Part 8 (1/2)

That prince, however, did not allow his past relations to be an obstacle to his present enterprise. The conquest of Opimius was the immediate object to which he devoted all his energies. As soon as the commissioners had appeared on African soil, they and their chief were received with the utmost deference by the king. The frequent and secret colloquies which took place between the arbitrators and one of the parties interested in their decision were not a happy omen for an impartial judgment, and, if the award could by the exercise of malevolent ingenuity be interpreted as unfair, would certainly breed the suspicion, and, in case the matter was ever submitted to a hostile court of law, the proof that the honour of the commissioners had succ.u.mbed to the usual vulgar and universally accredited methods of corruption. On the face of it the award seemed eminently just. Numidia was becoming a commercial and agricultural state; but since commerce and agriculture did not flourish in the same domains, it was impossible to endow each of the claimants equally with both these sources of wealth. To Adherbal was given that part of the kingdom which in its external attributes seemed the more desirable; he was to rule over the eastern half of Numidia which bordered on the Roman province, the portion of the country which enjoyed a readier access to the sea and could boast of a fuller development of urban life. Cirta the capital lay within this sphere, and Adherbal could continue to give justice from the throne of his fathers.

But those who held that the strength of a country depended mainly on its people and its soil, believed that Jugurtha had received the better part. The territories with which he was entrusted were those bordering on Mauretania, rich in the products of the soil and teeming with healthy human life.[895] From the point of view of military resources there could be no question as to which of the two kings was the stronger. The peaceful character of Adherbal may have seemed a justification for his peaceful sphere of rule; but the original aggressor was kept at his normal strength. Jugurtha ruled over the lands in which the national spirit, of which he was himself the embodiment, found its fullest and fiercest expression. He did not mean to acquiesce for a moment in the settlement effected by the commission. No sooner had it completed its task and returned home, than he began to devise a scheme which would lead to war between the two princ.i.p.alities and the consequent annihilation of Adherbal. He shrank at first from provoking the senate by a wanton attack on the neighbouring kingdom which they had just created; his design was rather to draw Adherbal into hostilities which would lead to a pitched battle, a certain victory, the disappearance of the last of Micipsa's race and the union of the two crowns. With this object he ma.s.sed a considerable force on the boundary between the two kingdoms and suddenly crossed the frontier. His mounted raiders captured shepherds with their flocks, ravaged the fields of the peasantry, looted and burned their homes; then swept back within their own borders.[896]

But Adherbal was not moved to reprisals. His circ.u.mstances no less than his temperament dictated methods of peace: and, if he could not keep his crown by diplomacy, he must have regarded it as lost. The Roman people was a better safeguard than his Numidian subjects, and it was necessary to temporise with Jugurtha until the senate could be moved by a strong appeal. Envoys were despatched to the court of the aggressor to complain of the recent outrage; they brought back an impudent reply; but Adherbal, steadfast in his pacific resolutions, still remained quiescent, Jugurtha's plan had failed and he was in no mood for further delay; he held now, as he had done once before, that his end could best be effected by vigorous and decisive action. The lapse of time could not improve his own position but might strengthen that of Adherbal, and it was advisable that a new Roman commission should witness an accomplished fact and make the best of it rather than engage again in the settlement of a disputed claim. It was no longer a predatory band but a large and regular army that he now collected; his present purpose was not a foray but a war.[897] He advanced into his rival's territory ravaging its fields, harrying its cities and gathering booty as he went. At every step the confidence of his own forces, the dismay of the enemy increased.

Adherbal was at last convinced that he must appeal to the sword for the security of his crown. A second flight to Rome would have utterly discredited him in the eyes of his subjects, perhaps in those of the Roman government itself; yet, as his chief hope still lay in Rome, he hurriedly despatched an emba.s.sy to the suzerain city[898] while he himself prepared to take the field. With unwilling energy he gathered his available forces and marched to oppose Jugurtha's triumphant progress. The invading host had now skirted Cirta to the west and was apparently attempting to cut off its communications with the sea. The disastrous results that would have followed the success of this attempt, may have been the final motive that spurred Adherbal to his appeal to arms; and it was somewhere within the fifty miles that intervened between the capital and its port of Rusicade and at a spot nearer to the sea than to Cirta,[899] that the opposing armies met. The day was already far spent when Adherbal came into touch with his enemy: there was no thought of a pitched battle in the gathering gloom, and either party took up his quarters for the night. Towards the late watches of the night, in the doubtful light of the early dawn, the soldiers of Jugurtha crept up to the outposts of the enemy; at a given signal they rushed on the camp and carried it by storm. Adherbal's soldiers, heavy with sleep and groping for their arms, were routed or slain; the prince himself sprang on his horse and with a handful of his knights sped for safety to the walls of Cirta, Jugurtha's troops in hot pursuit. They had almost closed on the fugitive before the walls were reached; but the race had been watched from the battlements, and, as the flying Adherbal pa.s.sed the gates, the walls were manned by a volunteer body of Italian merchants who kept the pursuing Numidians at bay.[900] It was the merchant cla.s.s that had most to fear from the cruelty and cupidity of the nomad hordes that now beat against the fortress, and during the siege that followed they controlled the course of events far more effectually than the unhappy king whom they had for the moment saved from destruction.

