Jugurthine War

• 1. Introduction

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  The Jugurthine War ended with its namesake in chains. Jugurtha, the king Rome had spent years fighting, was thrown into the Tullianum, an underground prison in Rome. That came after he was paraded through the city during Gaius Marius's triumph in 104 BC, and he was executed soon after. The war was fought in 111-105 BC. It set the Roman Republic against Numidia's King Jugurtha. Numidia was a kingdom on the north African coast, roughly matching modern-day Algeria. Jugurtha was not born to rule. He was the nephew and adopted son of King Micipsa, and he took the throne only after eliminating his rivals through assassination, war, and bribery. Numidia had been a loyal Roman ally since the Punic Wars, so when Jugurtha seized it, Rome felt compelled to intervene. How did a king with no legitimate claim end up shaping Rome's push across North Africa? And why did it take Roman commanders years, and several scandals, to bring him down? Despite the war's outcome, Numidia itself would not become a Roman province until 46 BC.

• 2. A Throne Won By Treachery

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  King Masinissa, who had stood by Rome through the Third Punic War, died in 149 BC. His son Micipsa succeeded him and ruled Numidia 149-118 BC. When Micipsa died, he left three potential heirs: his sons Adherbal and Hiempsal I, and an illegitimate nephew named Jugurtha. Jugurtha had already made his mark years earlier, fighting under the Roman general Scipio Aemilianus at the siege of Numantia. There, friendships with Roman aristocrats taught him Roman customs and military methods. Worried that Jugurtha might one day seize the kingdom from his less capable sons, Micipsa adopted him instead. He then split the succession three ways, among his two sons and his adopted nephew.

  After Micipsa died, the three co-heirs argued and agreed in principle to divide Numidia into three kingdoms. They could not agree on the terms, and Jugurtha declared open war on his cousins. Hiempsal, the younger but braver of the two brothers, was assassinated by Jugurtha's agents. Adherbal could not defend himself, was defeated, and fled to Rome, where he asked the Senate to arbitrate.

  Although Micipsa's will had given the Senate authority to settle the dispute, senators let themselves be bribed by Jugurtha into overlooking his crimes. The Senate formed a commission, led by former consul Lucius Opimius, to divide Numidia fairly between the two remaining claimants, beginning in 116 BC. Jugurtha bribed the commission's officials into granting him the richer, more populous western half of Numidia, leaving Adherbal the east. Powerless against that corruption, Adherbal accepted the split and peace held, briefly. In 113 BC, Jugurtha broke the peace and attacked his cousin again, defeating him and forcing him to retreat into his own capital, Cirta. Jugurtha's aim now was to conquer all of Numidia and rule it alone.

  Rome viewed the renewed war as a threat to regional stability and backed Adherbal. With Roman support, and the help of a large community of Roman Equites settled in Africa for trade, Adherbal held out inside Cirta for months. From within the siege, Adherbal appealed to Rome a second time, and the Senate answered by ordering Jugurtha to end the war and recognize Adherbal's kingship. Jugurtha ignored the order. The Senate then sent a second delegation, led by the respected consul Marcus Scaurus, to threaten him into submission. Jugurtha stalled, feigning openness to talks with Scaurus and Adherbal until Cirta ran out of food and hope of relief. When Scaurus left without securing any real commitment, Adherbal surrendered. Jugurtha had him executed, along with every Roman who had helped defend the city. The killing of Roman citizens provoked outrage back home, and under pressure from the tribune Gaius Memmius, the Senate reluctantly declared war on Jugurtha in 111 BC.

  Command of that war went first to that year's consul, Lucius Calpurnius Bestia.

• 3. Bought Generals

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  Lucius Calpurnius Bestia, consul for the year, took command of the Roman army sent to Africa against Jugurtha, accompanied by Marcus Scaurus and other experienced officers. He received an offer of alliance from Bocchus I, king of Mauretania and Jugurtha's own father-in-law. That defection alarmed Jugurtha, who sent word to the Roman consul offering to surrender. No longer viewing him as a threat, the Senate granted Jugurtha extremely lenient terms. Numidia was restored to him intact, in exchange for bribes to the Senate, a small fine, and the surrender of his war elephants. He later bought the elephants back at a reduced price from corrupt Roman officers.

