Chapter IV: The Rule of the Restoration (1)

Vacancy in the Government

The new structure, which Gaius Gracchus had reared, became on his death a ruin. His death indeed, like that of his brother, was primarily a mere act of vengeance; but it was at the same time a very material step towards the restoration of the old constitution, when the person of the monarch was taken away from the monarchy, just as it was on the point of being established. It was all the more so in the present instance, because after the fall of Gaius and the sweeping and bloody prosecutions of Opimius there existed at the moment absolutely no one, who, either by blood-relationship to the fallen chief of the state or by preeminent ability, might feel himself warranted in even attempting to occupy the vacant place. Gaius had departed from the world childless, and the son whom Tiberius had left behind him died before reaching manhood; the whole popular party, as it was called, was literally without any one who could be named as leader. The Gracchan constitution resembled a fortress without a commander; the walls and garrison were uninjured, but the general was wanting, and there was no one to take possession of the vacant place save the very government which had been overthrown.

The Restored Aristocracy

So it accordingly happened. After the decease of Gaius Gracchus without heirs, the government of the senate as it were spontaneously resumed its place; and this was the more natural, that it had not been, in the strict sense, formally abolished by the tribune, but had merely been reduced to a practical nullity by his exceptional proceedings. Yet we should greatly err, if we should discern in this restoration nothing further than a relapse of the state-machine into the old track which had been trodden and worn for centuries. Restoration is always revolution; but in this case it was not so much the old government as the old governor that was restored. The oligarchy made its appearance newly equipped in the armour of the -tyrannis- which had been overthrown. As the senate had beaten Gracchus from the field with his own weapons, so it continued in the most essential points to govern with the constitution of the Gracchi; though certainly with the ulterior idea, if not of setting it aside entirely, at any rate of thoroughly purging it in due time from the elements really hostile to the ruling aristocracy.

Prosecutions of the Democrats

At first the reaction was mainly directed against persons. Publius Popillius was recalled from banishment after the enactments relating to him had been cancelled (633), and a warfare of prosecution was waged against the adherents of Gracchus; whereas the attempt of the popular party to have Lucius Opimius after his resignation of office condemned for high treason was frustrated by the partisans of the government (634). The character of this government of the restoration is significantly indicated by the progress of the aristocracy in soundness of sentiment. Gaius Carbo, once the ally of the Gracchi, had for long been a convert,(1) and had but recently shown his zeal and his usefulness as defender of Opimius. But he remained the renegade; when the same accusation was raised against him by the democrats as against Opimius, the government were not unwilling to let him fall, and Carbo, seeing himself lost between the two parties, died by his own hand. Thus the men of the reaction showed themselves in personal questions pure aristocrats. But the reaction did not immediately attack the distributions of grain, the taxation of the province of Asia, or the Gracchan arrangement as to the jurymen and courts; on the contrary, it not only spared the mercantile class and the proletariate of the capital, but continued to render homage, as it had already done in the introduction of the Livian laws, to these powers and especially to the proletariate far more decidedly than had been done by the Gracchi. This course was not adopted merely because the Gracchan revolution still thrilled for long the minds of its contemporaries and protected its creations; the fostering and cherishing at least of the interests of the populace was in fact perfectly compatible with the personal advantage of the aristocracy, and thereby nothing further was sacrificed than merely the public weal.

The Domain Question under the Restoration

All those measures which were devised by Gaius Gracchus for the promotion of the public welfare--the best but, as may readily be conceived, also the most unpopular part of his legislation--were allowed by the aristocracy to drop. Nothing was so speedily and so successfully assailed as the noblest of his projects, the scheme of introducing a legal equality first between the Roman burgesses and Italy, and thereafter between Italy and the provinces, and--inasmuch as the distinction between the merely ruling and consuming and the merely serving and working members of the state was thus done away-- at the same time solving the social question by the most comprehensive and systematic emigration known in history. With all the determination and all the peevish obstinacy of dotage the restored oligarchy obtruded the principle of deceased generations--that Italy must remain the ruling land and Rome the ruling city in Italy--afresh on the present. Even in the lifetime of Gracchus the claims of the Italian allies had been decidedly rejected, and the great idea of transmarine colonization had been subjected to a very serious attack, which became the immediate cause of Gracchus' fall. After his death the scheme of restoring Carthage was set aside with little difficulty by the government party, although the individual allotments already distributed there were left to the recipients. It is true that they could not prevent a similar foundation by the democratic party from succeeding at another point: in the course of the conquests beyond the Alps which Marcus Flaccus had begun, the colony of Narbo (Narbonne) was founded there in 636, the oldest transmarine burgess- city in the Roman empire, which, in spite of manifold attacks by the government party and in spite of a proposal directly made by the senate to abolish it, permanently held its ground, protected, as it probably was, by the mercantile interests that were concerned. But, apart from this exception--in its isolation not very important--the government was uniformly successful in preventing the assignation of land out of Italy.

