A History of Rome During the Later Republic and Early Principate

by A. H. J. Greenidge

Metellus was as fully conscious of the change in the situation. Lately he had been forcing himself on Jugurtha at every point; now he held back and waited for the favourable chance. He wished above all to learn something of the fighting spirit and methods of the Moors;[1111] they were an untried foe, and Roman success was usually the fruit of knowledge and not of experiment. He waited in his fortified camp near Cirta to watch events, when news was brought from Rome which proved to his mind that cautious inaction was now not merely the wiser but the only policy. The news that came by letter was of stunning force. Metellus had already learnt of Marius's election to the consulship. This knowledge should have prepared him for the worst; but a proud man, conscious of his deserts, will not meet in anticipation an event that, however probable, seems incredible. Yet here it was before him in black and white. He had been superseded in his command and the province of Numidia belonged to Marius.[1112] There was no pretence of self-restraint; tears rose to his eyes, as bitter language flowed from his lips. It was disputed whether natural pride or the sense of unmerited wrong was the secret of his wrath, or whether he held (as many thought) that a victory already won was being wrested from his grasp. But it was safely conjectured that his grief would not have been so violent had any man but Marius been his successor.

To risk a defeat at the moment when the command was slipping from his grasp seemed to Metellus the height of folly; but, even had he not possessed this additional motive for inaction, the situation would probably have forced him to temporise and to attempt to dissolve the hostile coalition by diplomacy. He therefore sent a message to Bocchus urging him to think seriously of the course of action which he had adopted.[1113] An opportunity was still open to him of becoming the friend and ally of Rome; why should he adopt this motiveless attitude of hostility? The cause of Jugurtha was desperate; did the King of Mauretania wish to bring his own country into the same miserable plight? These were the first words that Bocchus had heard of a possible convention with Rome; he had scored the first point, but was much too wise to give away the game. Definite offers must be made and securely guaranteed before he would withdraw the terror of his presence. Firmness and conciliation must be blended in his answer, which, when delivered, was both gracious and chivalrous. He longed, he said, for peace, but was stirred to pity for the fortunes of Jugurtha. If the latter were also given the chance of making terms with Rome, all might be arranged. Metellus replied with another message framed to meet the position taken up by the king; the answer of Bocchus was a cautious mixture of assent and protest. As he showed no unwillingness to continue the discussion, Metellus occupied the remainder of his own tenure of the command in further parleyings. Envoys came and went, and the war was practically suspended. A delicate and promising negotiation was on foot; it remained to be seen whether it would be patiently continued or rudely interrupted by the new governor of Numidia.

CHAPTER VIII

The summer must have been well advanced when Marius landed at Utica with his untried forces. The veterans were handed over to his care by the legate Rutilius[1114] for Metellus had fled the sight of the man, whose success had been based on a slanderous attack on his own reputation. It must have been with a heavy heart that he accomplished the voyage to Rome; for the greatest expert in the moods of the people could scarcely have foretold the surprise that awaited him there. The popular passion was spent; it was a feverish force that had burnt itself out; the country voters had at last bethought themselves of their work and returned to their farms; many of the most active and disorderly spirits, the restless loud-voiced men who are the potent minority in an agitation, had been removed by the levy of Marius; with the city mob docility generally alternated with revolution, and it was now inclined to look to the verdict of the recognised heads of the State. In this moment of reaction, too, many must have been inclined to wonder what after all could be said against this general who had never lost a battle, who had conquered cities and pitilessly revenged the one disaster which was not his fault, who had constantly swept the terrible King of Numidia as a helpless fugitive before him. The presence of Metellus completed the work by giving stability to these half-formed views. The common folk are the true idealists. They love a hero rather better than a victim, although it often depends on the turn of a hair which part the object of their attentions is to play. Now they followed the lead of the senate; the returned commander was the man of the day[1115] he had exalted the glory of the Roman name; and if there was no fault, there could only have been misfortune; but misfortune might be compensated by honour. There was the prospect of a triumph in store, that mixed source of sensuous satisfaction and national self-congratulation. Thus Metellus won his prizes from the Numidian war, a parade through the streets to the Capitol and the addition of the surname "Numidicus" to the already lengthy nomenclature of his house[1116]

