One effort he made to avert the struggle. He induced Fulvius to send his young son to the Senate to ask for terms. The messenger returned with the Senate"s reply that they must lay down their arms, and the two leaders must come and answer for their acts. Caius was ready to go. But Fulvius was too deeply committed, and sent his son back again, upon which Opimius seized him, and at once marched to the Aventine.
There was a fight, in which Fulvius was beaten, and with another son fled and hid himself in a bath or workshop. His pursuers threatened to burn all that quarter if he was not given up; so the man who had admitted him told another man to betray him, and father and son were slain.
[Sidenote: Murder of Caius.] Meanwhile Caius, who had neither armed nor fought, was about to kill himself in the temple of Diana, when his two friends implored him to try and save himself for happier times. Then it is said he invoked a curse on the people for their ingrat.i.tude, and fled across the Tiber. He was nearly overtaken; but his two staunch friends, Pomponius and Laetorius, gave their lives for their leader--Pomponius at the Porta Trigemina below the Aventine, Laetorius in guarding the bridge which was the scene of the feat of Horatius Cocles. As Caius pa.s.sed people cheered him on, as if it was a race in the games. He called for help, but no one helped him--for a horse, but there was none at hand. One slave still kept up with him, named Philocrates or Euporus. Hard pressed by their pursuers the two entered the grove of Furina, and there the slave first slew Caius and then himself. A wretch named Septimuleius cut off the head of Gracchus; for a proclamation had been made that whosoever brought the heads of the two leaders should receive their weight in gold.
Septimuleius, it is said, took out the brains and filled the cavity with lead; but if he cheated Opimius, Opimius in his turn cheated those who brought the head of Fulvius, for as they were of the lower cla.s.s he would pay them nothing. The story may be false; but Opimius was subsequently convicted of selling his country"s interests to Jugurtha for money, so that with equal likelihood it may be true. In the fight and afterwards he put to death 3,000 men, many of whom were innocent, but whom he would not allow to speak in their defence. The houses of Caius and Fulvius were sacked, and the property of the slain was confiscated. Then the city was purified, and the ferocious knave Opimius raised a temple to Concord, on which one night was found written "The work of Discord makes the temple of Concord." That year there was a famous vintage, and nearly two centuries afterwards there was some wine which had been made at the time that Caius Gracchus died. The wine, says the elder Pliny, tasted like and had the consistency of bitterish honey. But the memory of the great tribune has lasted longer than the wine, and will be honoured for ever by all those who revere patriotism and admire genius. He for whom at the last extremity friend and slave give their lives does not fall ingloriously. Even for a life so n.o.ble such deaths are a sufficient crown.
[Sidenote: The mother of the Gracchi.] The child of Caius did not long survive him. The son of Tiberius died while a boy. Only Cornelia, the worthy mother of the heroic brothers, remained. She could (according to the purport of Plutarch"s pathetic narrative) speak of them without a sigh or tear; and those who concluded from this that her mind was clouded by age or misfortune, were too dull themselves to comprehend how a n.o.ble nature and n.o.ble training can support sorrow, for though fate may often frustrate virtue, yet "to bear is to conquer our fate."
[Sidenote: Position of the n.o.bles after the murder. Lex Maria.] The n.o.bles no doubt thought that, having got rid of Gracchus, they had renewed their own lease of power. But they had only placed themselves at the mercy of meaner men. The murderous scenes just related happened in 121 B.C., and in 119 we read of a Lex Maria, the first law, that is to say, promulgated by the destined scourge of the Roman aristocracy.
Every Roman could vote, and voted by ballot, and was eligible to every office. The first law of Marius was to protect voters from the solicitations of candidates for office. It is significant that the n.o.bles opposed it, though in the end it was carried. Stealthy intrigue was now their safest weapon, but their power was tottering to its fall. Too jealous of each other to submit to the supremacy of one, it only remained for them to be overthrown by some leader of the popular party, and the Republic was no more. Yet, as if smitten by judicial blindness, they proceeded to hasten on their own ruin by reactionary provocations to their opponents. [Sidenote: Gracchan laws remain in force.] They dared not interfere with the corn law of Caius, for now that every man had a vote, which he could give by ballot, they were dependent on the suffrages of the mob. Neither dared they till seventeen years later make an attempt to interfere with the selection of the judices from the equestrian order, and even then the attempt failed. The scheme of taxation in the province of Asia was also left untouched. But what they dared to do they did. They prosecuted the adherents of Gracchus. They recalled Popillius from exile. When Opimius was arraigned for "perduellio," or misuse of his official power to compa.s.s the death of a citizen, they procured his acquittal.
