The escape of Adherbal placed Jugurtha in a dangerous position, as he must have hoped to have presented the Senate with a fait accompli, with him as the sole surviving ruler. Yet Adherbal was an unknown quantity to the Romans, whilst Jugurtha had many friends amongst the Roman aristocracy. Furthermore, he now had the whole resources of Numidia backing him. Given his contacts, knowledge of the Romans and financial resources, Jugurtha immediately sent envoys to Rome, to ensure that his ambassadors would have a favourable response amongst the Roman Senate, through a mixture of friendship and overt payment. On the day of the hearing in the Senate, Sallust reports that Adherbal gave a long emotional speech appealing to his father and grandfather’s service to Rome. Jugurtha’s envoys pointed out that Jugurtha had acted in the interests of Numidia, and that he himself had proved his loyalty to Rome on the battlefield of Numantia.131
In the end the Senate was split on the matter, but took the logical course, a division of Numidia between the two parties, without pursuing Jugurtha for his step brother’s murder. Such a course suited Rome’s interests in the region and once more divided Numidia, thus reducing her power and threat to Rome. For Jugurtha, this was a setback, but one that he could live with for now. A Senatorial commission was dispatched to divide Numidia, with the western region going to Jugurtha and the eastern to Adherbal. Jugurtha received the bulk of the population and fertile regions, Adherbal the coastal cities. Despite Sallust’s preoccupation with Jugurtha bribing every Roman senator he could, the commission came up with an even-handed division.132 In fact, this division superficially returned Numidia to the situation it had been before Masinissa’s time, with two, potentially antagonistic, regions (east and west). The obvious problem would be how long this settlement would hold. Both kings had met once on the battlefield and both had good cause to continue the war.
On the Roman side, the obvious question was whether they actually expected the settlement to hold. Given the circumstances, it appears to have been a forlorn hope. Yet, throughout the preceding century the Roman Senate had made such settlements before and they had always been honoured, with the threat of Roman armed force always being enough to ensure that whatever person or peoples involved adhered to them. Although Sallust attributed the breakdown of this settlement to Roman decline (moral and imperial), in reality Numidia represented something of a different case to the norm. For a start, Numidia had been a staunch Roman ally for over eighty years and had never been to war with Rome, let alone defeated. Secondly, Jugurtha knew the Roman elites well and this gave him greater confidence, some would say arrogance, when dealing with the Romans.
Once the Roman commission had left, Jugurtha drew up fresh plans for the annexation of Adherbal’s kingdom. To deter Rome’s wrath for breaching the agreement, he apparently planned to provoke Adherbal into declaring war on him, thus making him the victim of aggression. To these ends he sent raiding parties into eastern Numidia, destroying towns and seizing cattle. Adherbal, however, refused to be provoked, well remembering his previous military failure. Thus the situation continued for a number of years, until in 112 BC, the situation was so desperate for Adherbal that he had no option but to raise an army and meet Jugurtha in battle once more.
The two armies met near the city of Cirta, the old capital of a unified Numidia. Given the lateness of the day when the two armies met, battle was postponed until the following morning and both armies retired for the night. Once again Jugurtha proved his military superiority when he attacked Adherbal’s army as they slept. The attack soon ended in the rout and destruction of Adherbal’s army, with Adherbal himself fleeing once more, this time taking refuge in Cirta.133 Jugurtha immediately laid siege to the city, which, as the one of the strongest in Numidia, resisted all his attempts to take it by storm. For Jugurtha, it was a question of time, as it soon became clear that Adherbal had once again been able to send envoys to Rome, apparently before the armies met. Thus Jugurtha could soon expect the arrival of another Senatorial commission and it would be better for him if they were presented with a fait accompli of Adherbal’s death and Jugurtha as the ruler of Numidia. A further complication arose for him, however, in the presence of a sizeable population of Italian merchants in Cirta, who aided in the defence of the city. This would give the Romans a more tangible stake in the events.
When the envoys arrived, however, Jugurtha gave them no opportunity to speak to Adherbal, but assured them the fault lay with the other party and that he would soon send envoys to Rome to explain the matter. Apparently, he also promised to end the siege of Cirta. Amazingly the three-man commission accepted his word and left Africa to report the matter to the Senate, without waiting for the siege to be lifted. It is hard to credit their actions without the shadow of bribery being raised. With the commission returning to Rome to make their report, Jugurtha continued his siege of Cirta. Unfortunately for him, Adherbal had two of his men slip through the siege and take a letter to the Senate, which laid out the situation in full, revealing Jugurtha’s duplicity.
Although some advocated sending a military force to aid Adherbal, the Senate could only agree to the sending of a further Senatorial commission to Jugurtha, this time led by M. Aemilius Scaurus, the Princeps Senatus.134 Sallust explains this action by returning to the theme of Jugurtha’ bribery of the Senate, though in reality there can have been little appetite for involving themselves in a Numidian civil war, especially given the situation in Illyria and Macedon (see Chapter 3).