The war itself, under the guidance of Marius, soon assumed the character which it had possessed under that of all his predecessors. The originality of the new commander seemed to have spent itself in the selection of his troops; no new idea seems to have been introduced into the conduct of operations, which resumed their old shapes of precautions against surprise, weary marches from end to end of Numidia, and the siege of strongholds which were no sooner taken than they proved to be beyond the area of actual hostilities. Perhaps no new idea was possible except one that exchanged the weapons of war for those of diplomacy; but even the final attempt that had been made in this direction by Metellus was not continued by Marius. Bocchus, unwilling to lose the chance which had been presented of a definite convention with Home, sent repeated messages to her new representative to the effect that he desired the friendship of the Roman people, and that no acts of hostility on his part need be feared[1117] but his protestations were received with distrust, and Marius, accustomed to the duplicity of the African mind and rejecting the view that the king might really be wavering between war and peace, chose to regard them as the treacherous cover for a sudden attack. The desultory campaign which followed seems to have been directed by two motives. The first was the training of the raw levies which had just been brought from Rome; the second the supposed necessity of cutting Jugurtha off from the strongholds which he still held at the extremities of his kingdom. As these extremities were now threatened or commanded, on the south by the Gaetulians and on the west by the Mauretanians, the area of the war was no less than that of Numidia itself; and, as the occupation of such an area was impossible, the destruction of these strongholds, which was little loss to a mobile self-supporting force such as that which Jugurtha had at his command, was the utmost end which could be secured.