The Italian domain-question was settled in a similar spirit. The Italian colonies of Gaius, especially Capua, were cancelled, and such of them as had already been planted were again broken up; only the unimportant one of Tarentum was allowed to subsist in the form of the new town Neptunia placed alongside of the former Greek community. So much of the domains as had already been distributed by non-colonial assignation remained in the hands of the recipients; the restrictions imposed on them by Gracchus in the interest of the commonwealth--the ground-rent and the prohibition of alienation--had already been abolished by Marcus Drusus. With reference on the other hand to the domains still possessed by right of occupation--which, over and above the domain-land enjoyed by the Latins, must have mostly consisted of the estates left with their holders in accordance with the Gracchan maximum(2)--it was resolved definitively to secure them to those who had hitherto been occupants and to preclude the possibility of future distribution. It was primarily from these lands, no doubt, that the 36,000 new farm-allotments promised by Drusus were to have been formed; but they saved themselves the trouble of inquiring where those hundreds of thousands of acres of Italian domain-land were to be found, and tacitly shelved the Livian colonial law, which had served its purpose;--only perhaps the small colony of Scolacium (Squillace) may be referred to the colonial law of Drusus. On the other hand by a law, which the tribune of the people Spurius Thorius carried under the instructions of the senate, the allotment-commission was abolished in 635, and there was imposed on the occupants of the domain-land a fixed rent, the proceeds of which went to the benefit of the populace of the capital--apparently by forming part of the fund for the distribution of corn; proposals going still further, including perhaps an increase of the largesses of grain, were averted by the judicious tribune of the people Gaius Marius. The final step was taken eight years afterwards (643), when by a new decree of the people(3) the occupied domain-land was directly converted into the rent-free private property of the former occupants. It was added, that in future domain-land was not to be occupied at all, but was either to be leased or to lie open as public pasture; in the latter case provision was made by the fixing of a very low maximum of ten head of large and fifty head of small cattle, that the large herd- owner should not practically exclude the small. In these judicious regulations the injurious character of the occupation-system, which moreover was long ago given up,(4) was at length officially recognized, but unhappily they were only adopted when it had already deprived the state in substance of its domanial possessions. While the Roman aristocracy thus took care of itself and got whatever occupied land was still in its hands converted into its own property, it at the same time pacified the Italian allies, not indeed by conferring on them the property of the Latin domain-land which they and more especially their municipal aristocracy enjoyed, but by preserving unimpaired the rights in relation to it guaranteed to them by their charters. The opposite party was in the unfortunate position, that in the most important material questions the interests of the Italians ran diametrically counter to those of the opposition in the capital; in fact the Italians entered into a species of league with the Roman government, and sought and found protection from the senate against the extravagant designs of various Roman demagogues.

The Proletariate and the Equestrian Order under the Restoration

While the restored government was thus careful thoroughly to eradicate the germs of improvement which existed in the Gracchan constitution, it remained completely powerless in presence of the hostile powers that had been, not for the general weal, aroused by Gracchus. The proletariate of the capital continued to have a recognized title to aliment; the senate likewise acquiesced in the taking of the jurymen from the mercantile order, repugnant though this yoke was to the better and prouder portion of the aristocracy. The fetters which the aristocracy wore did not beseem its dignity; but we do not find that it seriously set itself to get rid of them. The law of Marcus Aemilius Scaurus in 632, which at least enforced the constitutional restrictions on the suffrage of freedmen, was for long the only attempt--and that a very tame one--on the part of the senatorial government once more to restrain their mob-tyrants. The proposal, which the consul Quintus Caepio seventeen years after the introduction of the equestrian tribunals (648) brought in for again entrusting the trials to senatorial jurymen, showed what the government wished; but showed also how little it could do, when the question was one not of squandering domains but of carrying a measure in the face of an influential order. It broke down.(5) The government was not emancipated from the inconvenient associates who shared its power; but these measures probably contributed still further to disturb the never sincere agreement of the ruling aristocracy with the merchant- class and the proletariate. Both were very well aware, that the senate granted all its concessions only from fear and with reluctance; permanently attached to the rule of the senate by considerations neither of gratitude nor of interest, both were very ready to render similar services to any other master who offered them more or even as much, and had no objection, if an opportunity occurred, to cheat or to thwart the senate. Thus the restoration continued to govern with the desires and sentiments of a legitimate aristocracy, and with the constitution and means of government of a -tyrannis-. Its rule not only rested on the same bases as that of Gracchus, but it was equally ill, and in fact still worse, consolidated; it was strong, when in league with the populace it overthrew serviceable institutions, but it was utterly powerless, when it had to face the bands of the streets or the interests of the merchants. It sat on the vacated throne with an evil conscience and divided hopes, indignant at the institutions of the state which it ruled and yet incapable of even systematically assailing them, vacillating in all its conduct except where its own material advantage prompted a decision, a picture of faithlessness towards its own as well as the opposite party, of inward inconsistency, of the most pitiful impotence, of the meanest selfishness--an unsurpassed ideal of misrule.

