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

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The unfortunate house of Masinissa was also made to play its part in the
movement. It was represented in the Roman camp by Gauda son of
Mastanabal, a prince weak both in body and mind, but the legitimate heir
to the Numidian crown, if it was taken from Jugurtha and Micipsa's last
wishes were fulfilled. For the old king in framing his testament had
named Gauda as heir in remainder to the kingdom, if his two sons and
Jugurtha should die without issue.[1060] The nearness of the succession,
now that the reigning king of Numidia was an enemy of the Roman people,
had prompted the prince to ask Metellus for the distinctions that he
deemed suited to his rank, a seat next that of the commander-in-chief, a
guard of Roman knights[1061] for his person. Both requests had been
refused--the place of honour because it belonged only to those whom the
Roman people had addressed as kings, the guard, because it was
derogatory to the knights of Rome to act as escort to a Numidian. The
prince may have taken the refusal, not merely as an insult in itself,
but as a hint that Metellus did not recognise him as a probable
successor to Jugurtha. He was in an anxious and moody frame of mind when
he was approached by Marius and urged to lean on him, if he would gain
satisfaction for the commander's contumely. The glowing words of his new
friend made hope appeal to his weak mind almost with the strength of
certainty. He was the grandson of Masinissa, the immediate occupant of
the Numidian throne, should Jugurtha be captured or slain; the crown
might be his at no distant date, should Marius be made consul and sent
to the war. He should make appeal to his friends in Rome to secure the
means which would lead to the desired end. The ship that bore the
prince's letter to Rome took many other missives from far more important
men--all of them with a strange unanimity breathing the same purport,
"Metellus was mismanaging the war, Marius should be made commander".
They were written by knights in the province--some of them officers in
the army, others heads of commercial houses[1062]--to their friends and
agents in Rome. All of these correspondents had not been directly
solicited by Marius, but in some mysterious way the hope of peace in
Africa had become indissolubly associated with his name. The central
bureau of the great mercantile system would soon be working in his
favour. Who would withstand it? Certainly not the senate still shaken by
the Mamilian law; still less the people who wanted but a new suggestion
to change the character of their attack. All things seemed working
for Marius.

It was soon shown that, whoever the future commander of Numidia was to
be, he would have a real war on his hands; for the struggle had suddenly
sprung into new and vigorous life, and one of the few permanent
successes of Rome was annihilated in a moment by the craft of the
reawakened Jugurtha. The preparations of the king must have been
conjectured from their results; their first issue was a complete
surprise; for few could have dreamed that the personal influence of the
monarch, who had given away so much for an elusive hope of safety and
had almost been a prisoner in the Roman lines, should assert itself in
the very heart of the country believed to be pacified and now held by
Roman garrisons. The town of Vaga, the intended basis of supplies for an
army advancing to the south or west, the seat of an active commerce and
the home of merchants from many lands who traded under the aegis of the
Roman peace and a Roman garrison perched on the citadel, was suddenly
thrilled by a message from the king, and answered to the appeal with a
burst of heartfelt loyalty--a loyalty perhaps quickened by the native
hatred of the ways of the foreign trader. The self-restraint of the
patriotic plotters was as admirable as their devotion to a cause so
nearly lost. Many hundreds must have been cognisant of the scheme, yet
not a word reached the ears of those responsible for the security of the
town. Even the poorest conspirator did not dream of the fortune that
might be reaped from the sale of so vast a secret, and the Roman was as
ignorant of the hidden significance of native demeanour as he was of the
subtleties of the native tongue. In eye and gesture he could read
nothing but feelings of friendliness to himself, and he readily accepted
the invitation to the social gathering which was to place him at the
mercy of his host.[1063] The third day from the date at which the plot
was first conceived offered a golden opportunity for an attack which
should be unsuspected and resistless. It was the day of a great national
festival, on which leisured enjoyment took the place of work and every
one strove to banish for the time the promptings of anxiety and fear.