Nevertheless, the urgency with which the Senate viewed the matter can be seen by the fact that the commission left Rome for Africa in just three days and once there immediately summoned Jugurtha to Utica, the de-facto capital city of Rome’s African province.135 Despite Sallust, we do not know exactly what the Commission said, but Sallust states that ‘terrible threats were made in the name of the Senate.’136 From this it must be the case that the commission ordered Jugurtha to end the siege of Cirta, return to his own kingdom and abide by the earlier Roman settlement.
For Jugurtha, this was the moment of truth. Agreeing to the Roman demand would overturn the last year’s successes and leave him with just Western Numidia. To continue the siege would be to directly disobey a command from the Senate. For Jugurtha the crucial calculation must have been whether Rome would go to war with him. With Adherbal dead there was no other clear rival to the Numidian throne, so would Rome replace him? It was at this point that events took an unusual turn. Despite holding off the siege for a number of months (at least four), the inhabitants of Cirta, including Adherbal himself, surrendered to Jugurtha. Sallust attributes this to the Italian community living in Cirta who believed that Jugurtha would adhere to the orders of the Senate.137
Whether this was a spontaneous action or whether Jugurtha made overtures to Adherbal and the Italians is not reported. What followed next sealed the issue. Jugurtha took Adherbal captive and had him tortured to death. Furthermore, an apparent massacre took place in Cirta, with the primary victims being the Italian trading community.138
At first such a provocative act seems difficult to understand. Not only did Jugurtha disobey a direct Senatorial command, but apparently slaughtered the Italians living in Cirta. Yet although Sallust states that this was done on Jugurtha’s command, we have to question this.139 Killing Adherbal made perfect strategic sense. The Senate had never fully supported him anyway and his death created the fait accompli of there being only one Numidian heir of Micipsa left, and one who had himself fought in Rome’s cause. Yet the massacre of the traders seems to be a blatant act of provocation or a very casual attitude to Roman sensibilities.
Here a parallel is useful. In 88 BC when the Pontic King Mithridates VI invaded the Roman province of Asia, he ordered a massacre of the Italian traders, which was enthusiastically undertaken by the locals, despite their inhabiting a Roman province for the past fifty years. Was the massacre undertaken on Jugurtha’s orders or a spontaneous act by the locals? Given that the Italians had been the most belligerent group, thus ensuring a lon
g siege, with all the suffering that must have engendered, added to the natural dislike that such a group of privileged traders must have stirred up in any case, it would not be surprising that they were unpopular. Furthermore, we must question just how popular a group they would have been without the Senators themselves.
In any event, the massacre took place and Jugurtha, now sole king of a unified Numidia had to wait upon Rome’s reaction, which surprisingly was mixed. Sallust reports that despite this massacre, the Senate was still reticent about declaring war on Numidia, which he again assigns to Jugurtha’s bribery.140 In all fairness, the Senate’s options were limited. Jugurtha had been a staunch Roman ally of old and the massacre had taken place during a civil war siege, and frankly Adherbal was less known and had fewer contacts amongst the elites of Rome. Furthermore, Numidia was a vast and wild country about which the Romans knew little and had never operated in militarily since the days of Scipio Africanus. Such a war was not especially attractive and would have required a fresh levy of men for fighting overseas, with all the problems that came with that. Furthermore, it was clear that a barbarian migration was underway in Europe and having an army across the Mediterranean operating in the North African interior was not the best form of defence.
In any event, once again, the crucial decision was taken away from the Senate, and here we must look to the other two constituent elements in Roman politics in this period: the equestrian order and the people. For the equestrian order, recently brought into Roman politics by C. Gracchus, the massacre at Cirta was of men from their own order and struck at their business interests in Africa. Thus they had the two motives of revenge and the opportunity offered by a successful settlement of any war. As for the people, we are told that one of the tribunes, C. Memmius, ran a successful anti-senatorial campaign, demanding revenge on Jugurtha for the massacre and stating that the ‘greedy’ aristocracy were all in the pocket of a corrupt African prince. For an urban populace still smarting from the murder of C. Gracchus and his followers by the Senate, such a view hit home.
Thus the Senate found themselves, ironically like Jugurtha, pushed towards a war they did not want.141 In the end the Senate came to a compromise and allocated the two consular provinces for 111 BC as Italy and Africa.142 From such an inauspicious start came the war which was to determine the dominant power in North Africa.
Summary
What are we to make of the outbreak of the Jugurthine War? Taken from a long-term perspective, a clash between Rome and Numidia for dominance of North Africa seems inevitable. Although a unified Numidia had been created by Syphax and the Carthaginians, it was the Romans and Masinissa who ensured its survival and prosperity. As seen above, Numidia had been created to keep Carthage in check and had done such a good job of it that within Masinissa’s lifetime, Numidia had become the dominant power of the North African region. It is clear to us that Rome had created a monster, which after the fall of Carthage had now outlived its original purpose. Furthermore, Numidia now became a powerful kingdom bordering Roman territory. Although this is clear to us, it is unclear how the Romans at the time saw this, though Scipio Aemilianus’ division of Numidia coming so soon after the Roman attack on Carthage perhaps indicates that the Romans realized that they no longer needed a unified and powerful Numidia. Yet on two occasions a divided Numidia inevitably fell into the hands of a single ruler. Thus, taken from this perspective, war between the two powers does seem inevitable at some stage.