The Men of the Restoration

It could not be otherwise; the whole nation was in a state of intellectual and moral decline, but especially the upper classes. The aristocracy before the period of the Gracchi was truly not over- rich in talent, and the benches of the senate were crowded by a pack of cowardly and dissolute nobles; nevertheless there sat in it Scipio Aemilianus, Gaius Laelius, Quintus Metellus, Publius Crassus, Publius Scaevola and numerous other respectable and able men, and an observer favourably predisposed might be of opinion that the senate maintained a certain moderation in injustice and a certain decorum in misgovernment. This aristocracy had been overthrown and then reinstated; henceforth there rested on it the curse of restoration. While the aristocracy had formerly governed for good or ill, and for more than a century without any sensible opposition, the crisis which it had now passed through revealed to it, like a flash of lightning in a dark night, the abyss which yawned before its feet. Was it any wonder that henceforward rancour always, and terror wherever they durst, characterized the government of the lords of the old nobility? that those who governed confronted as an united and compact party, with far more sternness and violence than hitherto, the non- governing multitude? that family-policy now prevailed once more, just as in the worst times of the patriciate, so that e. g. the four sons and (probably) the two nephews of Quintus Metellus--with a single exception persons utterly insignificant and some of them called to office on account of their very simplicity--attained within fifteen years (631-645) all of them to the consulship, and all with one exception also to triumphs--to say nothing of sons-in-law and so forth? that the more violent and cruel the bearing of any of their partisans towards the opposite party, he received the more signal honour, and every outrage and every infamy were pardoned in the genuine aristocrat? that the rulers and the ruled resembled two parties at war in every respect, save in the fact that in their warfare no international law was recognized? It was unhappily only too palpable that, if the old aristocracy beat the people with rods, this restored aristocracy chastised it with scorpions. It returned to power; but it returned neither wiser nor better. Never hitherto had the Roman aristocracy been so utterly deficient in men of statesmanly and military capacity, as it was during this epoch of restoration between the Gracchan and the Cinnan revolutions.

Marcus Aemilius Scaurus

A significant illustration of this is afforded by the chief of the senatorial party at this time, Marcus Aemilius Scaurus. The son of highly aristocratic but not wealthy parents, and thus compelled to make use of his far from mean talents, he raised himself to the consulship (639) and censorship (645), was long the chief of the senate and the political oracle of his order, and immortalized his name not only as an orator and author, but also as the originator of some of the principal public buildings executed in this century. But, if we look at him more closely, his greatly praised achievements amount merely to this much, that, as a general, he gained some cheap village triumphs in the Alps, and, as a statesman, won by his laws about voting and luxury some victories nearly as serious over the revolutionary spirit of the times. His real talent consisted in this, that, while he was quite as accessible and bribable as any other upright senator, he discerned with some cunning the moment when the matter began to be hazardous, and above all by virtue of his superior and venerable appearance acted the part of Fabricius before the public. In a military point of view, no doubt, we find some honourable exceptions of able officers belonging to the highest circles of the aristocracy; but the rule was, that the lords of quality, when they were to assume the command of armies, hastily read up from the Greek military manuals and the Roman annals as much as was required for holding a military conversation, and then, when in the field, acted most wisely by entrusting the real command to an officer of humble lineage but of tried capacity and tried discretion. In fact, if a couple of centuries earlier the senate resembled an assembly of kings, these their successors played not ill the part of princes. But the incapacity of these restored aristocrats was fully equalled by their political and moral worthlessness. If the state of religion, to which we shall revert, did not present a faithful reflection of the wild dissoluteness of this epoch, and if the external history of the period did not exhibit the utter depravity of the Roman nobles as one of its most essential elements, the horrible crimes, which came to light in rapid succession among the highest circles of Rome, would alone suffice to indicate their character.

Administration under the Restoration Social State of Italy

The administration, internal and external, was what was to be expected under such a government. The social ruin of Italy spread with alarming rapidity; since the aristocracy had given itself legal permission to buy out the small holders, and in its new arrogance allowed itself with growing frequency to drive them out, the farms disappeared like raindrops in the sea. That the economic oligarchy at least kept pace with the political, is shown by the opinion expressed about 650 by Lucius Marcius Philippus, a man of moderate democratic views, that there were among the whole burgesses hardly 2000 families of substantial means. A practical commentary on this state of things was once more furnished by the servile insurrections, which during the first years of the Cimbrian war broke out annually in Italy, e. g. at Nuceria, at Capua, and in the territory of Thurii. This last conspiracy was so important that the urban praetor had to march with a legion against it and yet overcame the insurrection not by force of arms, but only by insidious treachery. It was moreover a suspicious circumstance, that the insurrection was headed not by a slave, but by the Roman knight Titus Vettius, whom his debts had driven to the insane step of manumitting his slaves and declaring himself their king (650). The apprehensions of the government with reference to the accumulation of masses of slaves in Italy are shown by the measures of precaution respecting the gold- washings of Victumulae, which were carried on after 611 on account of the Roman government: the lessees were at first bound not to employ more than 5000 labourers, and subsequently the workings were totally stopped by decree of the senate. Under such a government as the present there was every reason in fact for fear, if, as was very possible, a Transalpine host should penetrate into Italy and summon the slaves, who were in great part of kindred lineage, to arms.