The officers of the garrison had been invited by their acquaintances
within the town to share in their domestic celebrations. They and their
commandant, Titus Turpilius Silanus, were reclining at the feast in the
houses of their several hosts when the signal was given. The tribunes
and centurions were massacred to a man; Turpilius alone was spared; then
the conspirators turned on the rank and file of the Roman troops. The
position of these was pitiable. Scattered in the streets, without
weapons and without a leader, they saw the holiday throng around them
suddenly transformed into a ferocious mob. Even such of the meaner
classes as had up to this time been innocent of the murderous plot, were
soon baying at their heels; some of these were hounded on by the
conspirators; others saw only that disturbance was on foot, and the
welcome knowledge of this fact alone served to spur them to a senseless
frenzy of assault. The Roman soldiers were merely victims; there was
never a chance of a struggle which would make the sacrifice costly, or
even difficult.[1064] The citadel, in which their shields and standards
hung, was in the occupation of the foe; when they sought the city gates,
they found the portals closed; when they turned back upon the streets,
the line of fury was deeper than before, for the women and the very
children on the level housetops were hurling stones or any missiles that
came to hand on the hated foreigners below. Strength and skill were of
no avail; such qualities could not even prolong the agony; the veteran
and the tyro, the brave and the shrinking, were struck or cut down with
equal ease and swiftness. Only one man succeeded in slipping through the
gates. This was the commandant Turpilius himself. Even the lenient view
that a lucky chance or the pity of his host had given him his freedom,
did not clear him of the stain which the tyrannical tradition of Roman
arms stamped on every commander who elected to survive the massacre of
the division entrusted to his charge.[1065]

When the news was brought to Metellus, the heart-sick general buried
himself in his tent.[1066] But his first grief was soon spent, and his
thoughts turned to a scheme of vengeance on the treacherous town.
Rapidly and carefully the scheme was unfolded in his mind, and by the
setting of the sun the first steps towards the recovery of Vaga had been
taken. In the dusk he left his camp with the legion which had been
stationed in his own quarters and as large a force of Numidian cavalry
as he could collect. Both horse and foot were slenderly equipped, for he
was bent on a surprise and a long and hard night's march lay before him.
He was still speeding on three hours after the sun had risen on the
following day. The tired soldiers cried a halt, but Metellus spurred
them on by pointing to the nearness of their goal (Vaga, he showed, was
but a mile distant, just beyond the line of hills which shut out their
view), the sanctity of the work of vengeance, the certainty of a rich
reward in plunder. He paused but to reform his men. The cavalry were
deployed in open order in the van; the infantry followed in a column so
dense that nothing distinctive in their equipment or organisation could
be discerned from afar, and the standards were carefully
concealed.[1067] When the men of Vaga saw the force bearing down upon
their town, their first and right impression led them to close the
gates; but two facts soon served to convince them of their error. The
supposed enemy was not attempting to ravage their land, and the horsemen
who rode near the walls were clearly men of Numidian blood. It was the
king himself, they cried, and with enthusiastic joy they poured from the
gates to meet him. The Romans watched them come; then at a given signal
the closed ranks opened, as each division rushed to its appointed task.
Some charged and cut in pieces the helpless multitude that had poured
upon the plain; others seized the gates, others again the now undefended
towers on the walls. All sense of weariness had suddenly vanished from
limbs now stimulated by the lust of vengeance and of plunder. The
slaughter was pitiless, the search for plunder as thorough as the
slaughter. The war had not yet given such a prize as this great trading
town. Its ruin was the general's loss as it was the soldiers' gain; but
the need for rapid vengeance vanquished every other sentiment in
Metellus's mind. Roman punishment was as swift as it was sure, if but
two days could elapse between the sin and the suffering of the men of
Vaga. A gloomy task still remained. Inquiry must be made as to the mode
in which Turpilius the commandant had escaped unharmed from the
massacre. The investigation was a bitter trial to Metellus; for the
accused was bound to him by close ties of hereditary friendship, and had
been accredited by him with the command of the corps of engineers.[1068]
The command at Vaga had been a further mark of favour, and it was
believed by some that Turpilius had justified his commander's hopes only
too well, and that it was his very humanity and consideration for the
townsfolk under his command which had offered him means of escape such
as only the most resolute would have refused.[1069] But the scandal was
too grave to admit of a private inquiry, in which the honour of the army
might seem to be sacrificed to the caprice of the friendly judgment of
Metellus. His very familiarity with the accused entailed the duty of a
cold impartiality, and Turpilius found little credence or excuse for the
tale that he unfolded before the members of the court which adjudicated
on his case. The harsh view of Marius was particularly recalled in the
light of subsequent events. The fact or fancy that it was Marius who had
himself condemned and had urged his brother judges to deliver an adverse
vote, was seized by the gatherers of gossip, ever ready to discover a
sinister motive in the actions of the man who never forgot, was embedded
in that prose epic of the "Wrath of Marius" which subsequently adorned
the memoirs of the great, and became a story of how the relentless
lieutenant had, in malignant disregard of his own convictions, caused
Metellus to commit the inexpiable wrong of dooming a guest-friend to an
unworthy death.[1070] The death was inflicted with all the barbarity of
Roman military law; Turpilius was scourged and beheaded,[1071] and
through this final expiation the episode of Vaga remained to many minds
a still darker horror than before.