But when Carbo was accused of the same crime, they remembered that he had been a partisan of Tiberius, though since a renegade, and would not help him. So while Opimius got off, the champion of Opimius was driven to commit suicide--a fitting close to a contemptible career.
[Sidenote: Reactionary legislation.] But they soon a.s.sailed measures as well as men. The Lex Baebia appears to have secured those who had actually established themselves at Carthage in their allotments; but the Senate annulled the colonies which Caius had planned in Italy, and, with one exception, Neptunia, broke up those already settled.
[Sidenote: The agrarian law annulled.] Then by three successive enactments it got rid of the agrarian law, and plunged Italy again into the decline from which by the help of that law she was emerging.
1. The occupiers were allowed again to sell their land. Tiberius had expressly forbidden this, and now the rich at once began to buy out the small owners, whom they often evicted by means more or less foul. 2. A tribune named Borius, or Thorius, prohibited any further distribution of land, thus knocking on the head the permanent commission. These two laws were tantamount to handing over to the rich in the city and the country the greater part of the public land, giving them a legal t.i.tle to it instead of the possession on sufferance with which the Gracchi had interfered. The mouths of the farmers were stopped by the pernicious but tempting permission to sell their land. The people were cajoled by the vectigalia, which Drusus had abolished, being reimposed, and the proceeds divided among them. 3. Encouraged by the general acquiescence in these insidious aggressions they induced a tribune, whose name is conjectured to have been C. Baebius, to do away with the vectigalia altogether. [Sidenote: Lex Thoria.] The date of this law, usually called the Thorian law, was 111 B.C. The real Thorian law was probably carried in 118 B.C. Between these dates the rich would have been getting back the land from the poor occupiers, and so, when the Senate abolished the vectigalia, it was really pocketing them, and once for all and by a legal form turning the public into private land. This law, which is here called the Baebian law, Cicero ascribes to Spurius Thorius, who, he says, freed the land from the vectigal. But as Appian says that Spurius Borius imposed the vectigal, it is a.s.sumed that Cicero confused names, that the Spurius Borius of Appian was Spurius Thorius, and that the tribune whom Cicero calls Thorius was really quite another person.
However that may be, the law would benefit the rich, because the rich would be owners of the land. Certain provisions of it were directly meant to prevent opposition in the country. For if many of the poor farmers would grumble at being ousted from their land, the land which had been specially a.s.signed to Latin towns, and of which Tiberius Gracchus had threatened to dispossess them, was left in the same state as before his legislation; that is to say, the Senate did not give the occupiers an indefeasible t.i.tle, but it did not meddle with them. Moreover, it amply indemnified the Socii and Latini who had surrendered land for the colonies of Caius, while some compensation was given to poor farmers by a clause, that in future a man might only graze ten large and fifty smaller beasts on the pastures of what still remained public land. By this law the jurisdiction over land which had been a.s.signed by the triumvirs was given to the consuls, censors, and praetors, the jurisdiction over cases in which disputes with the publicani required settlement being granted to the consuls, praetors, and, as such cases would occur chiefly in the provinces which were mostly under propraetors, to propraetors also.
[Sidenote: Pernicious results of the reaction.] The results of this reactionary legislation are partly summed up by Appian, when he attributes to it a dearth of citizens, soldiers, and revenue. To our eyes its effects are clearer still. Slave labour and slave-discontent, "latifundia," decrease of population, depreciation of the land, received a fresh impetus, and the triumphant optimates pushed the State step by step further down the road to ruin. For the end for which they struggled was not the good of Italy, much less of the world, but the supremacy of Rome in Italy, and of themselves in Rome.
Wealth and office were shared by an ever narrowing circle. Ten years after the pa.s.sing of the Baebian law, it was said that among all the citizens there were only 2,000 wealthy families. And between the years 123 and 109 B.C. four sons and probably two nephews of Quintus Metellus gained the consulship, five of the six gained triumphs, and one was censor, while he himself had filled all the highest offices of the State. Thus, as Sall.u.s.t says, the n.o.bles pa.s.sed on the chief dignities from hand to hand.
There must have been many of the Gracchan party, now left without a head, who burned for deliverance from such despicable masters. But they were for the time disorganized and cowed. [Sidenote: Caius Marius.] There was one man whom Scipio Aemilia.n.u.s was said to have pointed out in the Numantine war as capable, if he himself died, of taking his place; and the rough soldier had already come forward as a politician, on the one hand checking the optimates by protecting the secrecy and efficiency of the ballot, and on the other defying the mob by opposing a distribution of corn; but for the present no one could tell how far he would or could go, and though he had already been made praetor, the Metelli could as yet afford to despise him. The death of Caius prolonged the Senate"s misrule for twenty years. Twenty years of shame at home and abroad--the turpitude of the Jugurthine war--a second and more stubborn slave revolt in Sicily--the apparition of the Northern hordes inflicting disaster after disaster upon the Roman armies, which in 105 B.C. culminated in another and more appalling Cannae--these things had yet to come about before the cup of the Senate"s infamy was full, and before those who had drawn the sword against the Gracchi perished by the sword of Marius, impotent, unpitied, and despised.