The practice of the untrained Roman levies was rendered easy by the fact that Jugurtha had resumed the offensive. He no longer had the help of his Mauretanian auxiliaries, for Bocchus had retired to his own kingdom, and he had therefore lost his desire for a pitched battle; but his swarms of Gaetulian horse had enabled him to resume his old style of guerilla fighting, and he had taken advantage of the practical suspension of hostilities which had accompanied the change in the Roman command, to set on foot a series of raids against the friends of Rome and even to penetrate the borders of the Roman province itself.[1118] For some time the attention of Marius was absorbed in following his difficult tracks, in striving to anticipate his rapidly shifting plans, in creating in his own men the habits of endurance, the mobility and the strained attention, which even a brief period of such a chase will rapidly engender in the rawest of recruits. The pursuit gradually shifted to the west, and a series of sharp conflicts on the road ended finally in the rout of the king in the neighbourhood of Cirta. With troops now seasoned to the toils of long marches and deliberate attack, Marius turned to the more definite, if not more effective, enterprise of beleaguering such fortified positions as were still strongly held, and by their position seemed to give a strategic advantage to the enemy. His object was either to strip Jugurtha of these last garrisons or to force him to a battle if he came to their defence. At first he confined his operations within a narrow area; the best part of the summer months seems to have been spent in the territory lying east and south of Cirta, and within this region several fortresses and castles still adhering to the king were reduced by persuasion or by force.[1119] Yet Jugurtha made no move, and Marius gained a full experience of the helpless irritation of the commander who hears that his enemy is far away, neglectful of his efforts and wholly absorbed in some deep-laid scheme the very rudiments of which are beyond the reach of conjecture. His operations seem to have brought him to a point somewhere in the neighbourhood of Sicca, and this proximity to the southern regions of Numidia suggested the thought of an enterprise that might rival and even surpass Metellus's storm of Thala. About thirteen miles west of that town[1120] lay the strong city of Capsa.[1121] It marked almost the extremest limit of Jugurtha's empire in this direction, placed as it was just north of the great lakes and west of the deepest curve of the Lesser Syrtis. The town was the gift of an oasis, which here broke the monotony of the desert with pleasant groves of dates and olives and a perennial stream of water. The sources of this stream, which was formed by the union of two fountains, had been enclosed within the walls, and supplied drinking water for the city before it passed beyond it to irrigate the land. Even this supply hardly sufficed for the moderate needs of the Numidians, who supplemented it by rain water[1122] which they caught and stored in cisterns. A siege of Capsa in the dry season might therefore prove irksome to the inhabitants; but the invading army might be even less well supplied, for although four other springs outside the walls fed the canals which served the work of irrigation, they tended to run low when the season of rain was past. The security of the city, although its defences and its garrison were strong, was thought to reside mainly in its desert barrier. The waste through which an invading army would have to pass was waterless and barren, while the multitude of snakes and scorpions that found a congenial home on the arid soil increased the horror, if not the danger, of the route.[1123] Jugurtha had dealt kindly by the lonely citizens of Capsa; they were free from taxes and had seldom to answer to any demand of the king: and this favour, which was perhaps as much the product of necessity as of policy, had strengthened their loyalty to the Numidian throne. It is probable that some strategic, or at least military, motive was mingled in the mind of Marius with the mere desire of excelling his predecessor and creating a deep impression in the minds of the proletariate in his army and at home. Although Capsa, with its limited resources, could hardly ever have served as the point of departure for a large Numidian or Gaetulian host, it might have been of value as a refuge for the king when he wished to vanish from the eyes of his enemies, and perhaps as a means of communication with friendly cities or peoples situated between the two Syrtes. To vanquish the difficulties of such an enterprise might also strike terror into the Numidian garrisons of other towns, and the subjects of Jugurtha might feel that no stronghold was safe when the unapproachable Capsa had been taken or destroyed. But the difficulties of the task were great. The Numidians of these regions were more attached to a pastoral life than to agriculture; the stores of corn to be found along the route were therefore scanty, and their scarcity was increased by the fact that the king, who seems but lately to have passed through these regions, had ordered that large supplies of grain should be conveyed from the district and stored in the fortresses which his garrisons still held.[1124] Nothing could be got from the fields, which at this late period of the autumn showed nothing but arid stubble. It was fortunate that some stores still lay at Lares (Lorbeus), a town at a short distance to the south-east of his present base;[1125] these were to be supplemented by the cattle that the foraging parties had driven in, and the Roman soldier would at least have his unwelcome supply of meat tempered by a moderate allowance of meal. Yet the terrors of the journey were so great that Marius thought it wise to conceal the object of his enterprise even from his own men, and even when, after a six days' march to the south, he had reached a stream called the Tana,[1126] the motive of the expedition was still in all probability unknown. Here, as in Metellus's march on Thala, a large supply of water was drawn from the river and stored in skins, all heavy baggage was discarded, and the lightened column prepared for its march across the desert. By day the soldiers kept their camp and every stage of the journey was accomplished between night-fall and dawn. On the morning of the third day they had reached some rising ground not more than two miles from Capsa.[1127] The sun had not yet risen when Marius halted his men in a hollow of the dunes, and watched the town to see whether his cautious plans had really effected a surprise. Evidently they had; for, when day broke, the gates were seen to open and large numbers of Numidians could be observed leaving the city for the business of the fields. The word was given, and in a moment the whole of the cavalry and the lightest of the infantry were dashing on the town. They were meant to block the gates; while Marius and the heavier troops followed as speedily as they could, driving the straggling Numidians before them. It was the possession of these hostages that decided the fate of the town. The commandant parleyed and agreed to admit the Romans within the walls, the condition, whether tacit or expressed, of this surrender being that the lives of the citizens should be spared. The condition was immediately broken. The town was given over to the flames, all the Numidians of full age were put to the sword, the rest were sold into slavery, and the movable property which had been seized was divided amongst the soldiers. The breach of international custom was not denied; the only attempt at palliation was drawn from the reflection that it was due neither to motiveless treachery nor to greed; a position like Capsa, it was urged,—difficult of approach, open to the enemy, the home of a race notorious for its mobile cunning-could be held neither by leniency nor by fear.[1128] The expedition had miscarried, if the town was not destroyed; and, as frequently happens in the pursuit of wars with peoples to whom the convenient epithet of "barbarian" can be applied, the successful fruit of cruelty and treachery was perhaps defended on the ground that the obligations of international law must be either reciprocal or non-existent.

