A History of Rome, Vol 1 by A H.J. Greenidge

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Neither the movements which followed the battle of the Muthul nor the
site of the winter quarters into which Metellus led his men, have been
recorded. The campaign of the next year seems still to have been
confined to the eastern portion of Numidia, its object being the
security of the country between Vaga and Zama. This rich country was
cruelly ravaged, every fortified post that was taken was burnt, all
Numidians of fighting age who offered resistance were put to the sword.
This policy of terrorism produced some immediate results. The army was
well provisioned, the frightened natives bringing in corn and other
necessaries in abundance; towns and districts yielded hostages for their
good behaviour; strong places were surrendered in which garrisons were
left.[1031] But the presence of Jugurtha soon made itself felt. The
king, if he had collected an army, had left the major part of it behind.
He was now at the head of a select body of light horse, and with this
mobile force he followed in Metellus's tracks. The Romans felt
themselves haunted by a phantom enemy who passed with incredible
rapidity from point to point, whose stealthy advances were made under
cover of the darkness and over trackless wastes, and whose proximity was
only known by some sudden and terrible blow dealt at the stragglers from
the camp. The death or capture of those who left the lines could neither
be hindered nor avenged; for before reinforcements could be hurried up,
the Numidians had vanished into the nearest range of hills. The most
ordinary operations of the army were now being seriously hindered.
Supply and foraging parties had to be protected by cohorts of infantry
and the whole force of cavalry; plundering was impossible; and fire was
found the readiest means of wasting country which could no longer be
ravaged for the benefit of the men. It was thought unsafe for the whole
army to operate in two independent columns. Such columns were indeed
formed, Metellus heading one and Marius the other; but it was necessary
for them to keep the closest touch. Although they sometimes divided to
extend the sphere of their work of terror and devastation, they often
united through the pressure of fear, and the two camps were never at a
great distance from each other.[1032] The king meanwhile followed them
along the hills, destroying the fodder and ruining the water supply on
the line of march; now he would swoop on Metellus, now on Marius, harass
the rear of the column and vanish again into his hiding places.

The painful experiences of the later portion of this march convinced
Metellus that some decisive effort should be made, which would crown his
earlier successes, give him some sort of command of the line of country
through which he had so perilously passed, and might, by the importance
of the attempt, force Jugurtha to a battle. The hilly country through
which he had just conducted his legions, was that which lay between the
great towns of Sicca and Zama.[1033] The possession of both these places
was absolutely essential if the southern district which he had terrified
and garrisoned was to be kept permanently from the king. Sicca was
already his, for it had been the first of the towns to throw off its
allegiance to Jugurtha after the battle on the Muthul had dissipated the
Numidian army.[1034] He now turned his attention to the still more
important town of Zama, the true capital and stronghold of this southern
district, and prepared to master the position by assault or siege.
Jugurtha was soon cognisant of his plan, and by long forced marches
crossed Metellus's line and entered Zama.[1035] He urged the citizens to
a vigorous defence and promised that at the right moment he would come
to their aid with all his forces; he strengthened their garrison by
drafting into it a body of Roman deserters, whose circumstances
guaranteed their loyalty, and disappeared again from the vision of
friends and foes. Shortly afterwards he learnt that Marius had left the
line of march for Sicca, and that he had with him but a few cohorts
intended to convoy to the army the corn which he hoped to acquire in the
town. In a moment Jugurtha was at the head of his chosen cavalry and
moving under cover of the night. He had hoped perhaps to find the
division in the town, to turn the tide of feeling in Sicca by his
presence, and to see the ablest of his opponents trapped within the
walls. But, as he reached the gate, the Romans were leaving it. He
immediately hurled his men upon them and shouted to the curious folk who
were watching the departure of the cohorts, to take the division in the
rear. Chance, he cried, had lent them the occasion of a glorious deed of
arms. Now was the time for them to recover freedom, for him to regain
his kingdom. The magic of the presence of the national hero had nearly
worked conversion to the Siccans and destruction to the Romans. The
friendly city would have proved a hornets' nest, had not Marius bent all
his efforts to thrusting a passage through Jugurtha's men and getting
clear of the dangerous walls. In the more open ground the fighting was
sharp but short. A few Numidians fell, the rest vanished from the field,
and Marius came in safety to Zama, where he found Metellus contemplating
his attack.

