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Cato and Metellus had been said to have come home. Cæsar did not choose that this should be so, and had ordered them away. It was clearly manifest to every man alive now that Cæsar was the actual master of Italy. During the whole of this winter he is on terms with Terentia, but he writes to her in the coldest strain.
Carthage a second time offered peace; but the victory of Metellus and the exhaustion of the enemy gave to the more energetic party the upper hand in the senate. Siege of Lilybaeum Peace was declined, and it was resolved to prosecute in earnest the siege of the two Sicilian cities and for this purpose to send to sea once more a fleet of 200 sail.
Thereupon Metellus left the province, which he had been compelled by decree of the people to give up to his former lieutenant Marius who was now consul; and the latter assumed the supreme command for the next campaign in 648. He was indebted for it in some degree to a revolution.
Metellus now hastily sent the whole of this force to the camp, and bade Marius follow with all speed at the head of some cohorts of the allies. His anguish at the sullied honour of his troops was greater than his fear. With tears streaming down his face he besought his legate to wipe out the stain which blurred the recent victory and not to permit the enemy to escape unpunished.
For Marius, in whose ideas virtue and capacity consisted largely in deceit, made very little account of what he had openly professed to the senate; and knowing that Metellus was one of a fixed resolution, and, as Pindar has it, esteemed Truth the first principle of heroic virtue; he hoped to ensnare him into a declaration before the senate, and on his refusing, as he was sure to do, afterwards to take the oath, he expected to bring him into such odium with the people, as should never be wiped off.
At the beginning of 608 the Achaeans advanced into Thessaly to reduce to obedience Heraclea near to Oeta, which, in accordance with the decree of the senate, had detached itself from the Achaean league. The consul Lucius Mummius, whom the senate had resolved to send to Greece, had not yet arrived; accordingly Metellus undertook to protect Heraclea with the Macedonian legions.
Now the battle on the Sucro is said to have been brought about by the eagerness of Pompeius, who wished Metellus to have no share in the victory.
Metellus saw instead the prospect of a series of harassing assaults that would delay his progress, and he dreaded the fierceness of the season more than the weapons of the enemy.
In four days he crossed the sea with a favourable wind, and was most joyfully received by the people, and being introduced to the popular assembly by one of the tribunes, he began by violent abuse of Metellus, and ended with asking for the consulship and promising that he would either kill Jugurtha or take him alive.
Dubious Attitude of Strabo The Cinnans around Rome Thus the storm gathered around the capital, and the government could no longer delay bringing forward their troops to protect it. But the forces of Metellus were detained by the Italians in Samnium and before Nola; Strabo alone was in a position to hasten to the help of the capital.
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