The destruction of Capsa was followed by other successes of a similar though less arduous kind. The event had served the purpose of Marius well in so far as it spread before him a name of terror which caused some of the Numidian garrisons to flee their strong places without a struggle. In the few cases where resistance was met, it was beaten down, and the fortified places which Jugurtha's soldiers were not rash enough to defend, were utterly destroyed by fire.[1129] Marius left a wilderness behind him on his return march to winter quarters,[1130] and perhaps renewed his devastating course in the south-eastern parts of Numidia during the spring of the following year, before his attention was suddenly called to another point in the vast area of the war. This easy triumph which cost little Roman blood and enriched the soldiers with the spoils of war, created in his men a belief in his foresight and prowess which seemed sufficient to stand the severest strain.[1131] A great effort had now to be made in a quarter of Numidia which lay not less than seven hundred miles from the recent scene of operations. As neither the site of Marius's recent winter quarters nor the base which he chose for his spring campaign are known to us, we cannot say whether the expedition which he now directed to the extreme west of Numidia was an unpleasant diversion from a scheme already in operation, or whether it was the result of a plan matured in the winter camp; but in either case this conviction of the necessity for sweeping the country in such utterly diverse directions proves the full success of the plan which Jugurtha was pursuing. It is more difficult to determine whether Marius increased the success of this plan by a political blunder of his own. The point at which he is now found operating was near the river Muluccha or Molocath,[1132] the dividing line between the kingdoms of Numidia and Mauretania. If the incursion which he made into this region was unprovoked, it was a challenge to King Bocchus and an impolitic disturbance of the recent attitude of quiescence that had been assumed by that hesitating monarch; but it is possible that news had reached Marius that a Mauretanian attack was impending, and that the same motive which had impelled Metellus to hasten from the south to the defence of Cirta, now urged his successor to push his army more than five hundred miles farther to the west up to the very borders of Mauretania. The movement seems to have been defensive, for at the moment when we catch sight of his efforts he had not attempted to cross the admitted frontier,[1133] but was endeavouring to secure a strong position that lay within what he conceived to be the Numidian territory. A giant rock rose sheer out of the plain, tapering into the narrow fortress which continued by its walls an ascent so smoothly precipitous that it seemed as though the work of nature had been improved by the hand of man.[1134] But one narrow path led to the summit and was believed to be the only way, not merely to a position of supreme value for defensive purposes, but also to one of those rich deposits which the many-treasured king was held to have laid up in the strongest parts of his dominions. The difficulties of a siege were almost insurmountable. The garrison was strong and well supplied with food and water; the only avenue for a direct assault upon the walls was narrow and dangerous; the site was as ill-suited as it could be for the movement of the heavier engines of war. When the attack was made, the mantlets of the besiegers were easily destroyed by fire and stones hurled from above; yet the soldiers could not leave cover, nor get a firm hold on the steeply sloping ground; the foremost amongst the storming party fell stricken with wounds, and a panic seemed likely to prevail amidst the ever-victorious army if it were again urged to the attack. While Marius was brooding over this unexpected check, and his mind was divided between the wisdom of a retreat and the chances that might be offered by delay, an accident supplied the defects of strength and counsel.[1135] A Ligurian in quest of snails was tempted to pursue his search from ridge to ridge on that side of the hill which lay away from the avenue of attack and had hitherto been deemed inaccessible. He suddenly found that he had nearly reached the summit; a spirit of emulation urged him to complete the work which he had unconsciously begun, and the branches of a giant holmoak, which twisted amongst the rocks, gave him a hold and footing when the perpendicular walls of the last ascent seemed to deny all chance of further progress. When at length he craned over the edge of the highest ridge, the interior of the fort lay spread before him. No member of the garrison was to be seen, for every man was engaged in repelling the assault which had been renewed on the opposite side. A prolonged survey was therefore possible, and all the important details of the fortress were imprinted on the mind of the Ligurian before he began his leisurely descent. The features of the slope he traversed were also more cautiously observed; the next ascent would be attempted by more than one, and every irregularity that might give a foothold must be noted by the man who would have to prove and illustrate his tale. When the story was told to Marius he sent some of his retinue to view the spot; their reports differed according to the character of their minds; some of the investigators were sanguine, others more than doubtful; but the consul eventually determined to make the experiment. The escalade was to be attempted by a band of ten; five of the trumpeters and buglemen were selected and four centurions, the Ligurian was to be their guide. With head and feet bare, their only armour a sword and light leathern shield slung across their backs, the soldiers painfully imitated the daring movements of their active leader. But he was considerate as well as daring. Sometimes he would weave a scaling ladder of the trailing creepers; at others he would lend a helping hand; at others again he would gather up their armour and send them on before him, then step rapidly aside and pass with his burden up and down their struggling line. His cheery boldness kept them to their painful task until every man had reached the level of the fort. It was as desolate as when first seen by the Ligurian, for Marius had taken care that a frontal attack should engage the attention of the garrison. The climb had been a long one, and the battle had now been raging many hours when news was brought to the anxious commander that his men had gained the summit.[1136] The assault was now renewed with a force that astonished the besieged, and soon with a recklessness that led them to think the besiegers mad. They could see the Roman commander himself leaving the cover of the mantlets and advancing in the midst of his men up the perilous ascent under a tortoise fence of uplifted shields. Over the heads of the advancing party came a storm of missiles from the Roman lines below. Confident as the Numidians were in the strength of their position, scornful as were the gibes which a moment earlier they had been hurling against the foe, they could not think lightly of the serried mass that was moving up the hill and the rain of bullets that heralded its advance. Every hand was busy and every mind alert when suddenly the Roman trumpet call was heard upon their rear. The women and boys, who had crept out to watch the fight, were the first to take the alarm and to rush back to the shelter of the fort; most of the men were fighting in advance of their outer walls; those nearest to the ramparts were the first to be seized with the panic; but soon the whole garrison was surging backwards, while through and over it pressed the long and narrow wedge of Romans, cutting their way through the now defenceless mass until they had seized the outworks of the fort.