The Provinces Occupation of Cilicia

The provinces suffered still more in comparison. We shall have an idea of the condition of Sicily and Asia, if we endeavour to realize what would be the aspect of matters in the East Indies provided the English aristocracy were similar to the Roman aristocracy of that day. The legislation, which entrusted the mercantile class with control over the magistrates, compelled the latter to make common cause to a certain extent with the former, and to purchase for themselves unlimited liberty of plundering and protection from impeachment by unconditional indulgence towards the capitalists in the provinces. In addition to these official and semi-official robbers, freebooters and pirates pillaged all the countries of the Mediterranean. In the Asiatic waters more especially the buccaneers carried their outrages so far that even the Roman government found itself under the necessity in 652 of despatching to Cilicia a fleet, mainly composed of the vessels of the dependent mercantile cities, under the praetor Marcus Antonius, who was invested with proconsular powers. This fleet captured a number of corsair-vessels and destroyed some rock-strongholds and not only so, but the Romans even settled themselves permanently there, and in order to the suppression of piracy in its chief seat, the Rugged or western Cilicia occupied strong military positions--the first step towards the establishment of the province of Cilicia, which thenceforth appears among the Roman magistracies.(7) The design was commendable, and the scheme in itself was suitable for its purpose; only, the continuance and the increase of the evil of piracy in the Asiatic waters, and especiallyin Cilicia, unhappily showed with how inadequate means the pirates were combated from the newly-acquired position.

Revolt of the Slaves

But nowhere did the impotence and perversity of the Roman provincial administration come to light so conspicuously as in the insurrections of the slave proletariate, which seemed to have revived on their former footing simultaneously with the restoration of the aristocracy. These insurrections of the slaves swelling from revolts into wars-- which had emerged just about 620 as one, and that perhaps the proximate, cause of the Gracchan revolution--were renewed and repeated with dreary uniformity. Again, as thirty years before, a ferment pervaded the body of slaves throughout the Roman empire. We have already mentioned the Italian conspiracies. The miners in the Attic silver-mines rose in revolt, occupied the promontory of Sunium, and issuing thence pillaged for a length of time the surrounding country. Similar movements appeared at other places.

The Second Sicilian Slave-War

But the chief seat of these fearful commotions was once more Sicily with its plantations and its hordes of slaves brought thither from Asia Minor. It is significant of the greatness of the evil, that an attempt of the government to check the worst iniquities of the slaveholders was the immediate cause of the new insurrection. That the free proletarians in Sicily were little better than the slaves, had been shown by their attitude in the first insurrection;(8) after it was subdued, the Roman speculators took their revenge and reduced numbers of the free provincials into slavery. In consequence of a sharp enactment issued against this by the senate in 650, Publius Licinius Nerva, the governor of Sicily at the time, appointed a court for deciding on claims of freedom to sit in Syracuse. The court went earnestly to work; in a short time decision was given in eight hundred processes against the slave-owners, and the number of causes in dependence was daily on the increase. The terrified planters hastened to Syracuse, to compel the Roman governor to suspend such unparalleled administration of justice; Nerva was weak enough to let himself be terrified, and in harsh language informed the non-free persons requesting trial that they should forgo their troublesome demand for right and justice and should instantly return to those who called themselves their masters. Those who were thus dismissed, instead of doing as he bade them, formed a conspiracy and went to the mountains.

The governor was not prepared for military measures, and even the wretched militia of the island was not immediately at hand; so that he concluded an alliance with one of the best known captains of banditti in the island, and induced him by the promise of personal pardon to betray the revolted slaves into the hands of the Romans. He thus gained the mastery over this band. But another band of runaway slaves succeeded in defeating a division of the garrison of Enna (Castrogiovanni); and this first success procured for the insurgents-- what they especially needed--arms and a conflux of associates. The armour of their fallen or fugitive opponents furnished the first basis of their military organization, and the number of the insurgents soon swelled to many thousands. These Syrians in a foreign land already, like their predecessors, seemed to themselves not unworthy to be governed by kings, as were their countrymen at home; and-- parodying the trumpery king of their native land down to the very name--they placed the slave Salvius at their head as king Tryphon. In the district between Enna and Leontini (Lentini) where these bands had their head-quarters, the open country was wholly in the hands of the insurgents and Morgantia and other walled towns were already besieged by them, when the Roman governor with his hastily-collected Sicilian and Italian troops fell upon the slave-army in front of Morgantia. He occupied the undefended camp; but the slaves, although surprised, made a stand. In the combat that ensued the levy of the island not only gave way at the first onset, but, as the slaves allowed every one who threw down his arms to escape unhindered, the militia almost without exception embraced the good opportunity of taking their departure, and the Roman army completely dispersed. Had the slaves in Morgantia been willing to make common cause with their comrades before the gates, the town was lost; but they preferred to accept the gift of freedom in legal form from their masters, and by their valour helped them to save the town--whereupon the Roman governor declared the promise of liberty solemnly given to the slaves by the masters to be void in law, as having been illegally extorted.

