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Updated: May 16, 2025
Here, as in Metellus's march on Thala, a large supply of water was drawn from the river and stored in skins, all heavy baggage was discarded, and the lightened column prepared for its march across the desert. By day the soldiers kept their camp and every stage of the journey was accomplished between night-fall and dawn.
By this route he would reach the high plateaux, which command on the south-east the plains of Sicca and Zama, on the north-west those of Naraggara and Thagaste, on the south those of Thala and Theveste. Metellus's march led him over a mountain height which was some miles from the river.
The expedition of Marius to Capsa was a venture as aimless, as that of Metellus to Thala had been judicious; but the expedition to the Molochath, which passed along the border of, if not into, the Mauretanian territory, was directly repugnant to sound policy.
The fringe of the desert had but been reached; the king had fled beyond it; the south and west were soon to be in a blaze; we shall soon see Metellus forced to take up his position in the north; and a slight incident which occurred while Metellus was at Thala showed that even cities of the distant east, which had never been under the immediate sway of the Numidian power, were wavering in their attachment to Rome.
The king had vanished out of sight in the distance. In the interior of the modern beylik of Tunis, close on the edge of the great desert, there lay on an oasis provided with springs the strong place Thala; thither Jugurtha had retired with his children, his treasures, and the flower of his troops, there to await better times.
No Roman army had at any part of the campaign attempted to penetrate such trackless regions, and the court at Thala may have believed even this foretaste of the desert to be an adequate protection against an enemy which clung to towns and cultivated lands and relied, in the cumbrous manner of civilised warfare, on organised lines of communication.
The slight successes of this war, such as the taking of Thala and of Capsa and the victories near Cirta, were attained by judicious adaptations to the new conditions, by the employment of light infantry and the increased use of cavalry; but even these improvements were of little avail, for effective pursuit was still impossible, and without pursuit the conflict could not be brought to a close.
The devoted villagers had also brought an unexpectedly large supply of corn, so eager were they to give emphatic proof of their newly acquired loyalty. But one day more and the walls of Thala came in sight. Its citizens were surprised but not dismayed; they made preparations for the siege, while their king vanished into the desert with his children and a large portion of his hoarded wealth.
Metellus ventured to follow the king through a desert, in which his troops had to carry water along with them in skins forty-five miles; Thala was reached and fell after a forty days' siege; but the Roman deserters destroyed the most valuable part of the booty along with the building in which they burnt themselves after the capture of the town, and what was of more consequence king Jugurtha escaped with his children and his chest.
Metellus ventured to follow the king through a desert, in which his troops had to carry water along with them in skins forty-five miles; Thala was reached and fell after a forty days' siege; but the Roman deserters destroyed the most valuable part of the booty along with the building in which they burnt themselves after the capture of the town, and what was of more consequence king Jugurtha escaped with his children and his chest.
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