The history of the Jugurthine war has been thus far related at greater length than the space at command would warrant if it was merely a history of military details.  But it is a striking commentary on the politics of the time and the vices of the government.  The state of society could not be more succinctly summed up than in the words with which Jugurtha quitted Rome.  What was it which made the nobles so greedy of money as to be lost to all shame in hunting for it?  A speech supposed to have been delivered that very year partly answers the question:  ’Gourmands say that a meal is not all that it ought to be unless, precisely when you are relishing most what you are eating, your plate is removed and another, and better, and richer one is put in its place.  Your exquisite, who makes extravagance and fastidiousness pass for wit, calls that the “bloom of a meal.”  “The only bird,” says he, “which you should eat whole is the becafico.  Of every other bird, wild or tame, nothing, unless your host 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.