But much had been gained by the recovery of the revolted town. It is
true that in its present condition it was almost useless to its
possessors; but its fate must have stayed the progress of revolt in
other cities, and the rapidity of Metellus's movements had hampered
Jugurtha's immediate plans. The king had probably intended that Vaga
should be a second Zama, and that the Romans should be kept at bay by
its strong walls while he himself harassed their rear or attacked their
camp. Now the scene of a successful guerilla warfare must be sought
elsewhere. Its choice depended on the movements of the Roman army; but
the time for the commencement of the new struggle was postponed longer
than it might have been by a domestic danger which, while it confirmed
the king in his resolution to struggle to the bitter end, absorbed his
attention for the moment and hampered his operations in the field.
Bomilcar's negotiations with Rome were bearing their deadly fruit.[1072]
The minister was a victim of that expectant anguish, which springs from
the failure of a treacherous scheme, when the cause of that failure is
unknown. Why had the king broken off the negotiations? Was he himself
suspected? Would the danger be lessened, if he remained quiescent? It
might be increased, for the peril from Rome still existed, and there was
the new terror from the vengeance of a master, whose suspicion seemed to
his affrighted soul to be revealing itself in a cold neglect. Bomilcar
determined that he would face but a single peril, and plunged into a
course of intrigue far more dangerous than any which he had yet essayed.
He no longer worked through underlings or appealed to the emissaries of
Rome. He aimed at internal revolution, at the fall of the king by the
hands of his servants--a stroke which he might exhibit to the suzerain
power as his own meritorious work--and he adopted as a confidant a man
of his own rank and at the moment of greater influence than himself.
Nabdalsa was the new favourite of Jugurtha. He was a man of high birth,
of vast wealth, of great and good repute in the district of Numidia
which he ruled. His fame and power had been increased by his appointment
to the command of such forces as the king could not lead in person, and
he was now operating with an army in the territory between the
head-quarters of Jugurtha and the Roman winter camp, his mission being
to prevent the country being overrun with complete impunity by the
invaders. His reason for listening to the overtures of Bomilcar is
unknown; perhaps he knew too much of the military situation to believe
in his master's ultimate success, and aimed at securing his own
territorial power by an appeal to the gratitude of Rome. But he had not
his associate's motive for hasty execution; and when Bomilcar warned him
that the time had come, his mind was appalled by the magnitude of a deed
that had only been prefigured in an ambiguous and uncertain shape. The
time for meeting came and passed. Bomilcar was in an agony of impatient
fear. The doubtful attitude of his associate opened new possibilities of
danger; a new terror had been added to the old, and the motive for
despatch was doubled. His alarm found vent in a brief but frantic letter
which mingled gloomy predictions of the consequences of delay with
fierce protestations and appeals. Jugurtha, he urged, was doomed, the
promises of Metellus might at any moment work the ruin of them both, and
Nabdalsa's choice lay between reward and torture.[1073]

When this missive was delivered by a faithful hand, the general, tired
in mind and body, had stretched himself upon a couch. The fiery words
did not stimulate his ardour; they plunged him still deeper in a train
of anxious thought, until utter weariness gave way to sleep. The letter
rested on his pillow. Suddenly the covering of the tent door was
noiselessly raised. His faithful secretary, who believed that he knew
all his master's secrets, had heard of the arrival of a courier. His
help and skill would be needed, and he had anticipated Nabdalsa's demand
for his presence. The letter caught his eye; he lightly picked it up and
read it, as in duty bound--for did he not deal with all letters, and
could there be aught of secrecy in a paper so carelessly laid down? The
plot now flashed across his eyes for the first time, and he slipped from
the tent to hasten with the precious missive to the king. When Nabdalsa
awoke, his thoughts turned to the letter which had harassed his last
waking moments. It was gone, and he soon found that his secretary had
disappeared as well. A fruitless attempt to pursue the fugitive
convinced him that his only hope lay in the clemency, prudence or
credulity of Jugurtha. Hastening to his master, he assured him that the
service which he had been on the eve of rendering had been anticipated
by the treachery of his dependent; let not the king forget their close
friendship, his proved fidelity; these should exempt him from suspicion
of participation in such a horrid crime.

