seemed to be so, the king requested that, for the purpose of concluding the treaty and receiving the royal captive, Marius would send to him Lucius Sulla, who was known and acceptable to the king partly from his having formerly appeared as envoy of the senate at the Mauretanian court, partly from the commendations of the Mauretanian envoys destined for Rome to whom Sulla had rendered services on their way.  Marius was in an awkward position.  His declining the suggestion would probably lead to a breach; his accepting it would throw his most aristocratic and bravest officer into the hands of a man more than untrustworthy, who, as every one knew, played a double game with the Romans and with Jugurtha, and who seemed almost to have contrived the scheme for the purpose of obtaining for himself provisional hostages from both sides in the persons of Jugurtha and Sulla.  But the wish to terminate the war outweighed every other consideration, and Sulla agreed to undertake the perilous task which Marius suggested to him.  He boldly departed under the guidance of Volux the son of king Bocchus, nor did his resolution waver even when his guide led him through the midst of Jugurtha’s camp.  He rejected the pusillanimous proposals of flight that came from his attendants, and marched, with the king’s son at his side, uninjured through the enemy.  The daring officer evinced the same decision in the discussions with the sultan, and induced him at length seriously to make his choice.

Surrender and Execution of Jugurtha

Jugurtha was sacrificed.  Under the pretext that all his requests were to be granted, he was allured by his own father-in-law into an ambush, his attendants were killed, and he himself was taken prisoner.  The great traitor thus fell by the treachery of his nearest relatives.  Lucius Sulla brought the crafty and restless African in chains along with his children to the Roman headquarters; and the war which had lasted for seven years was at an end.  The victory was primarily associated with the name of Marius.  King Jugurtha in royal robes and in chains, along with his two sons, preceded the triumphal chariot of the victor, when he entered Rome on the 1st of January 650:  by his orders the son of the desert perished a few days afterwards in the subterranean city-prison, the old -tullianum- at the Capitol—­ the “bath of ice,” as the African called it, when he crossed the threshold in order either to be strangled or to perish from cold and hunger there.  But it could not be denied that Marius had the least important share in the actual 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