The city lay in a plain and nature had contributed but little to its
defence,[1036] but it was strong in all the means that art could supply
and well prepared to stand a siege. Metellus planned a general assault
and arranged his forces around the whole line of wall. The attack began
at every point at once; in the rear were the light-armed troops,
shooting stones and metal balls at the defenders and covering the
efforts of the active assailants, who pressed up to the walls and strove
to effect an entry by scaling ladders and by mines. The defending force
betrayed no sign of terror or disordered haste. They calmly distributed
their duties, and each party kept a watchful eye on the enemy whom it
was its function to repel; while some transfixed those farther from the
wall with javelins thrown by the hand or shot from an engine, others
dealt destruction on those immediately beneath them, rolling heavy
stones upon their heads and showering down pointed stakes, heavy
missiles and vessels full of blazing pine fed with pitch and
sulphur.[1037]

The battle raging round the walls may have absorbed the thoughts even of
that section of the Roman army which had been left to guard the camp.
Certainly they and their sentries were completely off their guard when
Jugurtha with a large force dashed at the entrenchments and, so complete
was the surprise, swept unhindered through the gate.[1038] The usual
scene of panic followed with its flight, its hasty arming, the groans of
the wounded, the silent falling of the slain. But the unusual degree of
the recklessness of the garrison was witnessed by the fact that not more
than forty men were making a collective stand against the Numidian
onset. The little band had seized a bit of high ground and no effort of
the enemy could dislodge them. The missiles which had been aimed against
them they hurled back with terrible effect into the dense masses around;
and when the assailants essayed a closer combat, they struck them down
or drove them back with the fury of their blows. Their resistance may
have detained Jugurtha in the camp longer than he had intended; but the
immediate escape from the emergency was due to the cowards rather than
to the brave. Metellus was wrapt in contemplation of the efforts of his
men before the walls of Zama when he suddenly heard the roar of battle
repeated from another quarter. As he wheeled his horse, he saw a crowd
of fugitives hurrying over the plain; since they made for him, he judged
that they were his own men. It seems that the cavalry had been drawn up
near the walls, probably as a result of the impression that Jugurtha, if
he attacked at all, would attempt to take the besiegers in the rear.
Metellus now hastily sent the whole of this force to the camp, and bade
Marius follow with all speed at the head of some cohorts of the allies.
His anguish at the sullied honour of his troops was greater than his
fear. With tears streaming down his face he besought his legate to wipe
out the stain which blurred the recent victory and not to permit the
enemy to escape unpunished.

Jugurtha had no intention of being caught in the Roman camp; but it was
not so easy to get out as it had been to come in. Some of his men were
jammed in the exits, while others threw themselves over the ramparts;
Marius took full advantage of the rout, and it was with many losses that
Jugurtha shook himself free of his pursuers and retreated to his own
fastnesses. Soon the approach of night brought the siege operations to
an end. Metellus drew off his men and led them back to camp after a
day's experience that did not leave a pleasant retrospect behind it.
Warned by its incidents that the cavalry should be posted nearer to the
camp, he began the work of the following day by disposing the whole of
this force over that quarter of the ground on which the king had made
his appearance;[1039] more definite arrangements were also made for the
detailed defence of the Roman lines, and the assault of the previous day
was renewed on the walls of Zama. Yet in spite of these elaborate
precautions Jugurtha's coming was in the nature of a surprise. The
silence and swiftness of his onset threw the first contingents of Romans
whom he met into momentary panic and confusion; but reserves were soon
moved up and restored the fortune of the day. They might have turned it
rapidly and wholly, but for a tactical device which Jugurtha had adopted
as a means of neutralising the superior stability of the Romans--a means
which permitted him to show a persistence of frontal attack unusual with
the Numidians. He had mingled light infantry with his cavalry; the
latter charged instead of merely skirmishing, and before the breaches
which they had made in the enemy's ranks could be refilled, the foot
soldiers made their attack on the disordered lines.[1040]

