urtha to Sulla; and yet in the eyes
of unprejudiced judges the services of these two threw the generalship
of Marius very much into the shade--more especially Sulla's brilliant
expedition to the desert, which had made his courage, his presence of
mind, his acuteness, his power over men to be recognized by the
general himself and by the whole army. In themselves these military
rivalries would have been of little moment, if they had not been mixed
up with the conflict of political parties, if the opposition had not
supplanted the senatorial general by Marius, and if the party of the
government had not, with the deliberate intention of exasperating,
praised Metellus and still more Sulla as the military celebrities
and preferred them to the nominal victor. We shall have to return
to the fatal consequences of these animosities when narrating
the internal history.

Reorganization of Numidia

Otherwise, this insurrection of the Numidian client-state passed
away without producing any noticeable change either in political
relations generally or even in those of the African province.
By a deviation from the policy elsewhere followed at this period
Numidia was not converted into a Roman province; evidently because
the country could not be held without an army to protect the frontier
against the barbarians of the desert, and the Romans were by no
means disposed to maintain a standing army in Africa. 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)
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.

Political Issues

Of greater importance than this regulation of African clientship were
the political consequences of the Jugurthine war or rather of the
Jugurthine insurrection, although these have been frequently estimated
too highly. Certainly all the evils of the government were therein
brought to light in all their nakedness; it was now