THE HISTORY OF OLD ROME

IV. The Revolution

From: The History of Rome, by Theodor Mommsen
Translated with the sanction of the author by William Purdie Dickson

CHAPTER IV - The Rule of the Restoration

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Page 60

Reorganization of Numidia

They contented themselves accordingly with annexing the most westerly district of Numidia, probably the tract from the river Molochath to the harbour of Saldae (Bougie)--the later Mauretania Caesariensis (province of Algiers)--to the kingdom of Bocchus, and with handing over the kingdom of Numidia thus diminished to the last legitimate grandson of Massinissa still surviving, Gauda the half-brother of Jugurtha, feeble in body and mind, who had already in 646 at the suggestion of Marius asserted his claims before the senate.(15)

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. That Gauda became Jugurtha's successor is indicated by Sallust, c. 65 and Dio. Fr. 79, 4, Bekk., and confirmed by an inscription of Carthagena (Orell. 630), which calls him king and father of Hiempsal II.

That on the east the frontier relations subsisting between Numidia on the one hand and Roman Africa and Cyrene on the other remained unchanged, is shown by Caesar (B. C. ii. 38; B. Afr. 43, 77) and by the later provincial constitution. On the other hand the nature of the case implied, and Sallust (c. 97, 102, 111) indicates, that the kingdom of Bocchus was considerably enlarged; with which is undoubtedly connected the fact, that Mauretania, originally restricted to the region of Tingis (Morocco), afterwards extended to the region of Caesarea (province of Algiers) and to that of Sitifis (western half of the province of Constantine). As Mauretania was twice enlarged by the Romans, first in 649 after the surrender of Jugurtha, and then in 708 after the breaking up of the Numidian kingdom, it is probable that the region of Caesarea was added on the first, and that of Sitifis on the second augmentation.

At the same time the Gaetulian tribes in the interior of Africa were received as free allies into the number of the independent nations that had treaties with Rome.

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