be a mean
fellow, but the hinder parts will be served, and enough of them to
satisfy everybody. People who eat the fore parts have no palate." If
luxury goes on at this rate there will soon be nothing left but for
them to have their meats nibbled at for them by some one else, to save
them the toil of eating. Already the couches of some men are decorated
more lavishly with silver and purple and gold than those of the
immortal gods.'

If the war up to this stage had revealed the hopeless depravity of the
senatorial government, its subsequent course revealed what shape
the revolution about to engulf that government would assume. The
consulship of Marius, won in spite of Metellus, signified really the
fall of the Republic and the rise of monarchy, while the rivalry of
Marius and Sulla showed that supreme authority would be competed for,
not in the forum but the camp. The law of Manilius necessitated an
earnest prosecution of the war. [Sidenote: Metellus appointed to the
command against Jugurtha. His character.] Quintus Caecilius Metellus
was elected consul for the year 109, and received Numidia as his
province. He was a stern, proud man; but if in his childish hauteur he
had a double portion of the foible of his order, he was free from many
of its vices. He set to work at once to rediscipline the army; and
his punishment of deserters, abominable in itself, was no doubt an
effective warning that the new general was not a man with whom it was
safe to trifle. The Romans were never gentle to the deserter unless he
deserted to them. They threw him to wild beasts, or cut off his hands.
Metellus did more. He buried 3,000 men to their waists, made the
soldiers use them as targets, and finally burned them.

[Sidenote: Battle on the Muthul.] Jugurtha was alarmed, and sent to
offer terms, asking only a guarantee for his life. Metellus returned
evasive answers, and secretly intrigued with the messengers for the
surrender or assassination of the king. But though assassination had
become one of the recognised weapons of a Roman noble, Metellus was a
novice in the art by the side of Jugurtha, who determined to die hard
now he was at bay. The Romans had to cross a range of mountains, after
which they descended into a plain through which the river Muthul
(probably a branch of the modern Mejerda) ran eighteen miles off.
Between them and the river was hilly ground--probably a spur from
the range. On this hilly ground the king posted Bomilca