On the other had though, this inevitability is contrasted by the strenuous efforts made by both parties (Jugurtha and the Senate) to avoid a war on this occasion. Furthermore, Rome declared war on Jugurtha on a very flimsy set of circumstances, the defiance of their order to settle the civil war by negotiation and the massacre of a number of traders who had gotten themselves entangled in a siege. Many have argued that this was nothing more than a pretext and that the Senate saw their chance to reign in the new sole king of a unified Numidia, others that Jugurtha’s actions were a direct challenge to Roman authority and implied supremacy in the Mediterranean. In point of fact, though, given the other events taking place, both at Rome and in their empire, both of the above points of view seem to flounder on the fact that Rome really had more pressing issues on their mind at the time and could ill afford a war in North Africa against their oldest ally in the region and it’s strongest power.
In many ways the only satisfactory explanation is to discard theories of inevitability or vague challenges to Roman authority and see the war as resulting from events and pressures outside of the main players’ control. It is unlikely that Jugurtha wanted a massacre of the Italian traders or that the Senate would view it as an unforgivable act.
As we have seen, in Rome, the Senate’s once-unassailable grip on issues of foreign policy had been undermined by the tribunes (either on their own initiative or working for others). In this case, whilst the Senate probably did not wish for war with Jugurtha, the matter was taken out of their hands and public outrage (real or whipped-up) ultimately had to be appeased.
However, just because the Senate declared war on Jugurtha did not mean that they intended it to be a war of conquest or even one which would involve large-scale fighting, nor resemble in any form the war that actually took place. In the public eye Jugurtha had challenged Rome’s authority and murdered (however unintentionally) its citizens (though whether they actually had Roman citizenship is another question). Thus the Senate had to act, or at least be seen to act, and be seen to bring Jugurtha back in line. From such an innocuous start came a war that was to determine the future of the North African continent and one that was to have dramatic effects on the shape of Roman politics.
Chapter 3
The Northern Wars: The Threat from the North (120–111BC)
However, before we can analyse the early phase of the Jugurthine War, we must first take a step back, in order to see how this war interconnects with the other events occurring in the Roman and non-Roman worlds (something that Sallust fails to do). In fact the survival of Sallust’s monograph on the war and the loss of a continuous narrative history such as Livy’s, can, if we are not careful, give us a dangerously one-sided approach to the period. In order to understand Rome’s reticence about engaging in a war in North Africa and their seemingly lacklustre early efforts, we must investigate the other concerns that were facing the Senate at the time.
The Lack of Sources
As mentioned earlier, the period of history we are covering suffers from a lack of surviving sources, especially in matters of foreign affairs. This is doubly the case when dealing with Rome’s Northern Wars in this period where, for great periods, we are reduced to scraps of information from the annalists, with barely more than names of generals and the peoples they fought, and sometimes not even that. For the last phase of the war, we are better informed, thanks to Plutarch’s biography of Marius, though this brings it own problems (see appendix five for a full analysis of the sources available).
This dearth of information is contrasted with the survival of Sallust’s monograph on the Jugurthine Wars, which, from a historian’s point of view, can create a one-sided view of the period. Thus we have wars in at least three major theatres of operation in this period – the North East (Macedon and Illyria), the North West (Gaul and Spain) and the South (Africa) – yet we only have a detailed narrative of one of them. However, any analysis of the importance of these areas of conflict should not be dependant on which one has sources available and which do not.
For the Northern Wars, we have an additional problem. As well as a lack of detailed campaign or battle narratives, we lack an understanding of the enemy that Rome faced. Although we have no Numidian sources, we can still try to construct an analysis for the war from the Jugurthine and Numidian perspectives, balancing out that of Rome’s. However, for the enemies that Rome faced in this period, there are almost no details which allow such a reconstruction. Thus the easiest course of action is to reduce them to the status of a faceless and an
onymous enemy, and merely judge the war from Rome’s point of view, a course of action that we must try to avoid at all costs. Even using the term ‘barbarian’ is a dangerous one as it homogenizes a number of different peoples and races, and thus tactics and motives. This will be seen most clearly in the wars of the northwest when Rome faced a multitude of different races, most notably the Cimbri, Teutones, Ambrones and Tigurini. Nevertheless, these limitations and problems should not act as a deterrent for what is a crucial period of Roman military history.
Rome’s Northern Borders
When examining the detail of Rome’s territories in this period, there is marked difference between how neat and clinical they appear on a map and the reality of the situation on the ground. During the period of the Roman Empire, Rome’s northern borders had a far greater rigidity to them, with geographical boundaries such as the Channel (and eventually Hadrian’s Wall), the Rhine and the Danube. In this period of the Republic, however, there were no such fixed barriers; even the Alps and Pyrenees, although natural barriers, did not neatly correspond with areas of Roman control, as we shall see below. For the purposes of clarity we can split Rome’s ‘northern borders’ into two distinct regions, the northeast and northwest, as they represent two different situations and two different theatres of war.
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