dates. Phrygia was the share
assigned to him; but the Senate took it back from his successor,
saying that the consul Aquillius had been bribed to give it. The
consul may have been base or the Senate mean, or, what is more
probable, the baseness of the one was used as a welcome plea by the
other's meanness. The European part was added to the province of
Macedonia. The Lycian confederacy received Telmissus. The rest was
formed into a province, which was called Asia--the name being at once
an incentive to and a nucleus for future annexation. Such a nucleus
they already possessed in the province of Africa, and there also war
was kindled by the ambition of a bastard.

[Sidenote: Jugurtha.] Jugurtha was the illegitimate son of Mastanabal,
Micipsa's brother. He had served at Numantia under Scipio, along with
his future conqueror Marius. There he had begun to intrigue with
influential Romans for the succession to the Numidian kingdom, and
had been rebuked by Scipio, who told him he should cultivate the
friendship, not of individual Romans, but of the State. But in
Jugurtha's heart a noble sentiment found no echo. Brave, treacherous,
restless, an able commander, a crafty politician, adroit in discerning
and profiting by other men's bad qualities, wading to the throne
through the blood of three kinsmen, he in some respects resembles
Shakspeare's Richard III.,--his 'prime of manhood daring, bold, and
venturous,' his 'age confirmed, proud, subtle, sly, and bloody.'
[Sidenote: Micipsa's will.] Micipsa had shared the kingdom with his
two brothers, who died before him; and as this, which was Scipio's
arrangement, had not worked badly in his own case, he in his turn left
his kingdom between Adherbal, Hiempsal, and Jugurtha. Adherbal was
weak and pusillanimous, Hiempsal hot-tempered and rash. Jugurtha, ten
or fifteen years older than either, was the favourite of the nation,
his handsome, martial figure and his reputation as a soldier according
with the notions of a race of riders as to what a king should be.
Hiempsal soon provoked him by refusing to yield the place of honour to
him at their first meeting; and when Jugurtha said that Micipsa's acts
during the last five years of his life should be held as null because
of his impaired faculties, Hiempsal retorted that he agreed with him,
for it was within three years that he had adopted Jugurtha. [Sidenote:
Jugurtha gets rid of Hiempsal.] Hiempsal went to a town called
Thirmida, to the ho