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Updated: June 22, 2025
In the year B.C. 118 Micipsa died, and a collision arose, as was to be expected, among his heirs. Hiempsal was assassinated, and the struggle for the Numidian crown lay between Adherbal and Jugurtha. The latter seized the whole territory, and Adherbal escaped to Rome, and laid his complaint before the Senate.
The claims of Adherbal for protection against his aggressive cousin might be just, but even to many moderate men, not wholly vitiated by the maxims of a Machiavellian policy, they may have appeared intolerable. Was Rome to waste her own strength and stake the peace of the empire on a mere question of dynastic succession?
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.
He had entertained hopes of having Gades betrayed to him without a contest, persons having come unsolicited into the Roman camp to make promises to that effect, as has been before mentioned. The plot was discovered before it was ripe, and all having been apprehended, were placed by Mago in the hands of Adherbal the praetor, to be conveyed to Carthage.
If they had prayed to see Adherbal, the request, must have been refused; to prolong the negotiations was to court further insult, and they set their faces once more for Rome after faithfully performing the important mission of repeating a message of the senate with verbal correctness.
The other fled to Rome and sought the support of the senate. Jugurtha now, following the suggestions of his false friends, sent gold and promises to Rome, purchased the support of venal senators, and had voted to him the strongest half of the kingdom; Adherbal, the young prince, being given the weaker half. But the young man was not left in peace, even in this reduced inheritance.
Adherbal had treacherously plotted against his life; the crime had been revealed and he had but taken steps to forestall it; the Roman people would not be acting justly or honourably, if they hindered him from taking such steps in his own defence as were the common right of all men. He would soon send envoys to Rome to deal with the whole question in dispute.
The quinquereme was just entering the strait, when Laelius, who had himself also sailed out of the harbour of Carteia in a quinquereme, followed by seven triremes, bore down upon Adherbal and his triremes, feeling assured that the trireme, when once caught in the rapid strait, would not be able to return against the opposing current.
To Adherbal was given that part of the kingdom which in its external attributes seemed the more desirable; he was to rule over the eastern half of Numidia which bordered on the Roman province, the portion of the country which enjoyed a readier access to the sea and could boast of a fuller development of urban life.
During the early struggles between the three kings, Massiva had attached himself to the party of Hiempsal and Adherbal, and had thus incurred Jugurtha's enmity; but he had continued to live in Numidia as long as there was any hope of the continuance of the dual kingship.
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