liverer of Libya from the rule of the
hated foreigners; unscrupulous and cunning as he was, and unwieldy
as was the Roman government, he might at any time even after a peace
rekindle the war in his native country; tranquillity would not be
secured, and the removal of the African army would not be possible,
until king Jugurtha should cease to exist. Officially Metellus gave
evasive answers to the proposals of the king; secretly he instigated
the envoys to deliver their master living or dead to the Romans. But,
when the Roman general undertook to compete with the African in the
field of assassination, he there met his master; Jugurtha saw
through the plan, and, when he could not do otherwise, prepared
for a desperate resistance.

Battle on the Muthul

Beyond the utterly barren mountain-range, over which lay the route of
the Romans into the interior, a plain of eighteen miles in breadth
extended as far as the river Muthul, which ran parallel to the
mountain-chain. The plain was destitute of water and of trees except
in the immediate vicinity of the river, and was only intersected by
a hill-ridge covered with low brushwood. On this ridge Jugurtha
awaited the Roman army. His troops were arranged in two masses;
the one, including a part of the infantry and the elephants, under
Bomilcar at the point where the ridge abutted on the river, the
other, embracing the flower of the infantry and all the cavalry,
higher up towards the mountain-range, concealed by the bushes.
On debouching from the mountains, the Romans saw the enemy in a
position completely commanding their right flank; and, as they could
not possibly remain on the bare and arid crest of the chain and were
under the necessity of reaching the river, they had to solve the
difficult problem of gaining the stream through the entirely open plain
of eighteen miles in breadth, under the eyes of the enemy's horsemen and
without light cavalry of their own. Metellus despatched a detachment
under Rufus straight towards the river, to pitch a camp there;
the main body marched from the defiles of the mountain-chain in an
oblique direction through the plain towards the hill-ridge, with a
view to dislodge the enemy from the latter. But this march in the
plain threatened to become the destruction of the army; for, while
Numidian infantry occupied the mountain defiles in the rear of the
Romans as the latter evacuated them, the Roman attacking column found
itself assailed on al