Jugurtha replied in a conciliatory tone.[1074] Neither then nor
afterwards did he betray any trace of violent emotion. Bomilcar and many
of his accomplices were put to death swiftly and secretly; but it was
not well that rumours of a widely spread treason should be noised
abroad. The pretence of security was a means of ensuring safety, and he
had to ask too much of his Numidians to indulge even the severity that
he held to be his due. Yet it was believed that the tenor of Jugurtha's
life was altered from that moment. It was whispered that the bold
soldier and intrepid ruler searched dark corners with his eyes and
started at sudden sounds, that he would exchange his sleeping chamber
for some strange and often humble resting place at night, and that
sometimes in the darkness he would start from sleep, seize his sword and
cry aloud, as though maddened by the terror of his dreams.

The news of the fall of Bomilcar swept from Metellus's mind the last
faint hope that the war might be brought to a speedy close by the
immediate surrender of Jugurtha,[1075] and he began to make earnest
preparations for a fresh campaign. In the new struggle he was to be
deprived of the services of his ablest officer, for Marius had at length
gained his end and had won from his commander a tardy permit to speed to
Rome and seek the prize, which was doubtless still believed in the
uninformed circles of the camp to be utterly beyond his grasp. The
consent, though tardy, was finally given with a good will, for Metellus
had begun to doubt the wisdom of keeping by his side a lieutenant whose
restless discontent and growing resentment to his superior were beyond
all concealment. Marius must have wished that his general's choler had
been stirred at an earlier date, for the leave had been deferred to a
season which would have deterred a less strenuous mind, from all
thoughts of a political campaign during the current year. Delay,
however, might be fatal; the war might be brought to a dazzling close
before the consular elections again came round; the political balance at
Rome might alter; it was necessary to reap at once the harvest of
mercantile greed and popular distrust that had been so carefully
prepared. It is possible that the usual date for the elections had
already been passed and that It was only the postponement of the Comitia
that gave Marius a chance of success.[1076] Even then it was a slender
one, for it was believed in later times that his leave had been won only
twelve days before the day fixed for the declaration of the
consuls.[1077] In two days and a night he had covered the ground that
lay between the camp and Utica. Here he paused to sacrifice before
taking ship to Italy. The cheering words of the priest who read the
omens[1078] seemed to be approved by the good fortune of his voyage. A
favourable wind bore him in four days across the sea, and he reached
Rome to find men craving for his presence as the crowning factor in a
popular movement, delightful in its novelty and entered into with a
genuine enthusiasm by the masses, who were fully conscious that there
was a wrong of some undefined kind to be set right, and were as a whole
perhaps blissfully ignorant of the intrigues by which they were being
moved. Yet the thinking portion of the community had some grounds for
resentment and alarm. The Numidian was not merely injuring those
interested in African finance, but was engaging an army that was sadly
needed elsewhere. The struggle in the North was going badly for Rome,
and despatches had lately brought the news of the defeat of the consul
Silanus by a vast and wandering horde known as the Cimbri,[1079] who
hovered like a threatening cloud on the farther side of the Alps and
might at no distant date sweep past the barrier of Italy. The senatorial
government, although its position had not been formally assailed, had
been sufficiently shaken by the Mamilian commission to distrust its
power of stemming an adverse tide; and Scaurus, its chief bulwark, had
lately been so ill-advised as to force a conflict with constitutional
procedure in a way which could not be approved by a class of men to
which the smallest precedent of political life that had once been
stereotyped, appealed as a vital element in administration. He had
spoilt a magnificent display of energy during his tenure of the
censorship--an energy that issued in the rebuilding of the Mulvian
bridge[1080] and in the continuance of the great coast road[1081] from
Etruria past Genua to Dertona in the basin of the Po--by an
unconstitutional attempt to continue in his office after the death of
his colleague. His resignation had been enforced by some of the
tribunes;[1082] and the great man seems still to have been under the
passing cloud engendered by his own obstinate ambition, when the
intrigues of the ever-dreaded coalition of the mercantile classes and
the popular leaders were completed by the arrival of Marius.

