Jugurtha's Filthy Little War & the Rise of Marius

A History of Mankind (197)

To check all previous newsletters in the History of Mankind, which is pretty long, you can click here.

Foreign envoys in Rome understood Roman political realities, dirty and dispiriting as they were, very well and communicated them to their masters in Alexandria, Seleucia and elsewhere.

Senatorial reluctance regarding foreign entanglements created a massive opening for bribery, since envoys with funds to spend could easily find receptive hands and ears among senators who didn’t feel they were betraying Roman interests while taking cash in exchange for not involving the Republic in distant quarrels. As a matter of fact, these senators had some justification for believing that they were instead being rewarded for doing the right thing for Rome.

Many foreign kings played this game, and nobody better than Jugurtha. This Numidian prince, an illegitimate grandson of the long-lived Masinissa – who defeated Hannibal in Zama with Scipio Africanus and then had a long reign that only ended with his death in 148 BC, at the age of around 90 – had made important connections in Rome during the Numantia campaign in Northern Hispania; there, he served under Scipio Aemilianus and alongside Gaius Marius, and came away with a poor opinion of the brutal Romans.