CHAPTER IV.
THE JUGURTHINE WAR.
[Sidenote: Attalus of Pergamus.] Attalus III., the last of that supple dynasty which had managed to thrive on the jealous and often treacherous patronage of Rome, left his dominions at his death to the Republic. He had begun his reign by ma.s.sacring all his father"s friends and their families, and ended it as an amateur gardener and dilettante modeller in wax; so perhaps the malice of insanity had something to do with the bequest, if indeed it was not a forgery.
Aristonicus, a natural son of a previous king, Eumenes II., set it at naught and aspired to the throne.
[Sidenote: Aristonicus usurps the kingdom of Pergamus.] Attalus died in 133, the year of the tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus, when Scipio was besieging Numantia, and the first slave revolt was raging in Sicily. The Romans had their hands full, and Aristonicus might have so established himself as to give them trouble, had not some of the Asiatic cities headed by Ephesus, and aided by the kings of Cappadocia and Bithynia, opposed him. He seized Leucae (the modern Lefke) and was expelled by the Ephesians. But when the Senate found time to send commissioners, he was already in possession of Thyatira, Apollonia, Myndus, Colophon, and Samos. Blossius, the friend of Gracchus, had come to him, and the civil strife at Rome must have raised his hopes. [Sidenote: Conduct of Cra.s.sus, ill.u.s.trating Roman rule in the province.] But in the year 131 P. Licinius Cra.s.sus Mucia.n.u.s, the father-in-law of Caius Gracchus, was consul, and was sent to Asia. He was Pontifex Maximus, rich, high-born, eloquent, and of great legal knowledge; and from his intimacy with the Gracchi and Scipio he must have been an unusually favourable specimen of the aristocrat of the day. And this is what he did in Asia. He was going to besiege Leucae, and having seen two pieces of timber at Elaea, sent for the larger of them to make a battering ram. The builder, who was the chief magistrate of the town, sent him the smaller piece as being the most suitable, and Cra.s.sus had him stripped and scourged. Next year he was surprised by the enemy near Leucae. Apparently he could have got off if he had not been laden with his collections in Asia, to procure which he had intrigued to prevent his colleague Flaccus getting that province. Unable to escape, he provoked his captor to kill him by thrusting a stick into his eye. His death was a striking comment on the Senate"s government. Cruelty and culture, personal bravery and.
incompetence--such an alloy was now the best metal which its most respectable representatives could supply.
[Sidenote: End of Aristonicus and settlement of the kingdom.]
Aristonicus was now the more formidable because he had roused the slaves, among whom the spirit of revolt, in sympathy with the rest of their kind throughout the Roman world, was then working. But in the year 130 M. Perperna surprised him, and carried him to Rome. Blossius committed suicide. The pretender was strangled in prison. Part of his territory was given to the kings who had helped the consul, one of whom was the father of the great Mithridates. Phrygia was the share a.s.signed to him; but the Senate took it back from his successor, saying that the consul Aquillius had been bribed to give it. The consul may have been base or the Senate mean, or, what is more probable, the baseness of the one was used as a welcome plea by the other"s meanness. The European part was added to the province of Macedonia. The Lycian confederacy received Telmissus. The rest was formed into a province, which was called Asia--the name being at once an incentive to and a nucleus for future annexation. Such a nucleus they already possessed in the province of Africa, and there also war was kindled by the ambition of a b.a.s.t.a.r.d.
[Sidenote: Jugurtha.] Jugurtha was the illegitimate son of Mastanabal, Micipsa"s brother. He had served at Numantia under Scipio, along with his future conqueror Marius. There he had begun to intrigue with influential Romans for the succession to the Numidian kingdom, and had been rebuked by Scipio, who told him he should cultivate the friendship, not of individual Romans, but of the State. But in Jugurtha"s heart a n.o.ble sentiment found no echo. Brave, treacherous, restless, an able commander, a crafty politician, adroit in discerning and profiting by other men"s bad qualities, wading to the throne through the blood of three kinsmen, he in some respects resembles Shakspeare"s Richard III.,--his "prime of manhood daring, bold, and venturous," his "age confirmed, proud, subtle, sly, and b.l.o.o.d.y."