This new figurehead of the democracy had a comparatively easy part
assigned him. Had it been necessary for him to persuade, he would
probably have failed, for he lacked the gifts of the orator and the
suppleness of the intriguer; but he was expected only to confirm, and
better confirmation was to be gained from his martial bearing and his
rugged manner than from his halting words. The speaking might be done by
others more practised in the art; a few words of harsh verification from
this living exemplar of the virtues of the people were all that was
demanded. His censure of Metellus was followed by a promise that he
would take Jugurtha alive or dead.[1083] The censure and the promise
gave the text for a fiery stream of opposition oratory. Threats of
prosecuting Metellus on a capital charge were mingled with passionate
assertions of confidence in the true soldier who could vindicate the
honour of Rome. The excitement spread even beyond the lazier rabble of
the city. Honest artisans, who were usually untouched by the delirious
forms of politics, and even thrifty country farmers,[1084] to whom time
meant money at this busy season of the year, were drawn into the throng
that gazed at Marius and listened to the burning words of his
supporters. Against such a concourse the nobility and its dependents
could make no head. The people who had come to listen stayed to vote,
and the suffrage of the centuries gave the "new man" as a colleague to
Lucius Cassius Longinus. But this triumph was but the prelude to
another. The people, now assembled in the plebeian gathering of the
tribes, were asked by the tribune Titus Manlius Mancinus whom they
willed to conduct the war against Jugurtha. The answer "Marius" was
given by overwhelming numbers, and the decision already reached by the
senate was brushed aside. That body had, in the exercise of its legal
authority, determined the provinces which should be administered by the
consuls of the coming year.[1085] Numidia had not been one of these, for
it had unquestionably been destined for Metellus. Gaul, on the other
hand, called for the presence of a consul and a soldier; and the senate,
although it had no power to make a definite appointment to this
province, had perhaps intended that Marius, if elected, should be
entrusted with its defence. Had this resolution been adopted, the paths
of Marius and Metellus would have ceased to cross; the Numidian war,
which demanded patience and diplomacy but not genius, might have
dwindled gradually away; and the barbarians of the North might have
yielded to their future victor before they had established their gloomy
record of triumphs over the arms of Rome. But this was not to be. The
party triumph would be incomplete if the senate's nominee was not ousted
from his command. We cannot say whether Marius shared in the blindness
which saw a more glorious field for military energy in Numidia than in
Gaul; personal rivalry and political passion may have already blunted
the instincts of the soldier. But, whatever his thoughts may have been,
his actions were determined by a superior force. He was but a pawn in
the hands of tribunes and capitalists; he had made promises which had
raised hopes, definitely commercial and vaguely political. These hopes
it must be his mission to fulfil. Before quitting Rome he found
words[1086] which vented all the spleen of the classes screened out of
office by the close-drawn ring of the nobility. The platitudes of merit,
tested by honest service and approved by distinctions won in war, were
advanced against the claims of birth; the luxurious life of the nobility
was gibbeted on the ground that sensuality was a bar to energy and
efficiency; even the elegant and conscientious taste of the cultured
commander, who supplied the defects of experience by the perusal of
Greek works on military tactics during his journey to the scene of war,
was held up to criticism as a sign that the vain and ignorant amateur
was usurping the tasks that belonged to the tried and hardy
expert.[1087] Fortunately the energy of Marius was better expended on
deeds than words. Whether the African war really required a more
vigorous army than that serving under Metellus, might be an open
question. Marius pretended that the need was patent, and exhibited the
greatest energy in beating up veteran legionaries and attracting to his
standard such of the Latin allies as had already approved their skill in
service.[1088] The senate lent a ready hand. Nothing was more unpopular
than a drastic levy, and the favourite might fail when he called for a
fulfilment of the brave language that had been heard on every side. But
the confidence in the new commander baffled its hopes; the conscripts