  The treaty was so favorable that it reignited public outrage in Rome. At the tribune Memmius's demand, the Senate opened an investigation into how it had been negotiated. Jugurtha was summoned to Rome under a promise of safe conduct and appeared as a witness. Rather than testify, he bribed two Roman tribunes to veto the proceedings and block his own questioning. In the uproar that followed, his cousin Massiva, who had fled to Rome fearing Jugurtha, saw an opening to press his own claim to the Numidian throne. Jugurtha had him assassinated too. The Senate was initially willing to accept another bribe and let the matter drop, but public fury and Jugurtha's own arrogance forced it to expel him from the city and cancel the recent peace. Roman legions were ordered back into Numidia.

  The consul Spurius Postumius Albinus took command of the African campaign in 110 BC but achieved little, hampered by his own incompetence, an undisciplined army, and, allegedly, more bribes from Jugurtha. When Albinus returned to Italy later that year, he left the command to his brother, Aulus Postumius Albinus. Aulus was more energetic but no more capable, and he decided on a bold winter march to besiege Suthul, the town holding the Numidian treasury. Suthul proved too well garrisoned and fortified to take. Unwilling to withdraw without landing a blow, Postumius let Jugurtha lure his army into the desolate Sahara. There, the Numidian king, who had reportedly bribed Roman officers to smooth the trap, caught the Romans at a severe disadvantage. Half the Roman army was killed, and survivors were forced to pass under a yoke, a humiliating ritual of surrender. The defeated Postumius signed a treaty naming Jugurtha king of all Numidia and reviving the earlier peace made under Bestia and Scaurus. When news of the surrender reached Rome, the Senate refused to honor it and kept the war alive.

  Command now passed to a plebeian whose reputation neither bribery nor disgrace had touched: Quintus Metellus.

• 4. Metellus's Discipline

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  Gaius Marius, a plebeian from Arpinum, and the disciplinarian Publius Rutilius Rufus both later described how Quintus Metellus chose his officers for the African campaign strictly by ability, not rank. Metellus reached Africa in 109 BC and spent his first months simply retraining the army and restoring discipline. By spring he led the reorganized force into Numidia. Jugurtha, alarmed, opened negotiations, and Metellus tried to convince the king's envoys to capture Jugurtha themselves and hand him to Rome. Sensing the plan, Jugurtha broke off talks and withdrew south, beyond the Numidian mountains.

  Metellus followed, crossing the mountains and advancing toward the Muthul River, 18 miles south of the range. Jugurtha had split his forces in two. Cavalry and his best infantry held the mountain's right flank, while his war elephants and remaining infantry waited closer to the river. Metellus sent one column, under Rufus, straight to the river, while he and Marius marched southwest to keep Jugurtha from blocking that advance. Jugurtha countered by sending infantry to seal the mountain passes behind the Romans, cutting off retreat, while his cavalry harassed Metellus's column across the open plain. Roman heavy cavalry could not match the Numidians' light horses, which struck and withdrew easily on the rough ground. Rufus, meanwhile, reached the river but was attacked by Jugurtha's southern force, leaving the two Roman columns unable to support each other. Even so, outnumbered and cut off, the Romans won on both fronts. Rufus's charge scattered the enemy's elephants and infantry, and Metellus and Marius seized the one hill that commanded the plain. The Numidians were driven back into the desert with heavy losses. Jugurtha himself escaped, so the Battle of the Muthul brought no final victory.

  New talks collapsed after Metellus rejected Jugurtha's concessions and demanded his outright surrender. Jugurtha responded by dismissing his weaker recruits and keeping only his most capable infantry and light cavalry, switching to guerrilla warfare. Metellus kept advancing, taking town after town, but could never pin down the king himself. He besieged the city of Zama hoping to draw Jugurtha into open battle, but the king refused to take the bait. In 108 BC, Metellus finally located Jugurtha's army and inflicted a serious defeat on it. Jugurtha fled with his family and treasure to the fortress of Thala, reachable only by a three-day march across waterless desert. Metellus equipped his men with water skins, followed, and besieged Thala until it fell after forty days. Jugurtha slipped away from the burning fortress regardless, undoing the victory.

  Jugurtha then took refuge at the court of Bocchus I of Mauretania, who received him warmly this time and pushed troops into Numidia as far as Cirta, without formally declaring war on Rome. Wintering in the region, Metellus opened negotiations with Bocchus to hand Jugurtha over. Before a deal was struck, the Roman Tribal Assembly stripped Metellus of command and gave it to his own lieutenant, Gaius Marius, after tension had grown between the two men over Marius's political ambitions. Metellus had refused for days to let Marius sail home to run for consul, relenting only near the end. Marius won the consulship for 107 BC, but Metellus had not realized Marius still wanted the Numidian command for himself. Numidia was not normally a province the Senate assigned to a consul, but the populares pushed a law through the Tribal Assembly handing the command to Marius anyway, and the Senate did not contest it.