[Sidenote: Micipsa"s will.] Micipsa had shared the kingdom with his two brothers, who died before him; and as this, which was Scipio"s arrangement, had not worked badly in his own case, he in his turn left his kingdom between Adherbal, Hiempsal, and Jugurtha. Adherbal was weak and pusillanimous, Hiempsal hot-tempered and rash. Jugurtha, ten or fifteen years older than either, was the favourite of the nation, his handsome, martial figure and his reputation as a soldier according with the notions of a race of riders as to what a king should be.
Hiempsal soon provoked him by refusing to yield the place of honour to him at their first meeting; and when Jugurtha said that Micipsa"s acts during the last five years of his life should be held as null because of his impaired faculties, Hiempsal retorted that he agreed with him, for it was within three years that he had adopted Jugurtha. [Sidenote: Jugurtha gets rid of Hiempsal.] Hiempsal went to a town called Thirmida, to the house of a man who had been in Jugurtha"s service.
This man Jugurtha bribed to procure a model of the town keys, which were taken to Hiempsal each evening. Then his men, getting into Thirmida one night, cut off Hiempsal"s head and took it to their master. He then proceeded to seize town after town; all the best warriors rallied to his standard, and in a pitched battle he defeated Adherbal, who fled to Rome, whither he had previously sent amba.s.sadors imploring aid. Jugurtha also sent envoys with plenty of money, to be given first to his old comrades, and then to men likely to be useful.
At once the indignation which the wrongs of the brothers had roused at Rome cooled down. [Sidenote: M. Aemilius Scaurus.] But M. Aemilius Scaurus, the chief of the aristocracy, seems to have been bidding for a higher price than was at first offered him, and by his influence ten commissioners were appointed to divide the kingdom. Scaurus had in his youth thought of becoming a money-lender, a trade in which he would certainly have excelled; and he may very likely have hoped to make something out of the commission, as the exemplary Opimius, murderer of Caius Gracchus, did. [Sidenote: Jugurtha bribes the commissioners.]
This man, whom Cicero extols as a most excellent citizen, had opposed Jugurtha at Rome but being in consequence treated by the king in Numidia with marked deference, joined the majority of his colleagues in swallowing the bribes offered to them. So Adherbal received the eastern half which, though it contained the capital Cirta and better harbours and towns, consisted mostly of barren sand, while the more fertile portion was a.s.signed to his rival.
[Sidenote: Jugurtha a.s.sails Adherbal, who appeals to the Senate.] This took place in the year 117 B.C. Scarcely had the commissioners left the province when the successful villain again took up arms. Adherbal, after much long-suffering and sending a complaint to Rome, was driven to do the same in self-defence. But he was defeated between Cirta and the sea, and would have been taken in Cirta had not the colony of Italians resident there beaten off the hors.e.m.e.n in pursuit. [Sidenote: A second commission, hoaxed or bribed by Jugurtha.] Meanwhile Adherbal"s message had reached Rome, and the Senate, with its high sense of responsibility, sent ten young men to Numidia as adjudicators. Perhaps, indeed, it was not mere carelessness which sent these young hopefuls to the best school of bribery in the world. They were bidden to insist simply on the war ceasing, and the two kings settling their disputes by law. And yet the news of the battle and the siege of Cirta had reached Rome. Jugurtha came to them, and said that his merits had won Scipio"s approval, and that, conscious of right, he could not submit to wrong; he then gravely charged Adherbal with plotting against his life, and promised to send amba.s.sadors to Rome.
Then the ten young men without even seeing Adherbal, left Africa, not we may conjecture so lightly laden as they came there.
The town of Cirta stood on the promontory of a peninsula formed by a loop of the river Ampsaga, and was almost impregnable. Modern writers represent it as a square spur, thrust out into a gorge which runs between two mountain-ranges, this gorge being spanned by a bridge at one corner of the square. The town, now known as Constantina, and distant 48 miles from the sea and 200 from Algiers, has been described as occupying a bold and commanding situation on a steep, rocky hill, with the river Rummel flowing on three sides of its base, the country around being a high terrace between the chains of the maritime and central Atlas. [Sidenote: Adherbal blockaded in Cirta.] Such being the strength of the place, Jugurtha could only hope to reduce it by blockade, and it was only after four months that two of Adherbal"s men got out and carried a piteous appeal from their master to the Senate, adjuring them, not indeed to give him back his kingdom, but to save his life. [Sidenote: A third commission.] Some of the Senate were for sending an army to Africa at once, but in those days honest men were always in the minority, and three commissioners were sent instead--Scaurus, the man who had so lively an appreciation of his own value, at their head. [Sidenote: Jugurtha is admonished by it.]
