IV. II. Tribunate Of Gracchus
3. It is in great part still extant and known under the erroneous name, which has now been handed down for three hundred years, of the Thorian agrarian law.
4. II. VII. Attempts At Peace
5. II. VII. Attempts At Peace
6. This is apparent, as is well known, from the further course of events. In opposition to this view stress has been laid on the fact that in Valerius Maximus, vi. 9, 13, Quintus Caepio is called patron of the senate; but on the one hand this does not prove enough, and on the other hand what is there narrated does not at all suit the consul of 648, so that there must be an error either in the name or in the facts reported.
7. It is assumed in many quarters that the establishment of the province of Cilicia only took place after the Cilician expedition of Publius Servilius in 676 et seq., but erroneously; for as early as 662 we find Sulla (Appian, Mithr. 57; B. C. i. 77; Victor, 75), and in 674, 675, Gnaeus Dolabella (Cic. Verr. i. 1, 16, 44) as governors of Cilicia--which leaves no alternative but to place the establishment of the province in 652. This view is further supported by the fact that at this time the expeditions of the Romans against the corsairs--e. g. the Balearic, Ligurian, and Dalmatian expeditions--appear to have been regularly directed to the occupation of the points of the coast whence piracy issued; and this was natural, for, as the Romans had no standing fleet, the only means of effectually checking piracy was the occupation of the coasts. It is to be remembered, moreover, that the idea of a -provincia- did not absolutely involve possession of the country, but in itself implied no more than an independent military command; it is very possible, that the Romans in the first instance occupied nothing in this rugged country save stations for their vessels and troops.
The plain of eastern Cilicia remained down to the war against Tigranes attached to the Syrian empire (Appian, Syr. 48); the districts to the north of the Taurus formerly reckoned as belonging to Cilicia-- Cappadocian Cilicia, as it was called, and Cataonia--belonged to Cappadocia, the former from the time of the breaking up of the kingdom of Attalus (Justin, xxxvii. 1; see above, IV. I. War Against Aristonicus), the latter probably even from the time of the peace with Antiochus.
8. IV. II. Insurrections Of The Slaves
9. III. VII. Numidians
10. IV. I The Siege
11. The following table exhibits the genealogy of the Numidian princes:--
Massinissa 516-605 (238-149) ------------------------------------------------------ Micipsa Gulussa Mastanabal d. 636 d. bef. 636 d. bef. 636 (118) (118) (118) ---------------------------- ------- --------------------- Adherbal Hiempsal I Micipsa Massiva Gauda Jugurtha d. 642 d. c. 637 (Diod. d. 643 d.bef. 666 d. 650 (112) (117) p. 607) (111) (88) (104) ----------- ------- Hiempsal II Oxyntas ------ Juba I ------- Juba II
12. In the exciting and clever description of this war by Sallust the chronology has been unduly neglected. The war terminated in the summer of 649 (c. 114); if therefore Marius began his management of the war as consul in 647, he held the command there in three campaigns. But the narrative describes only two, and rightly so. For, just as Metellus to all appearance went to Africa as early as 645, but, since he arrived late (c. 37, 44), and the reorganization of the army cost time (c. 44), only began his operations in the following year, in like manner Marius, who was likewise detained for a considerable time in Italy by his military preparations (c. 84), entered on the chief command either as consul in 647 late in the season and after the close of the campaign, or only as proconsul in 648; so that the two campaigns of Metellus thus fall in 646, 647, and those of Marius in 648, 649. It is in keeping with this that Metellus did not triumph till the year 648 (Eph. epigr. iv. p. 277). With this view the circumstance also very well accords, that the battle on the Muthul and the siege of Zama must, from the relation in which they stand to Marius' candidature for the consulship, be necessarily placed in 646. In no case can the author be pronounced free from inaccuracies; Marius, for instance, is even spoken of by him as consul in 649.
The prolongation of the command of Metellus, which Sallust reports (lxii. 10), can in accordance with the place at which it stands only refer to the year 647; when in the summer of 646 on the footing of the Sempronian law the provinces of the consuls to be elected for 647 were to be fixed, the senate destined two other provinces and thus left Numidia to Metellus. This resolve of the senate was overturned by the plebiscitum mentioned at lxxii. 7. The following words which are transmitted to us defectively in the best manuscripts of both families, -sed paulo... decreverat; ea res frustra fuit,- must either have named the provinces destined for the consuls by the senate, possibly -sed paulo [ante ut consulibus Italia et Gallia provinciae essent senatus] decreverat- or have run according to the way of filling up the passage in the ordinary manuscripts; -sed paulo [ante senatus Metello Numidiam] decreverat-.
13. Now Beja on the Mejerdah.
14. The locality has not been discovered. The earlier supposition that Thelepte (near Feriana, to the northward of Capsa) was meant, is arbitrary; and the identification with a locality still at the present day named Thala to the east of Capsa is not duly made out.
15. Sallust's political genre-painting of the Jugurthine war--the only picture that has preserved its colours fresh in the otherwise utterly faded and blanched tradition of this epoch--closes with the fall of Jugurtha, faithful to its style of composition, poetical, not historical; nor does there elsewhere exist any connected account of the treatment of the Numidian kingdom.