Athenion

While the revolt thus spread after an alarming manner in the interior of the island, a second broke out on the west coast. It was headed by Athenion. He had formerly been, just like Cleon, a dreaded captain of banditti in his native country of Cilicia, and had been carried thence as a slave to Sicily. He secured, just as his predecessors had done, the adherence of the Greeks and Syrians especially by prophesyings and other edifying impostures; but skilled in war and sagacious as he was, he did not, like the other leaders, arm the whole mass that flocked to him, but formed out of the men able for warfare an organized army, while he assigned the remainder to peaceful employment. In consequence of his strict discipline, which repressed all vacillation and all insubordinate movement in his troops, and his gentle treatment of the peaceful inhabitants of the country and even of the captives, he gained rapid and great successes. The Romans were on this occasion disappointed in the hope that the two leaders would fall out; Athenion voluntarily submitted to the far less capable king Tryphon, and thus preserved unity among the insurgents. These soon ruled with virtually absolute power over the flat country, where the free proletarians again took part more or less openly with the slaves; the Roman authorities were not in a position to take the field against them, and had to rest content with protecting the towns, which were in the most lamentable plight, by means of the militia of Sicily and that of Africa brought over in all haste. The administration of justice was suspended over the whole island, and force was the only law. As no cultivator living in town ventured any longer beyond the gates, and no countryman ventured into the towns, the most fearful famine set in, and the town-population of this island which formerly fed Italy had to be supported by the Roman authorities sending supplies of grain. Moreover, conspiracies of the town- slaves everywhere threatened to break out within, while the insurgent armies lay before, the walls; even Messana was within a hair's breadth of being conquered by Athenion.

Aquillius

Difficult as it was for the government during the serious war with the Cimbri to place a second army in the field, it could not avoid sending in 651 an army of 14,000 Romans and Italians, not including the transmarine militia, under the praetor Lucius Lucullus to the island. The united slave-army was stationed in the mountains above Sciacca, and accepted the battle which Lucullus offered. The better military organization of the Romans gave them the victory; Athenion was left for dead on the field, Tryphon had to throw himself into the mountain-fortress of Triocala; the insurgents deliberated earnestly whether it was possible to continue the struggle longer. But the party, which was resolved to hold out to the last man, retained the upper hand; Athenion, who had been saved in a marvellous manner, reappeared among his troops and revived their sunken courage; above all Lucullus with incredible negligence took not the smallest step to follow up his victory; in fact, he is said to have intentionally disorganized the army and to have burned his field baggage, with a view to screen the total inefficacy of his administration and not to be cast into the shade by his successor. Whether this was true or not, his successor Gaius Servilius (652) obtained no better results; and both generals were afterwards criminally impeached and condemned for their conduct in office--which, however, was not at all a certain proof of their guilt. Athenion, who after the death of Tryphon (652) was invested with the sole command, stood victorious at the head of a considerable army, when in 653 Manius Aquillius, who had during the previous year distinguished himself under Marius in the war with the Teutones, was as consul and governor entrusted with the conduct of the war. After two years of hard conflicts--Aquillius is said to have fought in person with Athenion, and to have killed him in single combat--the Roman general at length put down the desperate resistance, and vanquished the insurgents in their last retreats by famine. The slaves on the island were prohibited from bearing arms and peace was again restored to it, or, in other words, its recent tormentors were relieved by those of former use and wont; in fact, the victor himself occupied a prominent place among the numerous and energetic robber-magistrates of this period. Any one who still required a proof of the internal quality of the government of the restored aristocracy might be referred to the origin and to the conduct of this second Sicilian slave-war, which, lasted for five years.

The Dependent States

But wherever the eye might turn throughout the wide sphere of Roman administration, the same causes and the same effects appeared. If the Sicilian slave-war showed how far the government was from being equal to even its simplest task of keeping in check the proletariate, contemporary events in Africa displayed the skill with which the Romans now governed the client-states. About the very time when the Sicilian slave-war broke out, there was exhibited before the eyes of the astonished world the spectacle of an unimportant client-prince able to carry out a fourteen years' usurpation and insurrection against the mighty republic which had shattered the kingdoms of Macedonia and Asia with one blow of its weighty arm-- and that not by means of arms, but through the pitiful character of its rulers.

Numidia Jugurtha

The kingdom of Numidia stretched from the river Molochath to the great Syrtis,(9) bordering on the one side with the Mauretanian kingdom of Tingis (the modern Morocco) and on the other with Cyrene and Egypt, and surrounding on the west, south, and east the narrow district of coast which formed the Roman province of Africa. In addition to the old possessions of the Numidian chiefs, it embraced by far the greatest portion of the territory which Carthage had possessed in Africa during the times of its prosperity--including several important Old-Phoenician cities, such as Hippo Regius (Bona) and Great Leptis (Lebidah)--altogether the largest and best part of the rich seaboard of northern Africa. Numidia was beyond question, next to Egypt, the most considerable of all the Roman client-states. After the death of Massinissa (605), Scipio had divided the sovereign functions of that prince among his three sons, the kings Micipsa, Gulussa, and Mastanabal, in such a way that the firstborn obtained the residency and the state-chest, the second the charge of war, and the third the administration of justice.(10) Now after the death of his two brothers Massinissa's eldest son, Micipsa,(11) reigned alone, a feeble peaceful old man, who was fond of occupying himself more with the study of Greek philosophy than with affairs of state. As his sons were not yet grown up, the reins of government were practically held by an illegitimate nephew of the king, the prince Jugurtha. Jugurtha was no unworthy grandson of Massinissa. He was a handsome man and a skilled and courageous rider and hunter; his countrymen held him in high honour as a clear and sagacious administrator, and he had displayed his military ability as leader of the Numidian contingent before Numantia under the eyes of Scipio. His position in the kingdom, and the influence which he possessed with the Roman government by means of his numerous friends and war-comrades, made it appear to king Micipsa advisable to adopt him (634), and to arrange in his testament that his own two elder sons Adherbal and Hiempsal, and his adopted son Jugurtha along with them, should jointly inherit and govern the kingdom, just as he himself had done with his two brothers. For greater security this arrangement was placed under the guarantee of the Roman government.

