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But what were his intentions whether to sell his son-in-law dear to the Romans, or to take up the national war in concert with that son-in-law neither the Romans nor Jugurtha nor perhaps even the king himself knew; and he was in no hurry to abandon his ambiguous position. Marius Commander-in-Chief
The mercantile class had been wiped out, and though the Romans seem to have regained possession of Cirta at an early period of the war, it is not likely that it ever resumed the industrial life, which might have supplied money and provisions, if not men; while the position of the town rendered it useless as a basis of operations for expeditions into that western portion of Numidia, from which the chief military strength of Jugurtha was drawn.
It is said that he often turned and took a long and silent look at the distant town, and that at last the words broke from him "A city for sale and ripe for ruin, if only a purchaser can be found!" The departure of Jugurtha implied the renewal of the war.
Marius enjoyed the triumph for the capture of Jugurtha, but the honour of the success was given to Sulla through dislike of Marius, which caused Marius some uneasiness; for Sulla was naturally of an arrogant disposition, and as this was the first occasion, on which he had been raised from a mean condition and obscurity to be of some note among his fellow-citizens, and had tasted the sweets of distinction, he carried his pride so far as to have a seal-ring cut, on which the occurrence was represented, and he wore it constantly.
Had his object merely been to harden the army by bold razzias and to procure booty for the soldiers, or even to eclipse the march of Metellus into the desert by an expedition going still farther, this method of warfare might be allowed to pass unchallenged; but the main object to be aimed at, and which Metellus had steadfastly and perseveringly kept in view the capture of Jugurtha was in this way utterly set aside.
The head of the commission was Lucius Opimius, whose influence amongst the members of his order had never waned since he had exercised and proved his right of saving the State from the threatened dangers of sedition. His selection on this occasion gave an air of impartiality to the commission, for he was known to be no friend to Jugurtha.
Here Jugurtha starved; here Catiline's adherents were strangled; and, methinks, there cannot be in the world another such an evil den, so haunted with black memories and indistinct surmises of guilt and suffering. In old Rome, I suppose, the citizens never spoke of this dungeon above their breath.
Of this most terrible and cruel species of warfare Sallust speaks at the end of his history of the war with Jugurtha, where in mentioning that after the defeat of Jugurtha the movement of the Gauls into Italy began to be noticed, he observes that "in the wars of the Romans with other nations the struggle was for mastery; but that always in their wars with the Gauls the struggle on both sides was for life."
It is easy to see that such an army could do nothing in the field; and if Jugurtha on this occasion bribed the Roman general into inaction, as was afterwards judicially asserted against the latter, he did in truth what was superfluous. Spurius Albinus therefore contented himself with doing nothing.
The long winter quarters may have betrayed a deficiency in pay and provisions, and if Jugurtha purchased the security of a district, its immunity would be too public an event to make it possible for the commander of the attacking forces to pocket the whole of the ransom.
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