Jugurtha, after a desperate attempt to storm Cirta before they arrived, came to them at Utica, where he was admonished at great length. Then this precious trio left Africa, as the ten young men had done; and the surrender of Cirta followed, either because despair led its defenders to hope that submission, as it would save the enemy trouble, might conciliate him, or perhaps because water or food ran short. [Sidenote: Cirta taken and Adherbal murdered.] Jugurtha immediately tortured Adherbal to death, and put every Numidian and Italian in the place to the sword.
[Sidenote: Genuine indignation at Rome.] Then at last a thrill of genuine anger went through Rome. The honour of the State had been sorely wounded, but gold had been thus far a pleasant salve. Now, however, the equites were touched in their hearts at the fate probably of some of their own kinsmen, and almost certainly in an even more sensitive part--their purses. For no doubt there were commercial relations between the Italian community at Cirta and the Roman merchants, and here their gains were confiscated at one stroke by a savage. The senators, on the other hand, who had taken Numidian money, tried to quash discussion, and would have succeeded if the tribune, Caius Memmius, had not overawed them by his harangues. [Sidenote: War declared. Bestia sails to Africa.] Fresh envoys, who had been sent by Jugurtha with a fresh bribery fund, were ordered to leave Italy in ten days; and Bestia sailed for Africa, taking with him as his second in command Scaurus, who felt, no doubt, that a patriot was at last rewarded. [Sidenote: Jugurtha bribes the generals.] There was some fighting, and then the money from which Roman virtue had shrunk in Italy could be resisted no longer. The itching palm of Scaurus was at length filled as full as he thought mere decency demanded. Bestia was also gratified, Jugurtha"s submission was accepted, hostilities ceased, and the consul sailed home to superintend the next year"s elections.
[Sidenote: Harangues of the tribune Memmius.] But Memmius, justly incensed, now took a bolder tone. We cannot tell how far Sall.u.s.t reports what he really said, or how far he drew on his own invention.
But if he has given us Memmius"s own words, they must have rung in the ears of many an honest Roman like the trumpet-notes of that still more eloquent tribune whose body, ten years before, had been hurled into the Tiber. For he cast in the teeth of his audience their pusillanimity in suffering their champions to be murdered, and allowing so worthless a crew to lord it over them. It had been shameful enough that they had witnessed in silence the plunder of the treasury, the monopoly of all high office, and kings and free states cringing to a handful of n.o.bles; but now a worse thing had been done, and the honour of the Republic trafficked away. And the men who had done this felt neither shame nor sorrow, but strutted about with a parade of triumphs, consulships, and priesthoods, as if they were men of honour and not thieves. After these and similar home-thrusts, he called upon the people to insist on Jugurtha being brought to Rome, for so they would test the reality of his surrender. The tribune"s eloquence prevailed. The praetor Ca.s.sius was sent to bring Jugurtha under a promise of safe-conduct. Jugurtha hesitated. Bestia"s officers were treading in their general"s steps, taking bribes, selling as slaves the Numidians who had deserted to them, and pillaging the country. Jugurtha was fast becoming the national hero instead of the chief of a faction, and might have even then dreamt of defying Rome.
However, he yielded and, as it was not in his nature to do things by halves, came in the mean dress which was a.s.sumed to excite compa.s.sion.
He did more. This was the year of the so-called Thorian law.
[Sidenote: Jugurtha comes to Rome, and bribes the tribune Baebius.]
Caius Baebius, who may have been the author of that law, was tribune, and not of the stamp of Memmius. He took Jugurtha"s bribes, and when the king was being cross-questioned by Memmius, interposed his veto, and forbade him to reply. Thus once again, though the people were furious, the old plan seemed to be working well.
