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Updated: June 13, 2025
He heard at length that Rutilius had reached his bourne and halted, and at the same time the din of the battle between Jugurtha and Metellus came in louder volumes to his ear. The thought that Rutilius's attention was disengaged now that his main object had been accomplished, the fear that he might seek to bring help to his labouring commander, led Bomilcar to take more active measures.
Neither then nor afterwards did he betray any trace of violent emotion. Bomilcar and many of his accomplices were put to death swiftly and secretly; but it was not well that rumours of a widely spread treason should be noised abroad. The pretence of security was a means of ensuring safety, and he had to ask too much of his Numidians to indulge even the severity that he held to be his due.
Bomilcar, Himilcar, Abd-Melkarth, and the like. Dagon appears in scripture only as a Philistine god, which would not prove him to have been acknowledged by the Phoenicians; but as Philo of Byblus admits him among the primary Phoenician deities, making him a son of Uranus, and a brother of Il or Kronis, it is perhaps right that he should be allowed a place in the Phoenician list.
Even this step was taken with considerable hesitation, for it was admitted that the safe-conduct which protected Jugurtha extended to his retinue. The king and his court were strictly speaking extra-territorial, and the strict letter of international law would have handed Bomilcar over for trial by his sovereign.
If Bomilcar were sacrificed, his powerlessness to protect the chief member of his retinue might shake the allegiance of his own subjects. He therefore smuggled his accused henchman from Rome and had him conveyed secretly to Numidia.
This induced Massiva, a grandson of Massinissa living in Rome, to assert before the senate his claims to the vacant Numidian kingdom; upon which Bomilcar, one of the confidants of king Jugurtha, doubtless under his instructions made away with the rival of his master by assassination, and, when he was prosecuted on account of it, escaped with Jugurtha's aid from Rome.
Fear dispersed the rest far and wide, not less effectually than a storm. It happened also, at the same time, that Bomilcar arrived at Locri with soldiers sent from Carthage as a reinforcement, bringing with him also elephants and provisions. Bomilcar had by this time left the place, having set out for Bruttium to join Hanno.
Setting sail, therefore, from Carthage with a hundred and thirty men of war and seven hundred transports, he had tolerably fair winds for crossing over to Sicily, but was prevented by the same wind from doubling Cape Pachynum. The news of the approach of Bomilcar, and afterwards his unexpected delay, excited alternate fear and joy in the Romans and Syracusans.
On this ridge Jugurtha awaited the Roman army. His troops were arranged in two masses; the one, including a part of the infantry and the elephants, under Bomilcar at the point where the ridge abutted on the river, the other, embracing the flower of the infantry and all the cavalry, higher up towards the mountain-range, concealed by the bushes.
It might be increased, for the peril from Rome still existed, and there was the new terror from the vengeance of a master, whose suspicion seemed to his affrighted soul to be revealing itself in a cold neglect. Bomilcar determined that he would face but a single peril, and plunged into a course of intrigue far more dangerous than any which he had yet essayed.
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