A City for Sale

Jugurtha, grandson of Masinissa, had served with distinction under Scipio Aemilianus in Spain, where he made many friends among the Roman nobility. After the death of his adoptive father, King Micipsa of Numidia, he had one of his two co-heirs killed and made war on the other, Adherbal, whom he besieged and put to death at Cirta in 112 BC, killing many Italian traders in the city as well. Again and again, Sallust says, the Roman envoys and senators sent to stop him came home with his gold.

Rome declared war, but the first campaign ended in a suspiciously easy peace. Jugurtha was summoned to Rome under a safe-conduct to give evidence about the men he had bribed, and a tribune in his pay forbade him to speak. While in the city he had his cousin Massiva, a rival claimant who had come to Rome to seek support, murdered. That was too much even for the Senate, and Jugurtha was ordered to leave Italy. Sallust writes that after he had left the city he is said to have looked back at it often in silence, and at last to have said: 'A city for sale, and doomed to perish quickly if it finds a buyer.' The war that followed brought Gaius Marius to power and ended only in 105 BC, when Jugurtha was betrayed to the young quaestor Sulla. He was led in Marius's triumph and died in a Roman prison.