The crown jewel of Marius’s triumph was King Jugurtha himself. The last time Jugurtha was in Rome he had bribed senators, defied the Assembly, and ordered an assassination. He managed to upend domestic Roman politics and stay one step ahead of the legions for a decade. Now he was bound in chains like a common criminal and forced to march alongside his two sons, facing the humiliation of being the object not of awe and fear, but mockery and ridicule. At the end of the triumphal parade, Jugurtha was tossed into a prison cell so roughly that the gold earring he wore—the last piece of gold he had to his name—was ripped clean out of his ear. There was no more bribery. No more cunning plans. The Romans left him to die in a dungeon pit naked and starving: “He himself, too, conquered and in chains, saw the city of which he had vainly prophesied that it could be bought and would one day perish if it could find a purchaser. In Jugurtha it had a purchaser—if it had been for sale; but once it had escaped his hands, it was certain that it was not doomed to perish.” After six days of defiant resistance, Jugurtha finally dropped dead on the floor.40
But Marius was not able to enjoy his triumph in peace. Men who disdained the usurping novus homo praised the young noble Sulla as the
The generals of this later time… who needed their armies for service against one another, rather than against the public enemy, were compelled to merge the general and the demagogue.
PLUTARCH1
THE MEN WERE GETTING RESTLESS. FOR THREE DAYS, THEY had sat in their camps along the Rhône river in southern Gaul, surveying a vast horde of barbarians. Eager to fight after nearly two years of anticipation, they could not understand why Marius did not give the order to attack. Was this not what they had been waiting for? Was this not what they had been training for? For three days, they endured the ferocious war cries and taunts from the enemy. They endured repeated attacks on the walls. They endured the enemy ravaging the countryside. But Marius refused to let them attack.2
The men’s indignation at their commander’s inaction soon turned to disgust. “What cowardice has Marius discovered in us that he keeps out of battle,” they asked. “Does he fear the fate of Carbo and Caepio, whom the enemy defeated? Surely it is better to do something, even if we perish as they did, rather than to sit here and enjoy the spectacle of our allies being plundered.” But Marius held fast, saying there was far more at stake than pride. “It was not,” he said, “triumphs or trophies that should now be the object of [your] ambition, but how [you] might ward off so great a cloud and thunder-bolt of war and secure the safety of Italy.” Instead of fighting, he ordered his soldiers to man the walls and observe the enemy. He told them to study their weapons and watch how their horsemen rode. Marius wanted his men to grow accustomed to the frightening war cries and painted faces of these northern warriors so that the legionaries understood they were facing ordinary men, not demons from the underworld.3
On the fourth day, the great mass of barbarians offered one last attack, coming hard at the walls of the Roman camps. They were predictably repulsed. Deciding these Romans would never come out of their hiding place, the barbarians elected to pull up stakes and keep moving. In a great procession, they marched past the Romans camps—an entire nation of men, women, and children continued their migration south down the Rhône. As the horde passed they shouted a final taunt at the Romans, asking if they had any messages for their wives, “for we shall soon be with them.” When the last of these northerners had passed and traveled a safe distance down the river, Marius finally ordered his men to break camp and follow.4