The War for the Numidian Succession

Soon afterwards, in 636, king Micipsa died. The testament came into force: but the two sons of Micipsa--the vehement Hiempsal still more than his weak elder brother--soon came into so violent collision with their cousin whom they looked on as an intruder into the legitimate line of succession, that the idea of a joint reign of the three kings had to be abandoned. An attempt was made to carry out a division of the heritage; but the quarrelling kings could not agree as to their quotas of land and treasure, and the protecting power, to which in this case the decisive word by right belonged, gave itself, as usual, no concern about this affair. A rupture took place; Adherbal and Hiempsal were disposed to characterize their father's testament as surreptitious and altogether to dispute Jugurtha's right of joint inheritance, while on the other hand Jugurtha came forward as a pretender to the whole kingdom. While the discussions as to the partition were still going on, Hiempsal was made away with by hired assassins; then a civil war arose between Adherbal and Jugurtha, in which all Numidia took part. With his less numerous but better disciplined and better led troops Jugurtha conquered, and seized the whole territory of the kingdom, subjecting the chiefs who adhered to his cousin to the most cruel persecution. Adherbal escaped to the Roman province and proceeded to Rome to make his complaint there. Jugurtha had expected this, and had made his arrangements to meet the threatened intervention. In the camp before Numantia he had learned more from Rome than Roman tactics; the Numidian prince, introduced to the circles of the Roman aristocracy, had at the same time been initiated into the intrigues of Roman coteries, and had studied at the fountain-head what might be expected from Roman nobles. Even then, sixteen years before Micipsa's death, he had entered into disloyal negotiations as to the Numidian succession with Roman comrades of rank, and Scipio had been under the necessity of gravely reminding him that it was becoming in foreign princes to be on terms of friendship with the Roman state rather than with individual Roman citizens. The envoys of Jugurtha appeared in Rome, furnished with something more than words: that they had chosen the right means of diplomatic persuasion, was shown by the result. The most zealous champions of Adherbal's just title were with incredible rapidity convinced that Hiempsal had been put to death by his subjects on account of his cruelty, and that the originator of the war as to the succession was not Jugurtha, but Adherbal. Even the leading men in the senate were shocked at the scandal; Marcus Scaurus sought to check it, but in vain. The senate passed over what had taken place in silence, and ordained that the two surviving testamentary heirs should have the kingdom equally divided between them, and that, for the prevention of fresh quarrels, the division should be undertaken by a commission of the senate. This was done: the consular Lucius Opimius, well known through his services in setting aside the revolution, had embraced the opportunity of gathering the reward of his patriotism, and had got himself placed at the head of the commission. The division turned out thoroughly in favour of Jugurtha, and not to the disadvantage of the commissioners; Cirta (Constantine) the capital with its port of Rusicade (Philippeville) was no doubt given to Adherbal, but by that very arrangement the portion which fell to him was the eastern part of the kingdom consisting almost wholly of sandy deserts, while Jugurtha obtained the fertile and populous western half (what was afterwards Mauretania Caesariensis and Sitifensis).

Siege of Cirta

This was bad; but matters soon became worse. In order to be able under the semblance of self-defence to defraud Adherbal of his portion, Jugurtha provoked him to war; but when the weak man, rendered wiser by experience, allowed Jugurtha's horsemen to ravage his territory unhindered and contented himself with lodging complaints at Rome, Jugurtha, impatient of these ceremonies, began the war even without pretext. Adherbal was totally defeated in the region of the modern Philippeville, and threw himself into his capital of Cirta in the immediate vicinity. While the siege was in progress, and Jugurtha's troops were daily skirmishing with the numerous Italians who were settled in Cirta and who took a more vigorous part in the defence of the city than the Africans themselves, the commission despatched by the Roman senate on Adherbal's first complaint made its appearance; composed, of course, of young inexperienced men, such as the government of those times regularly employed in the ordinary missions of the state. The envoys demanded that Jugurtha should allow them as deputed by the protecting power to Adherbal to enter the city, and generally that he should suspend hostilities and accept their mediation. Jugurtha summarily rejected both demands, and the envoys hastily returned home--like boys, as they were--to report to the fathers of the city. The fathers listened to the report, and allowed their countrymen in Cirta just to fight on as long as they pleased. It was not till, in the fifth month of the siege, a messenger of Adherbal stole through the entrenchments of the enemy and a letter of the king full of the most urgent entreaties reached the senate, that the latter roused itself and actually adopted a resolution--not to declare war as the minority demanded but to send a new embassy--an embassy, however, headed by Marcus Scaurus, the great conqueror of the Taurisci and the freedmen, the imposing hero of the aristocracy, whose mere appearance would suffice to bring the refractory king to a different mind. In fact Jugurtha appeared, as he was bidden, at Utica to discuss the matter with Scaurus; endless debates were held; when at length the conference was concluded, not the slightest result had been obtained. The embassy returned to Rome without having declared war, and the king went off again to the siege of Cirta. Adherbal found himself reduced to extremities and despaired of Roman support; the Italians in Cirta moreover, weary of the siege and firmly relying for their own safety on the terror of the Roman name, urged a surrender. So the town capitulated. Jugurtha ordered his adopted brother to be executed amid cruel tortures, and all the adult male population of the town, Africans as well as Italians, to be put to the sword (642).