were marching to glory not to danger, and the supplementary army, that
was to avert a phantom peril and save an imaginary situation, was soon
enrolled. Such a demonstration had often been seen before in Rome; the
energy of an ambitious commander had with lamentable frequency rebuked
the indolence or confidence of his predecessor, and Marius was but
following in the footsteps of Bestia and Albinus. The real merits of his
labours were due to his freedom from a strange superstition which had
hitherto clung to the minds even of the best commanders that the later
Republic had produced. They had continued to hold the theory that the
effective soldier must be a man of means--a belief inherited from the
simple days of border warfare, when each conscript supplied his panoply
and the landless man could serve only as a half-armed skirmisher. For
ages past the principle had been breaking down. The vast forces required
for foreign wars demanded a wider area for the conscription; but this
area, as defined by the old conditions of service, so far from
increasing, was ever becoming less. In the age of Polybius the minimum
qualification requisite for service in the legions had sunk from eleven
thousand to four thousand asses;[1089] later it had been reduced to a
yet lower level;[1090] but, in spite of these concessions to necessity,
the senate had refused to accept the lesson, taught by the military
needs of the State and the social condition of Italy, that an empire
cannot be garrisoned by an army of conscripts. The legal power to effect
a radical alteration had long been in their hands; for the poorer
proletariate of Rome whom the law described as the men assessed "on
their heads," not on their holdings, had probably been liable to
military service of any kind in time of need.[1091] Perhaps it was mere
conservatism, perhaps it was a faint perception of the truth that an
armed rabble is fonder of men than institutions, and an appreciation of
the fact that the hold of the nobility over the capital would be
weakened if their clients were allowed to don the armour which made them
men, that had kept the senate within the strait limits of the antiquated
rules. Fortunately, however, the methods of raising an army depended
almost entirely on the discretion of the general engaged on the task.
Did he employ the conscription in a manner not justified by convention,
he might be met by resistance and appeals; but, if he chose to invite to
service, there was no power which could prescribe the particular modes
in which he should employ the units that flocked to his standard. It was
this latter method that was adopted by Marius. He did not strain his
popularity, and invite a conflict with senatorial tribunes, by forcing
foreign service on the ragged freemen who had hailed him as the saviour
of the State; but he invited their assistance in the glorious work and
asked them to be his comrades in the triumphal progress that lay before
him.[1092] The spirit of adventure, if not of patriotism, was touched:
the call was readily answered, and the stalwart limbs that had lounged
idly on the streets or striven vainly to secure the subsistence of the
favoured slave, became the instruments by which the State was to be
first protected and finally controlled. The conscription still remained
as the resort of necessity; but the creation of the first mercenary army
of Rome pointed to the mode in which any future commander could avoid
the friction and unpopularity which often attended the enforcement of
liability to service. The innovation of Marius was sufficiently
startling to attract comment and invite conjecture. Some held that the
army had been democratised to suit the consulship, and that the masses
who had seen in Marius's elevation the realisation of the vague and
detached ambitions of the poor, would continue to furnish a sure support
to the power which they had created.[1093] It is not unlikely that
Marius, with his knowledge of the tone of the army of Metellus, may have
wished to create for himself an environment that would mould the temper
of his future officers; but those more friendly critics who held that
efficiency was his immediate aim, and that "the bad" were chosen only
because "the good" were scarce,[1094] suggested the reason that was
probably dominant as a motive and was certainly adequate as a defence.
No thought of the ultimate triumph of the individual over the State by
the help of a devoted soldiery could have crossed the mind either of the
consul or of his critics. The Republic was as yet sacred, however
unhealthy its chief organs might be deemed; and although Marius was to
live to see the sinister fruit of his own reform, the harvest was to be
reaped by a rival, and the first fruits enjoyed by the senate whom that
rival served.