Jugurtha's object was being fulfilled as long as he could remain in the
field to effect this type of diversion and draw off considerable forces
from the walls of Zama. But his ingenious efforts attracted the
attention of the besieged as well as of the besiegers. It is true that,
when the assault was hottest, the citizens of Zama did not permit their
minds or eyes to stray; but there were moments following the repulse of
some great effort when the energy of the assailants flagged and there
was a lull in the storm of sound made by human voices and the clatter of
arms. Then the men on the walls would look with strained attention on
the cavalry battle in the plain, would follow the fortunes of the king
with every alternation of joy or fear, and shout advice or exhortation
as though their voices could reach their distant friends.[1041] Marius,
who conducted the assault at that portion of the wall which commanded
this absorbing view, formed the idea of encouraging this distraction of
attention by a feint and seizing the momentary advantage which it
afforded. A remissness and lack of confidence was soon visible in the
efforts of his men, and the undisturbed interest of the Numidians was
speedily directed to the manoeuvres of their monarch in the plain.
Suddenly the assault burst on them in its fullest force; before they
could brace themselves to the surprise, the foremost Romans were more
than half-way up the scaling ladders. But the height was too great and
the time too short. Stones and fire were again poured on the heads of
the assailants. It was some time before their confidence was shaken; but
when one or two ladders had been shattered into fragments and their
occupants dashed down, the rest--most of them already covered with
wounds--glided to the ground and hastened from the walls. This was the
last effort. The night soon fell and brought with it, not merely the
close of the day's work, but the end of the siege of Zama.

Metellus saw that neither of his objects could be fulfilled. The town
could not be taken nor would Jugurtha permit himself to be brought to
the test of a regular battle.[1042] The fighting season was now drawing
to its close and he must think of winter quarters for his army. He
determined, not only to abandon the siege, but to quit Numidia and to
winter in the Roman province. The sole relic of the fact that he had
marched an army through the territory between Vaga and Zama were a few
garrisons left in such of the surrendered cities as seemed capable of
defence. The despatches of this winter would not cheer the people or
encourage the senate. The policy of invasion had failed; and, if success
was to be won, it could be accomplished by intrigue alone. Metellus,
when the leisure of winter quarters gave him time to think over the
situation, decided that scattered negotiations with lesser Numidian
magnates would prove as delusive in the future as they had in the past.
The king's mind must be mastered if his body was to be enslaved; but it
was a mind that could be conquered only by confidence, and to secure
this influence it was necessary to approach the monarch's right-hand
man. This man was Bomilcar, the most trusted general and adviser of
Jugurtha--trusted all the more perhaps in consequence of the delusion,
into which even a Numidian king might fall, that the man who owes his
life to another will owe him his life-long service as well. A more
reasonable ground for Bomilcar's attachment might have been found in the
consideration that, in the eyes of Rome, he was as deeply compromised as
Jugurtha himself--from an official point of view, indeed, even more
deeply compromised; for to the Roman law he was an escaped criminal over
whose head still hung a capital charge of murder.[1043] But might not
that very fact urge the minister to make his own compact with Rome? His
life depended on the king's success, or on the king's refusal to
surrender him if peace were made with Rome; it depended therefore on a
double element of doubt. Make that life a certainty, and would any
Numidian longer balance the doubt against the certainty? Such was the
thought of Metellus when he opened correspondence with Bomilcar. The
minister wished to hear more, and Metellus arranged a secret interview.
In this he gave his word of honour that, if Bomilcar handed over
Jugurtha to him living or dead, the senate would grant him impunity and
the continued possession of all that belonged to him. The Numidian
accepted the promise and the condition it involved; his mind was chiefly
swayed by the fear that a continuance of the even struggle might result
in a compromise with Rome, and that his own death at the hands of the
executioner would be one of the conditions of that compromise.