Roman Intervention Treaty between Rome and Numidia

A cry of indignation rose throughout Italy. The minority in the senate itself and every one out of the senate unanimously condemned the government, with whom the honour and interest of the country seemed mere commodities for sale; loudest of all was the outcry of the mercantile class, which was most directly affected by the sacrifice of the Roman and Italian merchants at Cirta. It is true that the majority of the senate still even now struggled; they appealed to the class-interests of the aristocracy, and set in motion all the contrivances of collegiate procrastination, with a view to preserve still longer the peace which they loved. But when Gaius Memmius, designated as tribune of the people for next year, an active and eloquent man, brought the matter publicly forward and threatened in his capacity of tribune to call the worst offenders to judicial account, the senate permitted war to be declared against Jugurtha (642-3). The step seemed taken in earnest. The envoys of Jugurtha were dismissed from Italy without being admitted to an audience; the new consul Lucius Calpurnius Bestia, who was distinguished, among the members of his order at least, by judgment and activity, prosecuted the warlike preparations with energy; Marcus Scaurus himself took the post of a commander in the African army. In a short time a Roman army was on African ground, and marching upward along the Bagradas (Mejerdah) advanced into the Numidian kingdom, where the towns most remote from the seat of the royal power, such as Great Leptis, already voluntarily sent in their submission, while Bocchus king of Mauretania, although his daughter was married to Jugurtha, offered friendship and alliance to the Romans. Jugurtha himself lost courage, and sent envoys to the Roman headquarters to request an armistice. The end of the contest seemed near, and came still more rapidly than was expected. The treaty with Bocchus broke down, because the king, unacquainted with Roman customs, had conceived that he should be able to conclude a treaty so advantageous for the Romans without any gratuity, and therefore had neglected to furnish his envoys with the usual market price of Roman alliances. Jugurtha at all events knew Roman institutions better, and had not omitted to support his proposals for an armistice by a due accompaniment of money; but he too was deceived. After the first negotiations it turned out that not an armistice merely but a peace was purchaseable at the Roman head-quarters. The royal treasury was still well filled with the savings of Massinissa; the transaction was soon settled. The treaty was concluded, after it had been for the sake of form submitted to a council of war whose consent was procured after an irregular and extremely summary discussion. Jugurtha submitted at discretion; but the victor was merciful and gave him back his kingdom undiminished, in consideration of his paying a moderate fine and delivering up the Roman deserters and the war elephants (643); the greater part of the latter the king afterwards repurchased by bargaining with the individual Roman commandants and officers.

On the news of this peace the storm once more broke forth in Rome. Everybody knew how the peace had been brought about; even Scaurus was evidently open to bribery, only at a price higher than the ordinary senatorial average. The legal validity of the peace was seriously assailed in the senate; Gaius Memmius declared that the king, if he had really submitted unconditionally, could not refuse to appear in Rome, and that he should accordingly be summoned before them, with the view of ascertaining how the matter actually stood as to the thoroughly irregular negotiations for peace by hearing both the contracting parties. They yielded to the inconvenient demand: but at the same time granted a safe-conduct to the king inconsistently with the law, for he came not as an enemy, but as one who had made his submission. Thereupon the king actually appeared at Rome and presented himself to be heard before the assembled people, which was with difficulty induced to respect the safe-conduct and to refrain from tearing in pieces on the spot the murderer of the Italians at Cirta. But scarcely had Gaius Memmius addressed his first question to the king, when one of his colleagues interfered in virtue of his veto and enjoined the king to be silent. Here too African gold was more powerful than the will of the sovereign people and of its supreme magistrates. Meanwhile the discussions respecting the validity of the peace so concluded went on in the senate, and the new consul Spurius Postumius Albinus zealously supported the proposal to cancel it, in the expectation that in that case the chief command in Africa would devolve on him. This induced Massiva, a grandson of Massinissa living in Rome, to assert before the senate his claims to the vacant Numidian kingdom; upon which Bomilcar, one of the confidants of king Jugurtha, doubtless under his instructions made away with the rival of his master by assassination, and, when he was prosecuted on account of it, escaped with Jugurtha's aid from Rome.

Cancelling of the Treaty Declaration of War Capitulation of the Romans Second Peace

