A History of Rome During the Later Republic and Early Principate

by A. H. J. Greenidge

The advantage which Jugurtha took of this marvellous opportunity was a product of his nature and proves no ulterior design. Had he been the simplest and most loyal of souls, he would have been forced to act as he did. As a man of insight he soon learnt Scipio by heart, as a born strategist and trained hunter he soon saw through the tricks of the enemy, as a man devoid of the physical sense of fear he was foremost in every action. He had grasped at once the secret of Roman discipline, and his habit of implicit obedience to the word of command was as remarkable as his readiness in offering the right suggestion, when his opinion was asked. Intelligence was not a striking feature in the mental equipment of the staff which surrounded Scipio; it was grasped by the general wherever found without respect to rank or nationality; and while Marius was rising step by step in virtue of his proved efficiency, the Numidian prince, who might have been merely an ornamental adjunct to the army, was made the leader or participant in almost every enterprise which demanded a shrewd head and a stout heart. The favour of Scipio increased from day to day.[876] This was to be won by merit and success alone. With Romans of a weaker mould Jugurtha's wealth and social qualities produced a similar result. He entertained lavishly, he was clever, good-natured and amusing. He charmed the Romans whom he excelled as in his childish days he had charmed the Numidian boys whom he outraced.

In these rare intervals of rest from warfare there was opportunity for converse with men of influence and rank. Jugurtha's position and the future of Numidia were sometimes discussed, and the youthful wiseacres who claimed his friendship would sometimes suggest, with the cheerful cynicism which springs from a shallow dealing with imperial interests, that merit such as his could find its fitting sphere only if he were the sole occupant of the Numidian throne.[877] The words may often have been spoken in jest or idle compliment; although some who used them may have meant them to be an expression of the maxim that a protectorate is best served by a strong servant, and that a divided principality contains in itself the seeds of disturbance. Others went so far as to suggest the means as well as the end. Should difficulties arise with Rome, might not the assent of the great powers be purchased with a price? Scipio had not been blind to the colloquies of his favourite. When Numantia had been destroyed and the army was folding its tents, he gave Jugurtha the benefit of a public ovation and a private admonition. Before the tribunal he decorated him with the prizes of war, and spoke fervidly in his praise; then he invited him secretly to his tent and gave him his word of warning. "The friendship of the Roman people should be sought from the Roman people itself; no good could come of securing the support of individuals by equivocal means; there was a danger in purchasing public interest from a handful of vendors who professed to have power to sell; Jugurtha's own qualities were his best asset; they would secure him glory and a crown; if he tried to hasten on the course of events, the material means on which he relied might themselves provoke his utter ruin." [878]

On one point only Scipio seems to have been in agreement with the evil counsellors of Jugurtha. He seems to have believed that the true guardian of Numidia had been found, and the prince took with him a splendid testimonial to be presented to his uncle Micipsa. Scipio wrote in glowing terms of the great qualities which Jugurtha had displayed throughout the war; he expressed his own delight at these services, his own intention of making them known to the senate and Roman people, his sense of the joy that they must have brought to the monarch himself. His old friendship with Micipsa justified a word of congratulation; the prince was worthy of his uncle and of his grandfather Masinissa.[879]

