United States or Tajikistan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The compact made with Bestia and Scaurus had been tacitly, if not formally, repudiated by the senate, and the fiction that Jugurtha had surrendered, although it had played its part in the negotiations which brought him to Rome, disappeared with the compact.
Towards the late watches of the night, in the doubtful light of the early dawn, the soldiers of Jugurtha crept up to the outposts of the enemy; at a given signal they rushed on the camp and carried it by storm.
He began wearing a signet ring, the seal of which showed Bocchus delivering Jugurtha into his hand. This emblem was destined to grate on the nerves of Marius in a still more offensive form, for thirteen years later, when his work had been done and his glory had begun to wane, Rome was given an unexpected confirmation of the truthfulness of the scene which it depicted.
Lately he had been forcing himself on Jugurtha at every point; now he held back and waited for the favourable chance. He wished above all to learn something of the fighting spirit and methods of the Moors; they were an untried foe, and Roman success was usually the fruit of knowledge and not of experiment.
If even the assailants could distinguish them in the frenzy of victory, they knew them for men who had occupied the fighting line; and this fact was alone sufficient to doom them to destruction. Jugurtha may also have made his blunder.
The subject represented was Bocchus surrendering and Sulla receiving the surrender of Jugurtha. IV. Though Marius was annoyed at this, yet as he still thought Sulla beneath his jealousy, he employed him in his campaigns in his second consulship in the capacity of legate, and in his third consulship as tribune; and by his instrumentality Marius effected many important objects.
Aspar departed joyfully to the headquarters of Jugurtha, who was now at a considerable distance from the scene of the negotiations. Eight days later he returned with all speed, bearing a message for the ear of Bocchus. Jugurtha, it appeared, was willing to submit to any conditions. But he had little confidence in Marius.
King Bocchus was not unwilling to return to his old ambiguous position: without dissolving his agreement with Jugurtha or dismissing him, he entered into negotiations with the Roman general respecting the terms of an alliance with Rome.
Here Jugurtha starved; here Catiline's adherents were strangled; and, methinks, there cannot be in the world another such an evil den, so haunted with black memories and indistinct surmises of guilt and suffering. In old Rome, I suppose, the citizens never spoke of this dungeon above their breath.
The capacity of every officer in Marius's army was soon to be put to an effective test; for the coalition of Jugurtha and Bocchus, which the campaign might have been meant to prevent, turned out to be its immediate result.
Word Of The Day