[Sidenote: Murder of Ma.s.siva.] But now a cousin of the king, named Ma.s.siva, a grandson of Masinissa, at the instigation of the consul Albinus, claimed the Numidian crown. In the present state of parties he was sure of support, so Jugurtha had recourse to the second weapon which he always used when the first was useless. He had him a.s.sa.s.sinated by his adherent Bomilcar, and a.s.sisted the latter to escape from Italy. At last his savage audacity had overstepped even the forbearance of the rogues in his pay. [Sidenote: Jugurtha expelled from Rome.] He was ordered to leave Rome, and, as he went, uttered the famous epigram, "A city for sale, and when the first buyer comes, doomed to ruin!" [Sidenote: Futile campaign of Albinus.] It is possible that Spurius Albinus, who was next sent against him, was playing the game of Scaurus and Bestia over again; for he effected nothing in his campaign in 110. Nor does his brother"s rashness exonerate him. Left as propraetor in charge of the army, this man, in January 109, determined to try and carry off Jugurtha"s treasures by a _coup de main_. To do this he marched against Suthul, where the treasures were kept, at a season when the heavy rains turn the land into water. [Sidenote: Jugurtha overthrows Aulus Albinus.] Jugurtha retreated into the interior, enticing Aulus Albinus by hopes of coming to terms, and meanwhile tampering with his officers. Then, on a dark night, he surrounded the army. The traitors whom he had bribed deserted their posts. The soldiers threw away their arms, and next day Jugurtha forced Aulus to agree to go under the yoke, to make peace, and, perhaps, in mockery of the Senate"s treatment of the Numidian envoys, to leave Numidia in ten days. Of course the Senate would not acknowledge the treaty. Nor did they even go through the farce of surrendering the man who had made it. The chivalry of the era of Regulus would have seemed quixotic to cynics like Scaurus. The other Albinus, hastening to Africa, found the troops mutinous, and could effect nothing. Another tribune now stepped forward to impeach all, whether soldiers or civilians, who had a.s.sisted Jugurtha to the prejudice of the State. In spite of the aid of the rich Latins, who had just been gratified by the remission of the vectigal, the senators were beaten and the bill pa.s.sed. Triumvirs were appointed to investigate the matter; but one of them was Scaurus, sure to float most buoyantly where the sc.u.m of scoundrelism was thickest. [Sidenote: Banishment of Romans who had taken Jugurtha"s bribes.] The judices were equites, and among those condemned were Bestia, Sp. Albinus, Opimius, and Caius Cato, the grandson of Cato the censor. Opimius died at Dyrrhachium, a poor man; and probably no harder punishment could have befallen him.
The history of the Jugurthine war has been thus far related at greater length than the s.p.a.ce at command would warrant if it was merely a history of military details. But it is a striking commentary on the politics of the time and the vices of the government. The state of society could not be more succinctly summed up than in the words with which Jugurtha quitted Rome. What was it which made the n.o.bles so greedy of money as to be lost to all shame in hunting for it? A speech supposed to have been delivered that very year partly answers the question: "Gourmands say that a meal is not all that it ought to be unless, precisely when you are relishing most what you are eating, your plate is removed and another, and better, and richer one is put in its place. Your exquisite, who makes extravagance and fastidiousness pa.s.s for wit, calls that the "bloom of a meal." "The only bird," says he, "which you should eat whole is the becafico. Of every other bird, wild or tame, nothing, unless your host be a mean fellow, but the hinder parts will be served, and enough of them to satisfy everybody. People who eat the fore parts have no palate." If luxury goes on at this rate there will soon be nothing left but for them to have their meats nibbled at for them by some one else, to save them the toil of eating. Already the couches of some men are decorated more lavishly with silver and purple and gold than those of the immortal G.o.ds."
If the war up to this stage had revealed the hopeless depravity of the senatorial government, its subsequent course revealed what shape the revolution about to engulf that government would a.s.sume. The consulship of Marius, won in spite of Metellus, signified really the fall of the Republic and the rise of monarchy, while the rivalry of Marius and Sulla showed that supreme authority would be competed for, not in the forum but the camp. The law of Manilius necessitated an earnest prosecution of the war. [Sidenote: Metellus appointed to the command against Jugurtha. His character.] Quintus Caecilius Metellus was elected consul for the year 109, and received Numidia as his province. He was a stern, proud man; but if in his childish hauteur he had a double portion of the foible of his order, he was free from many of its vices. He set to work at once to rediscipline the army; and his punishment of deserters, abominable in itself, was no doubt an effective warning that the new general was not a man with whom it was safe to trifle. The Romans were never gentle to the deserter unless he deserted to them. They threw him to wild beasts, or cut off his hands.
Metellus did more. He buried 3,000 men to their waists, made the soldiers use them as targets, and finally burned them.
[Sidenote: Battle on the Muthul.] Jugurtha was alarmed, and sent to offer terms, asking only a guarantee for his life. Metellus returned evasive answers, and secretly intrigued with the messengers for the surrender or a.s.sa.s.sination of the king. But though a.s.sa.s.sination had become one of the recognised weapons of a Roman n.o.ble, Metellus was a novice in the art by the side of Jugurtha, who determined to die hard now he was at bay. The Romans had to cross a range of mountains, after which they descended into a plain through which the river Muthul (probably a branch of the modern Mejerda) ran eighteen miles off.