Whatever Micipsa's later intentions may have been, whether under ordinary circumstances his natural benevolence and even his patriotism would have continued to war with an undefined feeling of distrust, this letter relieved his doubts, if only because it showed that Jugurtha could never fill a private station. The act of adoption was immediately accomplished, and a testament was drawn up by which Jugurtha was named joint heir with Micipsa's own sons to the throne of Numidia.[880] A few years later the aged king lay on his deathbed. As he felt his end approaching, he is said to have summoned his friends and relatives together with his two sons, and in their presence to have made a parting appeal to Jugurtha. He reminded him of past kindnesses but acknowledged the ample return; he had made Jugurtha, but Jugurtha had made the Numidian name again glorious amongst the Romans and in Spain. He exhorted him to protect the youthful princes who would be his colleagues on the throne, and reminded him that in the maintenance of concord lay the future strength of the kingdom. He appealed to Jugurtha as a guardian rather than as a mere co-regent; for the power and name of the mature and distinguished ruler would render him chiefly responsible for harmony or discord; and he besought his sons to respect their cousin, to emulate his virtues, to prove to the world that their father was as fortunate in the children whom nature had given him as in the one who had been the object of his adoption.[881] The appeal was answered by Jugurtha with a goodly show of feeling and respect, and a few days later the old king passed away. The hour which closed his splendid obsequies was the last in which even a show of concord was preserved between the ill-assorted trio who were now the rulers of Numidia. The position of Jugurtha was difficult enough; for to rule would mean either the reduction of his cousins to impotence or the perpetual thwarting of his plans by crude and suspicious counsels. For that these would be suspicious as well as crude, was soon revealed: and the situation was immediately rendered intolerable by the conduct of Hiempsal. This prince, the younger of the two brothers, was a headstrong boy filled with a sense of resentment at Jugurtha's elevation to the throne and smarting at the neglect of what he held to be the legitimate claim to the succession. When the first meeting of the joint rulers was held in the throne room, Hiempsal hurried to a seat at the right of Adherbal, that Jugurtha might not occupy the place of honour in the centre; it was with difficulty that he was induced by the entreaties of his brother to yield to the claims of age and to move to the seat on the other side. This struggle for precedence heralded the coming storm. In the course of a long discussion on the affairs of the kingdom Jugurtha threw out the suggestion that it might be advisable to rescind the resolutions and decrees of the last five years, since during that period age had impaired the faculties of Micipsa. Hiempsal said that he agreed, since it was within the last three years that Jugurtha had been adopted to a share in the throne. The object of this remark betrayed little emotion; but it was believed that the peevish insult was the stimulus to an anxious train of thought which, as was to be expected from the resolute character of the thinker, soon issued into action. To be a usurper was better than to be thought one; the first situation entailed power, the second only danger. Anger played its part no doubt; but in a temperament like Jugurtha's such an emotion was more likely to be the justification than the cause of a crime. His thoughts from that moment were said to have been bent on ensnaring the impetuous Hiempsal. But guile moves slowly, and Jugurtha would not wait.[882]

The first meeting of the kings had given so thorough a proof of the impossibility of united rule that a resolution was soon framed to divide the treasures and territories of the monarchy. A time was fixed for the partition of the domains, and a still earlier date for the division of the accumulated wealth. The kings meanwhile quitted the capital to reside in close propinquity to their cherished treasures. Hiempsal's temporary home was in the fortified town of Thirmida,[883] and, as chance would have it, he occupied a house which belonged to a man who had once been a confidential attendant on Jugurtha.[884] The inner history of the events which followed could never have been known with certainty; but it was believed that Jugurtha induced this man to visit the house under some pretext and bring back impressions of the keys. The security of Hiempsal's person and treasures was supposed to be guaranteed by his regularly receiving into his own hands the keys of the gates after they had been locked; but a night came in which the portals were noiselessly opened and a band of soldiers burst into the house. They divided into parties, ranging each room in turn, prying into every recess, bursting doors that barred their entrance, stabbing the attendants, some in their sleep, others as they ran to meet the invaders. At last Hiempsal was found crouching in a servant's room; he was slain and beheaded, and those who held Jugurtha to be the author of the crime reported that the head of the murdered prince was brought to him as a pledge of the accomplished act.[885]

The news of the crime was soon spread through the whole of Northern Africa. It divided Numidia into two camps. Adherbal was forced by panic to arm in his own defence, and most of those who remained loyal to the memory of Micipsa gathered to the standard of the legitimate heir. But Jugurtha's fame amongst the fighting men of the kingdom stood him in good stead. His adherents were the fewer in number, but they were the more effective warriors.[886] He rapidly gathered such forces as were available, and dashed from city to city, capturing some by storm and receiving the voluntary submission of others. He had plunged boldly into a civil war, and by his action declared the coveted prize to be nothing less than the possession of the whole Numidian kingdom. But boldness was his best policy; Rome might more readily condone a conquest than a rebellion, and be more willing to recognise a king than a claimant.

