pay 200,000 pounds of silver, and had even
delivered up his elephants and 300 hostages, as well as 3000 Roman
deserters, who were immediately put to death. At the same time,
however, the king's most confidential counsellor, Bomilcar--who not
unreasonably apprehended that, if peace should ensue, Jugurtha would
deliver him up as the murderer of Massiva to the Roman courts--was
gained by Metellus and induced, in consideration of an assurance of
impunity as respected that murder and of great rewards, to promise
that he would deliver the king alive or dead into the hands of the
Romans. But neither that official negotiation nor this intrigue
led to the desired result. When Metellus brought forward the
suggestion that the king should give himself up in person as a
prisoner, the latter broke off the negotiations; Bomilcar's
intercourse with the enemy was discovered, and he was arrested and
executed. These diplomatic cabals of the meanest kind admit of no
apology; but the Romans had every reason to aim at the possession of
the person of their antagonist. The war had reached a point, at which
it could neither be carried farther nor abandoned. The state of
feeling in Numidia was evinced by the revolt of Vaga,(13) the most
considerable of the cities occupied by the Romans, in the winter of
646-7; on which occasion the whole Roman garrison, officers and men,
were put to death with the exception of the commandant Titus Turpilius
Silanus, who was afterwards--whether rightly or wrongly, we cannot
tell--condemned to death by a Roman court-martial and executed for
having an understanding with the enemy. The town was surprised
by Metellus on the second day after its revolt, and given over to
all the rigour of martial law; but if such was the temper of the
easy to be reached and comparatively submissive dwellers on the
banks of the Bagradas, what might be looked for farther inland and
among the roving tribes of the desert? Jugurtha was the idol of
the Africans, who readily overlooked the double fratricide in the
liberator and avenger of their nation. Twenty years afterwards a
Numidian corps which was fighting in Italy for the Romans had to
be sent back in all haste to Africa, when the son of Jugurtha
appeared in the enemy's ranks; we may infer from this, how great
was the influence which he himself exercised over his people.
What prospect was there of a termination of the struggle in regions
where the combined peculiarities of the