  Metellus answered by refusing to let his own legions serve under his successor, sending them instead to reinforce the consul Lucius Cassius Longinus, who was marching north to meet a Germanic invasion of Gaul.

• 5. Marius and the New Legions

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  Rome's traditional pool of legion-eligible manpower had shrunk by the time Gaius Marius took command, as growing inequality left fewer men able to meet the property requirement for service. Thousands of poor Romans, called the Capite Censi, sat idle in the city, barred from serving. Invoking a precedent set during the desperate Second Punic War, Marius was allowed to waive the property requirement and recruit them. That decision would later push Marius toward reforming the Roman army more broadly.

  When Marius reached Numidia, he broke off negotiations at once and resumed the war. He marched west, plundering the Numidian countryside and seizing minor towns and forts to try to lure Jugurtha into a pitched battle. Jugurtha refused to engage, and Marius's approach produced no better results than Metellus's had, so he settled into occupying towns and fortifying key positions. At the end of 107 BC, Marius made a dangerous march through the desert to Capsa in the south. After the town surrendered, he had every survivor executed. He then pushed far to the west and captured a fortress on the river Muluccha, where Jugurtha had stored much of his treasure. While Marius was occupied there, Jugurtha's loyalists retook Cirta.

  Marius's westward march brought the Roman army close to Bocchus's territory, finally drawing the Mauretanian king into open war on Jugurtha's side. In the deserts near Serif, a combined Numidian and Mauretanian army caught Marius off guard, and his troops could only fall back into defensive circles. Gaetulian and Mauretanian cavalry pressed the attack, pinning Marius and his main force on one hill while his quaestor, Lucius Cornelius Sulla, held another nearby with a separate detachment. The Romans held out until evening, and the Africans withdrew expecting to finish the fight the next morning. Instead, the Romans struck the Africans' poorly guarded camp at dawn and routed them completely. As the army marched east back to Cirta, the two kings harassed the column with light cavalry, but Sulla, commanding the rearguard, beat them back. When the combined African force tried one more attack, Sulla returned from pursuit in time to help rout both Jugurtha's and Bocchus's armies, in what became known as the Second Battle of Cirta. Marius's army wintered safely at Cirta, but it was now clear that open warfare alone could not defeat Jugurtha's guerrilla tactics.

  Over the winter, Marius reopened negotiations with Bocchus, who had fought at the Second Battle of Cirta but had never formally declared war on Rome. Marius eventually struck a deal. Sulla, who had friends in Bocchus's court, would enter the Mauretanian camp to take custody of Jugurtha as a political hostage. Sulla agreed, despite the risk that Bocchus might betray him instead. Siding with their Roman allies, the Mauretanians massacred Jugurtha's remaining followers, and Bocchus delivered the Numidian king to Sulla in chains. Bocchus was rewarded with the western part of Jugurtha's former kingdom and recognized as a friend of the Roman people, the term Rome used for an allied foreign monarch in good standing.

  The quaestor who had walked into enemy territory to make that arrest, Sulla, would soon claim the credit for it belonged to him more than to Marius.

• 6. A Republic in Decline

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  The war exposed how far bribery could bend Roman institutions. Jugurtha's treachery, conquests, and open defiance had repeatedly been overlooked in exchange for payoffs to military and civil officials. Romans increasingly chased individual power at the state's expense, a shift the war illustrated through Marius's own rise outside traditional norms. Marius's quaestor, Lucius Cornelius Sulla, watched these events firsthand, and he would later become Marius's rival in the first of Rome's great civil wars. According to the historian Plutarch, that rivalry traced back to Sulla's central role in negotiating Jugurtha's capture, a role that led Sulla to wear a ring depicting the moment even though Marius received official credit for the victory.

  The Roman historian Sallust wrote a monograph, Bellum Jugurthinum, on the war, framing it as an early sign of Rome's ethical decline. He placed it, alongside his account of the Catilinarian Conspiracy, within a timeline of Roman decay that he traced from the Fall of Carthage to the eventual fall of the Roman Republic itself. Sallust considered the Jugurthine War the first event in the chain that set that collapse in motion. Alongside Plutarch's biographies of Sulla and Marius, Sallust's account remains one of the most valuable surviving sources on the war.

  Numidia's own territory bordered the ruins of Carthage, Rome's old arch-enemy from the Punic Wars, a reminder that decades after Carthage had fallen, Rome was still drawing its wars from the same stretch of coastline.