Adherbal meanwhile had sent an embassy to the protecting State, to inform the senate of his brother's murder and his own evil plight. But, diffident as he was, he must have felt that a passive endurance of the outrages inflicted by Jugurtha dimmed his prestige and imperilled his position; he found himself at the head of the larger army, and trusting to his superiority in numbers ventured to risk a battle with his veteran enemy. The first conflict was decisive; his forces were so utterly routed that he despaired of maintaining his position in any part of the kingdom. He fled from the battlefield to the province of Africa and thence took ship to Rome.[887]

Jugurtha was now undisputed master of the whole of Numidia and had leisure to think out the situation. It could not have needed much reflection to show that the safer course lay in making an appeal to Rome. It was no part of his plan to detach Numidia entirely from the imperial city; even if such an end were desirable, a national war could not be successfully waged by a people divided in allegiance, against a state whose tenacious policy and inexhaustible resources were only too well known to Jugurtha. But he also knew that Rome, though tenacious, had the tolerance which springs from the unwillingness to waste blood and treasure on a matter of such little importance as a change in the occupancy of a subject throne, that a dynastic quarrel would seem to many blasé senators a part of the order of nature in a barbarian monarchy, that it is usually to the interest of a protecting state to recognise a king in fact as one in law, and that he himself possessed many powerful friends in the capital and had been told on good authority that royal presents judiciously distributed might confirm or even mould opinion. Within a few days of his victory he had despatched to Rome an embassy well equipped with gold and silver. His ambassadors were to confirm the affection of his old friends, to win new ones to his cause, and to spare no pains to gain any fraction of support that a bountiful generosity could buy.[888] Possibly few, who received courteous visits or missives from these envoys, would have admitted that they had been bribed. It was the custom of kings to send presents, and they did but answer to the call of an old acquaintance and a man who had done signal service to Rome. The news of Hiempsal's tragic end, the flight and arrival of his exiled brother, had at the moment caused a painful sensation in Roman circles. Now many members of the nobility plucked up courage to remark that there might be another side to the question. The newly gilded youth thronged their seniors in the senate and begged that no inconsiderate resolution should be taken against Jugurtha. The envoys, as men conscious of their virtue, calmly expressed their readiness to await the senate's pleasure. The appointed day arrived, and Adherbal, who appeared in person, unfolded the tale of his wrongs.[889]

Apart from the emotions of pity and consequent sympathy which may have been awakened in some breasts by the story of the ruined and exiled king, his appeal—passionate, vigorous and telling as it was—could not have been listened to with any great degree of pleasure by the assembled fathers; for it brought home to the government of a protecting state that most unpleasant of lessons, its duty to the protected. With the ingenuity of despair Adherbal exaggerated the degree of Roman government, in order to emphasise the moral and political obligations of the rulers to their dependents. If the King of Numidia was a mere agent of the imperial[890] city, subordinating his wishes to her ends, seeing the security of his own possessions in the extension of her influence alone, clinging to her friendship with a trust as firm as that inspired by ties of blood, it was the duty of the mistress to protect such a servant, and to avenge an outrage which reflected alike on her gratitude and her authority. It had been a maxim of Micipsa's that the clients of Rome supported a heavy burden, but were amply compensated by the immunity from danger that they enjoyed. And, if Rome did not protect, to whom could a client-king look for aid? His very service to Rome had made him the enemy of all neighbouring powers. It was true that Adherbal could claim little in his own right; he was a suppliant before he could be a benefactor, stripped of all power of benefiting his great protector before his devotion could be put to the test. Yet he could claim a debt; for he was the sole relic of a dynasty that had given their all to Rome. Jugurtha was destroying a family whose loyalty had stood every test, he was committing horrid atrocities on the friends of Rome, his insolence and impunity were inflicting as grave an injury on the Roman name as on the wretched victims of his cruelty.

Such was the current of subtle and cogent reasoning that ran through the passionate address of the exiled king, crying for vengeance, but above all for justice. The answer of Jugurtha's envoys was brief and to the point. They had only to state their fictitious case. A plausible case was all that was needed; their advocates would do the rest. Hiempsal, they urged, had been put to death by the Numidians in consequence of the cruelty of his rule. Adherbal had been the aggressor in the late war. He had suffered defeat, and was now petitioning for help because he had found himself unable to perpetrate the wrong which he had intended. Jugurtha entreated the senate to let the knowledge which had been gained of him at Numantia guide their opinion of him now, and to set his own past deeds before the words of a personal enemy.[891] Both parties then withdrew and the senate fell to debate.