addresses Sulla, now Jugurtha’s envoy, treats them kindly, promises the same to both. They alike are glad and full of good hope. But on the night which was next before the day set for the conference, the Moor — his friends called in, and then, his will changed, the rest removed — is said to have debated much with himself, varying in face, in color, and in the movement of his body as in his mind; which, of course, with himself silent, betrayed the secrets of his breast. Yet at last he bids Sulla be summoned, and according to his counsel lays the snare for the Numidian. Then, when the day came and it was reported to him that Jugurtha was not far off, with a few friends and our quaestor he goes forward, as if to meet him for honor’s sake, onto a mound very easy to the view of those lying in wait. To the same place the Numidian, with most of his connections, unarmed, as had been agreed, draws near; and at once, the signal given, he is set upon from the ambush on every side at once. The rest were cut down, Jugurtha is handed over in chains to Sulla, and was led by him to Marius.

About the same time, against the Gauls, our leaders Quintus Caepio and Gnaeus Manlius fought ill. At which terror all Italy trembled. From then, and ever since, down to our own memory, the Romans have so held it: that all else is subject to their valor, but that with the Gauls they fight for their safety, not for glory. But after it was reported that the war in Numidia was finished and that Jugurtha was being brought to Rome in chains, Marius was made consul in his absence, and the province of Gaul was decreed to him; and on the Kalends of January, with great glory, he triumphed as consul. And at that time the hope and the resources of the state rested upon him.