The War for the Numidian Succession

Soon afterwards, in 636, king Micipsa died.  The testament came into force:  but the two sons of Micipsa—­the vehement Hiempsal still more than his weak elder brother—­soon came into so violent collision with their cousin whom they looked on as an intruder into the legitimate line of succession, that the idea of a joint reign of the three kings had to be abandoned.  An attempt was made to carry out a division of the heritage; but the quarrelling kings could not agree as to their quotas of land and treasure, and the protecting power, to which in this case the decisive word by right belonged, gave itself, as usual, no concern about this affair.  A rupture took place; Adherbal and Hiempsal were disposed to characterize their father’s testament as surreptitious and altogether to dispute Jugurtha’s right of joint inheritance, while on the other hand Jugurtha came forward as a pretender to the whole kingdom.  While the discussions as to the partition were still going on, Hiempsal was made away with by hired assassins; then a civil war arose between Adherbal and Jugurtha, in which all Numidia took part.  With his less numerous but better disciplined and better led troops Jugurtha conquered, and seized the whole territory of the kingdom, subjecting the chiefs who adhered to his cousin to the most cruel persecution.  Adherbal escaped to the Roman province and proceeded to Rome to make his complaint there.  Jugurtha had expected this, and had made his arrangements to meet the threatened intervention.  In the camp before Numantia he had learned more from Rome than Roman tactics; the Numidian prince, introduced to the circles of the Roman aristocracy, had at the same time been initiated into the intrigues of Roman coteries, and had studied at the fountain-head what might be expected from Roman nobles.  Even then, sixteen years before Micipsa’s death, he had entered into disloyal negotiations as to the Numidian succession with Roman comrades of rank, and Scipio had been under the necessity of gravely reminding him that it was becoming in foreign princes to be on terms of friendship with the Roman state rather than with individual Roman citizens.  The envoys of Jugurtha appeared in Rome, furnished with something more than words:  that they had chosen the right means of diplomatic persuasion, was shown by the result.  The most zealous champions of Adherbal’s just title were with incredible rapidity convinced that Hiempsal had been put to death by his subjects on account of his cruelty, and that the originator of the war as to the succession was not Jugurtha, but Adherbal.  Even the leading men in the senate were shocked at the scandal; Marcus Scaurus sought to check it, but in vain.  The senate passed over what had taken place in silence, and ordained that the two surviving testamentary heirs should have the kingdom equally divided between them, and that, for the prevention of fresh quarrels, the division should be undertaken by a commission of the