This new outrage perpetrated under the eyes of the Roman government was at least so far effectual, that the senate now cancelled the peace and dismissed the king from the city (winter of 643-644). The war was accordingly resumed, and the consul Spurius Albinus was invested with the command (644). But the African army down to its lowest ranks was in a state of disorganization corresponding to such a political and military superintendence. Not only had discipline ceased and the spoliation of Numidian townships and even of the Roman provincial territory become during the suspension of hostilities the chief business of the Roman soldiery, but not a few officers and soldiers had as well as their generals entered into secret understanding with the enemy. It is easy to see that such an army could do nothing in the field; and if Jugurtha on this occasion bribed the Roman general into inaction, as was afterwards judicially asserted against the latter, he did in truth what was superfluous. Spurius Albinus therefore contented himself with doing nothing. On the other hand his brother who after his departure assumed the interim command--the equally foolhardy and incapable Aulus Postumius-- in the middle of winter fell on the idea of seizing by a bold coup de main the treasures of the king, which were kept in the town of Suthul (afterwards Calama, now Guelma) difficult of access and still more difficult of conquest. The army set out thither and reached the town; but the siege was unsuccessful and without prospect of result, and, when the king who had remained for a time with his troops in front of the town went into the desert, the Roman general preferred to pursue him. This was precisely what Jugurtha intended in a nocturnal assault, which was favoured by the difficulties of the ground and the secret understanding which Jugurtha had with some in the Roman army, the Numidians captured the Roman camp, and drove the Romans, many of whom were unarmed, before them in the most complete and disgraceful rout. The consequence was a capitulation, the terms of which--the marching off of the Roman army under the yoke, the immediate evacuation of the whole Numidian territory, and the renewal of the treaty cancelled by the senate--were dictated by Jugurtha and accepted by the Romans (in the beginning of 645).

Dissatisfaction in the Capital

This was too much to be borne. While the Africans were exulting and the prospect--thus suddenly opened up--of such an overthrow of the alien domination as had been reckoned scarcely possible was bringing numerous tribes of the free and half-free inhabitants of the desert to the standards of the victorious king, public opinion in Italy was vehemently aroused against the equally corrupt and pernicious governing aristocracy, and broke out in a storm of prosecutions which, fostered by the exasperation of the mercantile class, swept away a succession of victims from the highest circles of the nobility. On the proposal of the tribune of the people Gaius Mamilius Limetanus, in spite of the timid attempts of the senate to avert the threatened punishment, an extraordinary jury-commission was appointed to investigate the high treason that had occurred in connection with the question of the Numidian succession; and its sentences sent the two former commanders- in-chief Gaius Bestia and Spurius Albinus as well as Lucius Opimius, the head of the first African commission and the executioner withal of Gaius Gracchus, along with numerous other less notable men of the government party, guilty and innocent, into exile. That these prosecutions, however, were only intended to appease the excitement of public opinion, in the capitalist circles more especially, by the sacrifice of some of the persons most compromised, and that there was in them not the slightest trace of a rising of popular indignation against the government itself, void as it was of right and honour, is shown very clearly by the fact that no one ventured to attack the guiltiest of the guilty, the prudent and powerful Scaurus; on the contrary he was about this very time elected censor and also, incredible as it may seem, chosen as one of the presidents of the extraordinary commission of treason. Still less was any attempt even made to interfere with the functions of the government, and it was left solely to the senate to put an end to the Numidian scandal in a manner as gentle as possible for the aristocracy; for that it was time to do so, even the most aristocratic aristocrat probably began to perceive.

Cancelling of the Second Treaty Metellus Appointed to the Command Renewal of the War

The senate in the first place cancelled the second treaty of peace-- to surrender to the enemy the commander who had concluded it, as was done some thirty years before, seemed according to the new ideas of the sanctity of treaties no longer necessary--and determined, this time in all earnest, to renew the war. The supreme command in Africa was entrusted, as was natural, to an aristocrat, but yet to one of the few men of quality who in a military and moral point of view were equal to the task. The choice fell on Quintus Metellus. He was, like the whole powerful family to which he belonged, in principle a rigid and unscrupulous aristocrat; as a magistrate, he, no doubt, reckoned it honourable to hire assassins for the good of the state and would presumably have ridiculed the act of Fabricius towards Pyrrhus as unpractical knight errantry, but he was an inflexible administrator accessible neither to fear nor to corruption, and a judicious and experienced warrior. In this respect he was so far free from the prejudices of his order that he selected as his lieutenants not men of rank, but the excellent officer Publius Rutilius Rufus, who was esteemed in military circles for his exemplary discipline and as the author of an altered and improved system of drill, and the brave Latin farmer's son Gaius Marius, who had risen from the pike. Attended by these and other able officers, Metellus presented himself in the course of 645 as consul and commander-in-chief to the African army, which he found in such disorder that the generals had not hitherto ventured to lead it into the enemy's territory and it was formidable to none save the unhappy inhabitants of the Roman province. It was sternly and speedily reorganized, and in the spring of 646.(12)

Metellus led it over the Numidian frontier. When Jugurtha perceived the altered state of things, he gave himself up as lost, and, before the struggle began, made earnest proposals for an accommodation, requesting ultimately nothing more than a guarantee for his life. Metellus, however, was resolved and perhaps even instructed not to terminate the war except with the unconditional subjugation and execution of the daring client-prince; which was in fact the only issue that could satisfy the Romans. Jugurtha since the victory over Albinus was regarded as the deliverer of Libya from the rule of the hated foreigners; unscrupulous and cunning as he was, and unwieldy as was the Roman government, he might at any time even after a peace rekindle the war in his native country; tranquillity would not be secured, and the removal of the African army would not be possible, until king Jugurtha should cease to exist. Officially Metellus gave evasive answers to the proposals of the king; secretly he instigated the envoys to deliver their master living or dead to the Romans. But, when the Roman general undertook to compete with the African in the field of assassination, he there met his master; Jugurtha saw through the plan, and, when he could not do otherwise, prepared for a desperate resistance.

Battle on the Muthul