Between them and the river was hilly ground--probably a spur from the range. On this hilly ground the king posted Bomilcar, with the infantry and elephants. He himself, with the best of the foot and the cavalry, waited nearer the mountains. Metellus saw the snare, but was obliged to get water, and in making for the river was surrounded. But the new discipline told. Though isolated, each Roman division fought bravely. Metellus and Marius carried the hills. Rufus dispersed the picked infantry, and killed or captured all the elephants. Jugurtha"s plan was masterly, but it had failed. [Sidenote: Jugurtha keeps up a guerilla warfare.] His army dispersed, as such armies do upon defeat, and he was reduced to carrying on a guerilla warfare, spoiling the springs where Metellus was marching, and cutting off stragglers.
Metellus split his army into two columns; Marius commanded one and he the other, and so they marched, ravaging the country and capturing the towns, ready to form a junction whenever it was necessary. At last they came to Zama; and, while Metellus was attempting to storm the town, Jugurtha surprised his camp. Though beaten off in this a.s.sault he attacked the Romans again next day, and Metellus was obliged to give up his enterprise. [Sidenote: Metellus tampers with Bomilcar.]
After garrisoning the towns which he had taken, he went into winter quarters, probably at Utica, where he proceeded to tamper with Bomilcar. That traitor urged Jugurtha to surrender, and the king gave up his elephants, the deserters, and a large sum of money. But when it came to giving up himself his heart failed him, and, having discovered Bomilcar"s treachery, he slew him, and once more resolved to fight.
[Sidenote: Marius stands for the consulship, 107 B.C.] The preceding military operations are supposed to have taken place in the year 108 B.C. Marius went to Rome to stand for the consulship, and while he was away, in 107, Metellus retained the command. Jugurtha"s cause even now was not hopeless. The Numidians adored him, and were smarting under the Roman devastations. [Sidenote: Revolt of Vaga.] The chief town occupied by the Romans, Vaga--the modern Baja--revolted in the winter, and the commander, Turpilius, a Latin, rightly or wrongly was executed by Metellus for collusion with the enemy. But Metellus was eager to end the war, and pressed the king hard. Jugurtha lost another battle, and fled to Thala; but Metellus marched fifty miles across the desert, and forced him to flee by night out of the town, which was taken after a siege of forty days. But now a new enemy confronted the Romans.
[Sidenote: Bocchus joins Jugurtha.] Bocchus, king of Mauretania, formed an alliance with his son-in-law, Jugurtha, and was induced by him to march against Cirta, which was in the possession of the Romans.
About the same time Metellus heard that Marius was coming to supersede him. The proud man shed tears of rage, and would not move further for fear of hazarding his own reputation, or lessening the difficulties of his successor.
[Sidenote: Marius succeeds to the command.] The African war now promised hard work and little glory or profit to the soldiers, and Jugurtha"s bribing days were over. Hence it was hard to recruit the legions, and Marius took men from the Proletarii and Capite Censi, cla.s.ses usually exempt from service. With these troops, who would be more easily satisfied and more manageable, he filled up the gaps in the legions in Africa, and set to work, as Metellus had done, taking towns and forts and plundering the country. Bocchus had separated from Jugurtha, for they hoped that the Romans having two foes to chase would be the more easily hara.s.sed. But Marius was always on his guard, and beat, though he could never capture, Jugurtha whenever he came across him. [Sidenote: Capture of Capsa.] There is an oasis in the south of Tunis, and a town, Gafsa, in it, which in those days was called Capsa. This town Marius captured after a laborious march of nine or ten days, and, though the inhabitants surrendered, he ruthlessly ma.s.sacred every adult Numidian in it, and sold the rest as slaves. One other exploit of his is told by Sall.u.s.t, but with such blunders of geography as render identification of the place impossible. Carrying fire and sword through the land, Marius reached a fort in which the king"s treasures were. It stood on a precipice, which was considered inaccessible on all sides but one. For many days he strove in vain to gain the walls by this road, and only an accident saved him from failure in the end. A Ligurian in the army, while gathering snails, unconsciously got nearly to the top of the hill.
Finding this out he clambered further and got a full view of the town.
[Sidenote: Capture of another stronghold.] Next day Marius sent ten men with horns and trumpets and the Ligurian as guide, while he himself a.s.sailed the town by the road. As soon as they were at the top he ordered an a.s.sault on the walls. The men marched up with their shields locked over their heads, and at the same moment the Roman trumpets were heard at the side of the town over the precipice. The Numidians fled and the fort was won.