What passed between Bomilcar and Jugurtha can never have been known. The
king had no reason to regret the exploits of the year, and an appeal to
the desperate nature of his position would have been somewhat out of
place. But some of the reflections of Bomilcar, preserved or invented by
tradition,[1044] which pointed to weakness and danger in the future, may
conceivably have been expressed. It was true that the war was wasting
the material strength of the kingdom; it might be true that it would
wear out the constancy of the Numidians themselves and induce them to
put their own interests before those of their king. Such arguments could
never have weighed with Jugurtha had not his recent success suggested
the hope of a compromise; as a beaten fugitive he would have had nothing
to hope for; as a man who still held his own he might win much by a
ready compact with a Roman general in worse plight than himself. It
seems certain that Jugurtha was for the first time thoroughly deceived.
His judgment, sound enough in its estimate of the general situation,
must have been led astray by Bomilcar's representation of Metellus's
attitude, although the minister could not have hinted at a personal
knowledge of the Roman's views; and his confidence in his adviser led to
this rare and signal instance of a total misconception of the character
and powers of his adversary.

Some preliminary correspondence probably passed between Jugurtha and
Metellus before the king sent his final message.[1045] It was to the
effect that all the demands would be complied with, and that the kingdom
and its monarch would be surrendered unconditionally to the
representative of Rome. Metellus immediately summoned a council, to
which he gave as representative a character as was possible under the
circumstances. The transaction of delicate business by a clique of
friends had cast grave suspicions on the compact concluded by Bestia;
and it was important that the witnesses to the fact that the transaction
with Jugurtha contained no secret clause or understanding, should be as
numerous and weighty as possible. This result could be easily secured by
the general's power to summon all the men of mark available; and thus
Metellus called to the board not only every member of the senatorial
order whom he could find, but a certain number of distinguished
individuals who did not belong to the governing class.[1046] The policy
of the board was to make tentative and gradually increasing demands such
as had once tried the patience of the Carthaginians.[1047] Jugurtha
should give a pledge of his good faith; and, if it was unredeemed, Rome
would have the gain and he the loss. The king was now ordered to
surrender two hundred thousand pounds of silver, all his elephants and a
certain quantity of horses and weapons.[1048] He was also required to
furnish three hundred hostages.[1049] The request, at least as regards
the money and the materials for war, was immediately complied with. Then
the demands increased. The deserters from the Roman army must be handed
over. A few of these had fled from Jugurtha at the very first sign that
a genuine submission was being made, and had sought refuge with Bocchus
King of Mauretania;[1050] but the greater part, to the number of three
thousand,[1051] were surrendered to Metellus. Most of these were
auxiliaries, Thracians and Ligurians such as had abandoned Aulus at
Suthul; and the sense of the danger threatened by the treachery of
allies, who must form a vital element in all Roman armies, may have been
the motive for the awful example now given to the empire of Rome's
punishment for breach of faith. Some of these prisoners had their hands
cut off; others were buried in the earth up to their waists, were then
made a target for arrows and darts, and were finally burnt with fire
before the breath had left their bodies.[1052] The final order concerned
Jugurtha himself, He was required to repair to a place named
Tisidium,[1053] there to wait for orders. The confidence of the king now
began to waver. He may have hoped to the last moment for some sign that
his cause was being viewed with a friendly eye; but none had come.
Surrender to Rome was a thinkable position, while he was in a position
to bargain. It would be the counsel of a madman, if he put himself
wholly in the power of his enemy. He had sacrificed much; but the loss,
except in money, was not irremediable. Elephants were of no avail in
guerilla warfare, and Numidia, which was still his own, had horses and
men in abundance. He waited some days longer, probably more in
expectancy of a move by Metellus and in preparation of the step he
himself meant to take, than in doubt as to what that step should be;
when no modification of the demand came from the Roman side, he broke
off negotiations and continued the war. Metellus was still to be his
opponent; for earlier in the year the proconsulate of the commander had
been renewed.[1054]