It is difficult to gauge the positive advantages secured by this feat of arms; but it is probable that the capture of this particular hill-fortress, although its difficulty gave it undue prominence in the annals of the war, was not an isolated fact, but one of a series of successful attempts to establish a chain of posts upon the Mauretanian border, which might bring King Bocchus to better counsels and interrupt his communications with Jugurtha. The enterprise may have been followed by a tolerably long campaign in these regions. This campaign has not been recorded, but that it was contemplated is proved by the fact that Marius had ordered an enormous force of cavalry to meet him near the Muluccha.[1137] The force thus summoned actually served the purpose of covering a retirement that was practically a retreat; but this could not have been the object which it was intended to fulfil when its presence was commanded. A large force of horse was essential, if Bocchus was to be paralysed and the border country swept clear of the enemy. The cloud that was to burst from Mauretania was not the only chance that could be foretold; it was the issue to be dreaded, if all plans at prevention failed; but it was one that might possibly be averted by the presence of a commanding force in the border regions.

It had taken nearly a year to collect and transport from Italy the cavalry force that now entered the camp of Marius. The reason why Italy and not Africa was chosen as the recruiting ground is probably to be found in the lack of confidence which the Romans felt even in those Numidians who professed a friendly attitude; otherwise cheapness and even efficiency might seem to have dictated the choice of native contingents, although it is possible that, as a defensive force, the tactical solidarity of the Italians gave them an advantage even over the Numidian horse. The Latins and Italian allies had furnished the troopers that had lately landed on African soil,[1138] perhaps not at the port of Utica, but at some harbour on the west, for the time consumed by Marius in the march to his present position, even had not his campaign been planned in winter quarters, would have given him an opportunity to send notice of his whereabouts to the leader of the auxiliary force. This leader was Lucius Cornelius Sulla, who had spent nearly the whole of the first year of his quaestorship in beating up on Italian soil the troops of horsemen which he now led into the camp. In comparison with the arrival of the force that of the quaestor was as nothing; yet the advent of such a subordinate was always a matter of interest to a general. Tradition had determined that the ties between a commander and his quaestor should be peculiarly close; the superior was responsible for every act of the minor official whom the chance of the lot might thrust upon him; if his subordinate were capable, he was the chosen delegate for every delicate operation in finance, diplomacy, jurisdiction, or even war: if he were incapable, he might be dismissed,[1139] but could not be neglected, for he was besides the general the only man in the province holding the position of a magistrate, and was in titular rank superior even to the oldest and most distinguished of the legates.[1140] It was a matter of chance whether a government or a campaign was to be helped or hindered by the arrival of a new quaestor; and Marius, when he first heard of the man whom destiny had brought to his side, was inclined to be sceptical as to the amount of assistance which was promised by the new appointment.[1141] Apart from a remarkable personal appearance—an impression due to the keen blueness of the eyes, the clear pallor of the face, the sudden flush that spread at moments over the cheeks as though the vigour of the mind could be seen pulsing beneath the delicate skin[1142]—there was little to recommend Sulla to the mind of a hard and stern man engaged in an arduous and disappointing task. The new lieutenant had no military experience, he was the scion of a ruined patrician family, and, if the gossip of Rome were true, his previous life suggested the light-hearted adventurer rather than the student of politics or war. In his early youth he seemed destined to continue the later traditions of his family—those of an unaspiring temper or a careless indolence, which had allowed the consulship to become extinct in the annals of the race and had been long content with the minor prize of the praetorship. Even this honour had been beyond the reach of the father of Sulla; the hereditary claim to office had been completely broken, and the family fortune had sunk so low that there seemed little chance of the renewal of this claim. The present bearer of the name, the elder son of the house, had lived in hired rooms, and such slender means as he could command seemed to be employed in gratifying a passion for the stage.