successes: the conquest of Numidia up
to the edge of the desert was the work of Metellus, the capture of
Jugurtha was the work of Sulla, and between the two Marius played a
part somewhat compromising the dignity of an ambitious upstart.
Marius reluctantly tolerated the assumption by his predecessor of the
name of conqueror of Numidia; he flew into a violent rage when king
Bocchus afterwards consecrated a golden effigy at the Capitol, which
represented the surrender of Jugurtha to Sulla; and yet in the eyes
of unprejudiced judges the services of these two threw the generalship
of Marius very much into the shade--more especially Sulla's brilliant
expedition to the desert, which had made his courage, his presence of
mind, his acuteness, his power over men to be recognized by the
general himself and by the whole army. In themselves these military
rivalries would have been of little moment, if they had not been mixed
up with the conflict of political parties, if the opposition had not
supplanted the senatorial general by Marius, and if the party of the
government had not, with the deliberate intention of exasperating,
praised Metellus and still more Sulla as the military celebrities
and preferred them to the nominal victor. We shall have to return
to the fatal consequences of these animosities when narrating
the internal history.

Reorganization of Numidia

Otherwise, this insurrection of the Numidian client-state passed
away without producing any noticeable change either in political
relations generally or even in those of the African province.
By a deviation from the policy elsewhere followed at this period
Numidia was not converted into a Roman province; evidently because
the country could not be held without an army to protect the frontier
against the barbarians of the desert, and the Romans were by no
means disposed to maintain a standing army in Africa. They
contented themselves accordingly with annexing the most westerly
district of Numidia, probably the tract from the river Molochath to
the harbour of Saldae (Bougie)--the later Mauretania Caesariensis
(province of Algiers)--to the kingdom of Bocchus, and with handing
over the kingdom of Numidia thus diminished to the last legitimate
grandson of Massinissa still surviving, Gauda the half-brother of
Jugurtha, feeble in body and mind, who had already in 646 at the
suggestion of Marius asserted his claims before the senate.(15)
At the same time the Gaetulian tribe