The events of the summer and the peace of winter-quarters had given food
for reflection to others besides Metellus. We shall soon see what the
merchant classes in Africa thought of the progress of the war; more
formidable still were the emotions that had lately been excited in the
rugged breast of the great legate Marius. There are probably few
lieutenants who do not think that they could do better than their
commanders. Whether Marius held this view is immaterial; he soon came to
believe that he did, and expressed this belief with vigour. The really
important fact was that a man who had been praetor seven years before
and probably regarded himself as the greatest soldier of the age, was
carrying out the behests and correcting the blunders of a general who
owed his command to his aristocratic connections and blameless record in
civil life. The subordination in this particular form seemed likely to
be perpetuated in Numidia, for Metellus was entering on his second
proconsulate and his third year of power; in other forms and in every
sphere it was likely to be eternal, for it was an accepted axiom of the
existing regime that no "new man" could attain the consulship.[1055] The
craving for this office was the new blight that had fallen on Marius's
life; for it is the ambition which is legitimate that spreads the most
morbid influence on heart and brain. But the healthier part of his soul,
which was to be found in that old-fashioned piety so often maligned by
the question-begging name of superstition, soon came to the help of the
worldly impulse which the strong man might have doubted and crushed. On
one eventful day in Utica Marius was engaged in seeking the favour of
the gods by means of sacrificial victims. The seer who was interpreting
the signs looked and exclaimed that great and wonderful things were
portended. Let the worshipper do whatsoever was in his mind; he had the
support of the gods. Let him test fortune never so often, his heart's
desire would be fulfilled.[1056]

The gods had given a marvellous response in the only way in which the
gods could answer. They did not suggest, but they could confirm, and
never was confirmation more emphatic. Marius's last doubts were removed,
and he went straightway to his commander and asked for leave of absence
that he might canvass for the consulship in that very year. Metellus was
a good patron; that is, he was a bad friend. The aristocratic bristles
rose on the skin that had seemed so smooth. At first he expressed mild
wonder at Marius's resolution--the wonder that is more contemptuous than
a gibe--and exhorted him in words, the professedly friendly tone of
which must have been peculiarly irritating, not to let a distorted
ambition get the better of him; every one should see that his desires
were appropriate and limit them when they passed this stage; Marius had
reason to be satisfied with his position; he should be on his guard
against asking the Roman people for a gift which they would have a right
to refuse. There was no suspicion of personal jealousy in these
utterances; they reflected the standard of a caste, not of a man. But
Marius had measured the situation, and was not to be deterred by its
being presented again in a galling but not novel form. A further request
was met by the easy assumption that the matter was not so pressing as to
brook no delay; as soon as public business admitted of Marius's
departure, Metellus would grant his request. Still further entreaties
are said to have wrung from the impatient proconsul, whose good advice
had been wasted on a boor who did not know his place and could take no
hints, the retort that Marius need not hurry; it would be time enough
for him to canvass for the consulship when Metellus's own son should be
his colleague.[1057] The boy was about twenty, Marius forty-nine. The
prospective consulship would come to the latter when he had reached the
mature age of seventy-two. The jest was a blessing, for anything that
justified the whole-hearted renunciation of patronage, the dissolution
of the sense of obligation, was an avenue to freedom. Marius was now at
liberty to go his own way, and he soon showed that there was enough
inflammable material in the African province to burn up the credit of a
greater general than Metellus.

It is said that the division of the army, commanded by Marius, soon
found itself enjoying a much easier time than before;[1058] the stern
legate had become placable, if not forgetful--a circumstance which may
be explained either by the view that a care greater than that of
military discipline sat upon his mind, or by a belief that the new-born
graciousness was meant to offer a pleasing contrast to the rigour of
Metellus. But in this case the civilian element in the province was of
more importance than the army. The merchant-princes of Utica, groaning
over the vanished capital which they had invested in Numidian concerns,
heard a criticism and a boast which appealed strongly to their impatient
minds. Marius had said, or was believed to have said, that if but one
half of the army were entrusted to him, he would have Jugurtha in chains
in a few days;[1059] that the war was being purposely prolonged to
satisfy the empty-headed pride which the commander felt in his position.
The merchants had long been reflecting on the causes of the prolongation
of the war with all the ignorance and impatience that greed supplies;
now these causes seemed to be revealed in a simple and convincing light.