[Sidenote: Marius marches for Cirta.] Here, wherever the place was, Marius was joined by Sulla with some cavalry; and having gained his end, he marched eastward towards Cirta, intending to winter his men in the maritime towns. [Sidenote: Attempts of Jugurtha to surprise his march.] But the Numidian king had nerved himself for one last desperate effort. By the promise of a third of his kingdom he bribed Bocchus to join him, and one night at dusk surprised the retiring army. Only discipline saved it. Like the English at Inkermann, the Romans fought in small detached groups, till Marius was able to concentrate his men on a hill, while Sulla by his orders occupied another hard by. The barbarians surrounded them and kept up a revel all night, deeming their prey secure. But at dawn Marius bade the horns strike up, and with a shout the soldiers charged down and dispersed the enemy with ease. Then the march went on till they were near Cirta. Again Jugurtha attempted to cut off the retreat. Volux, son of Bocchus, had brought him some fresh infantry. While the cavalry engaged Sulla, Bocchus led these men round to attack the rear.
Jugurtha, who was fighting against Masinissa in the front, rode also to the rear, and, holding up a b.l.o.o.d.y head, cried out that he had slain Marius. The Romans began to give way, when Sulla, like Cromwell at Marston Moor, having done his own work charged the troops of Bocchus on the flank. Still Jugurtha fought on, and fled only when all around him were slain. The result of this battle was that Bocchus became anxious to come to terms. Sulla was sent to arrange them.
But Bocchus hated the Romans, while he feared them; and fresh solicitations from Jugurtha made him again waver. [Sidenote: Negotiations of Bocchus with Rome.] Soon afterwards, by permission of Marius, he sent an emba.s.sy to Rome. The Senate replied that they excused his past errors, and that he should have the friendship and alliance of Rome when he had earned it. Then ensued intrigue upon intrigue. [Sidenote: Sulla persuades Bocchus to betray Jugurtha.]
Sulla daringly visited Bocchus, and after some days" hesitation, during which Sulla pressed him to betray Jugurtha, and Jugurtha pressed him to betray Sulla, the Moorish king at last decided on which side his interests lay. The Roman devised a trap. The arch-traitor was ensnared, and was carried in chains to Rome, where he was led in his royal robes by the triumphal car of Marius, and, it is said, lost his senses as he walked along. One wonders with what relish Scaurus and his tribe, after gazing at the spectacle, sat down to their becaficoes that day. Then he was thrust into prison, and as they hasted to strip him, some tore the clothes off his back, while others in wrenching out his earrings pulled off the tips of his ears with them. And so he was thrust down naked into the Tullianum. "Hercules, what a cold bath!" he cried, with the wild smile of idiocy, as they cast him in. [Sidenote: Death of Jugurtha.] For six days he endured the torments of starvation, and then died. [Sidenote: Division of the Numidian kingdom.] The most westerly portion of his kingdom, corresponding to the modern province of Algiers, was given to Bocchus, the rest of it to Gauda, Jugurtha"s half-brother. The Romans did not care to turn into a province a country of which the frontiers were so hard to guard. But they received some Gaetulian tribes in the interior into free alliance, so that they had plenty of opportunities for meddling if they wished to do so.
CHAPTER V.
THE CIMBRI AND TEUTONES.
The Jugurthine war ended in 105 B.C. In one way it had been of real service to Rome. A terrible crisis was at hand, and this war had given her both soldiers and a general worthy of the name. Before, however, the story of the struggle with the Cimbri is told, something must be said about what had been going on at Rome, about the man who had now most influence there, and about his rivals. [Sidenote: Recommencement of the social struggle at Rome.] The great social struggle had recommenced. The personal rivalry between Marius and Sulla had begun before the Cimbric war. During that war men held as it were their breath in terror, but nevertheless it was as if only an interlude in that deadly civil strife, for which each of the contending parties was already arrayed. C. Marius was now fifty years old. Cato, the censor, was of opinion that no man can endure so much as he who has turned the soil and reaped the harvest. Marius was such a man. His family were clients of the Herennii. His father was a day-labourer of Cereatae, called today Casamare, after his ill.u.s.trious son, and he himself served in the ranks in Spain. [Sidenote: Previous career and present position of Marius.] Soon made an officer, he won Scipio"s favour as a brave, frugal, incorruptible, and trusty soldier, who never quarrelled with his general"s orders, even when they ran as counter to his own inclinations as the expulsion of all soothsayers from the camp before Numantia. On coming home he was lucky enough to marry the aunt of Julius Caesar, whose high birth and wealth opened the door to State honours, which to a man of his origin was at this time otherwise virtually closed. In 119 B.C. he was tribune, and had by the measures previously noticed won the reputation of an upright and patriotic politician, who would truckle neither to the n.o.bles nor the mob. From this time, however, the feud with the Metelli began; for he ordered L.