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Updated: June 3, 2025
Bogud departed to join Antony, while Bocchus forthwith took possession of his kingdom, and this act was afterward confirmed by Caesar. The Tingitanians were given citizenship.
As soon as they were at the top he ordered an assault 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. By the promise of a third of his kingdom he bribed Bocchus to join him, and one night at dusk surprised the retiring army.
Volux implied that the object of the Numidian's movement was to compromise the Moorish government in the eyes of Sulla; but he stated his emphatic belief that Jugurtha would, or could, do no positive hurt to the Roman envoy or his retinue. It was incredible, he maintained, that Jugurtha would attempt any overt act of hostility, when the son of Bocchus was present to be a witness to the crime.
One had only to look at their treatment of Perseus of Macedon, of Carthage, of himself. Who was Bocchus that he alone should be immune from such a danger? The mood of the king responded to Jugurtha's words, and without an instant's delay they took the field together.
When Bocchus received this answer, he despatched a letter to Marius asking that Sulla should be sent to advise with him on the matters that touched the common interests of himself and Rome. It was tolerably clear what the subject of interest was. If it could be made "common," the end of the war had been reached.
He attributed his failure to the populace, for he says that they knew he was a friend of Bocchus, and if he filled the office of ædile before that of prætor, they expected to have brilliant hunting exhibitions and fights of Libyan wild beasts, and that therefore they elected others to the prætorship, with the view of forcing him to serve as ædile.
Bocchus was king of the more distant barbarians, and was father-in-law to Jugurtha, yet sent him little or no assistance in his war, professing fears of his unfaithfulness, and really jealous of his growing power; but after Jugurtha fled, and in his distress came to him as his last hope, he received him as a suppliant, rather because ashamed to do otherwise, than out of real kindness; and when he had him in his power, he openly entreated Marius on his behalf, and interceded for him with bold words, giving out that he would by no means deliver him.
The Mauretanian kings, Bogud in Tingis and Bocchus in Iol, were Juba's natural rivals and to a certain extent long since in alliance with Caesar.
If Sulla had any further request to urge, which could be fairly made by the petitioner and honourably granted by himself, he would not refuse it. A strict and safe neutrality was the tentacle put out by Bocchus. The only shadow of a positive service by which he proposed to deserve the alliance of Rome, was the abandonment of a highly disputable claim to a part of Jugurtha's possessions.
Jugurtha might have everything to gain by massacring the Romans and seizing Sulla. The act would compromise Bocchus hopelessly in the eyes of the Roman government. There was hardly a man that would not believe in his treason, and from that time forth Bocchus would have no choice but to be the firm ally of Numidia against the vengeance of Rome.
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