[1143] Yet this taste was but one expression of a genuine thirst for culture;[1144] and, whatever the opinion of men might be, this youth whose most strenuous endeavours were strangely mingled with a careless geniality and an appetite that never dulled for the pleasures of the senses and the flesh, had a wonderful faculty for winning the love of women. His father had made a second marriage with a lady of considerable means; and the affection of the step-mother, who seems to have been herself childless, was soon centred on her husband's elder son.[1145] At her death he was found to be her heir, and the fortune thus acquired was added to or increased by another that had also come by way of legacy from a woman. This benefactress was Nicopolis, a woman of Greek birth, whose transitory loves, which had Brought her wealth, were closed by a lasting passion for the man to Whom this wealth was given.[1146] The possession of this competence, which might have completed the wreck of the nerveless pleasure-seeker that Sulla seemed to be, proved the true steel of which the man was made. The first steps in his political career gave the immediate lie to any theory of wasted opportunities. He had but exceeded by a year or two the minimum age for office when he was elected to the quaestorship; he was but thirty-one when he was scouring Italy for recruits;[1147] a year later he had entered Marius's camp near the Muluccha with his host of cavalry. A very brief experience was sufficient to convert the general's prejudice into the heartiest approval of his new officer. Any spirit of emulation which Sulla possessed was but shown in action and counsel; none could outstrip him in prowess and forethought, yet all that he did seemed to be the easy outcome either of opportunity or of a ready wit which charmed without startling: and he was never heard to breathe a word which reflected on the conduct of the pro-consul or his staff. Over the petty officers and the soldiers he attained the immediate triumph which attends supreme capacity combined with a facile temper and a sense of humour. His old companions of the stage had been perhaps his best instructors in the art of moulding the will of the common man. He had the right address for every one; a grumble was met by a few kind words; a roar of laughter was awakened by a ready jest, and its recipient was the happier for the day. When help was wanted, his resources seemed boundless; yet he never gave as though he expected a return, and the idea of obligation was dismissed with a shrug and a smile.[1148] Sulla was not one of the clumsy intriguers who laboriously lay up a store of favour and are easily detected in the attempt. He was a terrible man because his insight and his charm were a part of his very nature, as were also the dark current of ambition, scarcely acknowledged even by its possessor, and the surging tides of passion, carefully dammed by an exquisitely balanced intellect into a level stream, on which crowds might float and believe themselves to be victims or agents of an overmastering principle, not of a single man's caprice.

The capacity of every officer in Marius's army was soon to be put to an effective test; for the coalition of Jugurtha and Bocchus, which the campaign might have been meant to prevent, turned out to be its immediate result. The Moor was still hesitating between peace and war—looking still, it may be, for another bid from the representative of Rome, and waiting for the moment when he might compel the attention of Metellus's rude successor, who preferred the precautions of war to those of diplomacy—when the Numidian king, in despair at this ruinous passivity and at the loss of the magnificent strategic chance that was being offered by the enemy, approached his father-in-law with the proposal that the cession of one-third of Numidia should be the price of his assistance. The cession was to take effect, either if the Romans were driven out of Africa, or if a settlement was reached with Rome which left the boundaries of Numidia intact.[1149] Bocchus may not have credited the likelihood of the realisation of the first alternative; but combined action might render the second possible, and even if that failed, his chances of a bargain with Rome were not decreased by entering on a policy of hostility which might be closed at the opportune moment. For the time, however, he played vigorously for Jugurtha's success. His troops of horsemen poured over the border to join the Numidian force, and the combined armies moved rapidly to the east to encompass the columns of Marius, that had just begun their long march to the site which had been chosen for winter quarters.