the
idlers of the streets this was quite clear: numerous persons
unfriendly for reasons good or bad to the government, and especially
the justly-indignant mercantile order, desired nothing better than such
an opportunity of annoying the aristocracy in its most sensitive point:
he was elected to the consulship by an enormous majority, and not only
so, but, while in other cases by the law of Gaius Gracchus the
decision as to the respective functions to be assigned to the consuls
lay with the senate (p. 355), the arrangement made by the senate
which left Metellus at his post was overthrown, and by decree of
the sovereign comitia the supreme command in the African war
was committed to Marius.

Conflicts without Result

Accordingly he took the place of Metellus in the course of 647;
and held the command in the campaign of the following year; but his
confident promise to do better than his predecessor and to deliver
Jugurtha bound hand and foot with all speed at Rome was more easily
given than fulfilled. Marius carried on a desultory warfare with
the Gaetulians; he reduced several towns that had not previously been
occupied; he undertook an expedition to Capsa (Gafsa) in the extreme
south-east of the kingdom, which surpassed even that of Thala in
difficulty, took the town by capitulation, and in spite of the
convention caused all the adult men in it to be slain--the only
means, no doubt, of preventing the renewed revolt of that remote city
of the desert; he attacked a mountain-stronghold--situated on the
river Molochath, which separated the Numidian territory from the
Mauretanian--whither Jugurtha had conveyed his treasure-chest, and,
just as he was about to desist from the siege in despair of success,
fortunately gained possession of the impregnable fastness through
the coup de main of some daring climbers. 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 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 Mau