Jugurtha's plans were foiled; Adherbal had escaped, and there lay before him the irksome prospect of a siege, of probable interference from Rome and, it might be, of the necessity of openly defying the senate's commands. But it was now too late to draw back, and he set himself vigorously to the work of reducing Cirta by a.s.sault or famine. The task must have been an arduous one. The town formed one of the strongest positions for defence that could be found in the ancient world. It was built on an isolated cube of rock that towered above the vast cultivated tracts of the surrounding plain. At its eastern extremity the precipice made a sheer drop of six hundred feet, and was perhaps quite inaccessible on this side, although it threw out spurs, whether natural or of artificial construction, which formed a difficult and easily defensible communication with the lower land around. Its natural bastions were completed by a natural moat, for the river Ampsaga (the Wad Remel) almost encircled the town, and on the eastern side its deep and rus.h.i.+ng waters could only be crossed by a ledge of rock, through which it bored a subterranean channel and over which some kind of bridge or causeway had probably been formed.[901] The natural and easy mode of approach to the city was to be found in the south-west, where a neck of land of half a furlong's breadth led up to the princ.i.p.al gate.

In spite of the formidable difficulties of the task Jugurtha attempted an a.s.sault, for it was of the utmost importance that he should possess the person of Adherbal before interference was felt from Rome. Mantlets, turrets and all the engines of siege warfare were vigorously employed to carry the town by storm;[902] but the stout walls baffled every effort, and Jugurtha was forced to face as best he might another Roman emba.s.sy which Adherbal's protests had brought to African soil. The senate, when it had learnt the news of the renewed outbreak of the war, was as unwilling as ever to intervene as a third partner in a three-sided conflict. To play the part of the policeman as well as of the judge was no element in Roman policy; the very essence of a protectorate was that it should take care of itself; were intervention necessary, it should be decisive, and it would be a lengthy task and an arduous strain to gather and transport to Africa a force sufficient to overawe Jugurtha. The easy device of a new commission was therefore adopted. If its Suggestions were obeyed, all would be well; if they were neglected, matters could not be much worse than they were at present. As the new commissioners had merely to take a message and were credited with no discretionary power, it was thought unnecessary to burden the higher magnates of the State with the unenviable task, or to expose them to the undignified predicament of finding their representations flouted by a rebel who might have eventually to be recognised as a king. A chance was given to younger members of the senatorial order, and the three who landed in Africa were branded by the hostile criticism that was soon to find utterance and in the poverty of its indictment to catch at every straw, as lacking the age and dignity demanded by the mission--qualities which, had they been present, would probably have failed to make the least impression on Jugurtha's fixed resolve. The commissioners were to approach both the kings and to bring to their notice the will and resolution of the Roman senate and people, which were to the effect that hostilities should be suspended and that the questions at issue between the rivals should be submitted to peaceful arbitration. This conduct the senate recommended as the only one worthy of its royal clients and of itself.[903]

The speed of the envoys was accelerated by the impression that they might find but one king to be the recipient of their message. On the eve of their departure the news of the decisive battle and the siege of Cirta had reached their ears. Haste was imperative, if they were to retain their position as envoys, for the next despatch might bring news of Adherbal's death. The actual news received fell short of the truth,[904] and was perhaps still further softened for the public ear; the fact that the envoys had sailed was itself an official indication that all hope had not been abandoned. If they cherished a similar illusion themselves, it must almost have vanished before the sight that met their eyes in Numidia. They saw a closely beleaguered town in which one of the kings, who were to be the recipients of their message, was so closely hemmed that access to him was impossible.[905] The other, without abating one jot of his military preparations, met them with an answer as uncompromising as it was courteous. Jugurtha held nothing more precious than the authority of the senate; from his youth up he had striven to meet the approbation of the good; it was by merit not by artifice, that he had gained the favour of Scipio; it was desert that had won him a place amongst Micipsa's children and a share in the Numidian crown. But qualities carry their responsibilities; the very distinction of his services made it the more inc.u.mbent on him to avenge a wrong. Adherbal had treacherously plotted against his life; the crime had been revealed and he had but taken steps to forestall it; the Roman people would not be acting justly or honourably, if they hindered him from taking such steps in his own defence as were the common right of all men.[906]

He would soon send envoys to Rome to deal with the whole question in dispute.

This answer showed the Roman commissioners the utter helplessness of their position. Their presence in Jugurtha's camp within sight of a city in which a client king and a number of their own citizens were imprisoned, was itself a stigma on the name of Rome. If they had prayed to see Adherbal, the request, must have been refused; to prolong the negotiations was to court further insult, and they set their faces once more for Rome after faithfully performing the important mission of repeating a message of the senate with verbal correctness. Jugurtha granted them the courtesy of not renewing his active operations until he thought that they had quitted Africa. Then, despairing of carrying the town by a.s.sault, he settled to the work of a regular siege. The nature of the ground must have made a complete investment impossible; but it also rendered it unnecessary. The cliffs and the river bed made escape as difficult as attack. On some sides it was but necessary to maintain a strenuous watch on every possible egress; on others lines of circ.u.mvallation, with ramparts and ditches, kept the beleaguered within their walls. Siege-towers were raised to mate the height of the fortifications which they threatened, and manned with garrisons to harry the town and repel all efforts of its citizens to escape. The blockade was varied by a series of surprises, of sudden a.s.saults by day or night; no method of force or fraud was left untried; the loyalty of the defenders who appeared on the walls was a.s.sailed by threats or promises; the a.s.sailants were strenuously exhorted to effect a speedy entry.

It would seem that Cirta was ill-provided with supplies.[907] Adherbal, who had made it the basis of his attack and must have foreseen the probability of his defeat, should have seen that it was well provisioned; and the vast cisterns and granaries cut in the solid rock, that were in later times to be found within the city, should have supplied water and food sufficient to prolong the siege to a degree that might have tried the senate's patience as sorely as Jugurtha's. But neither the king nor his advisers were adepts in the art of war; it must have been difficult to regulate the distribution of provisions amidst the trading cla.s.ses, of unsettled habits and mixed nationalities, that were crowded within the walls; discontent could not be restrained by discipline and might at any moment be a motive to surrender. The imprisoned king saw no prospect of a prolongation of the war that could secure even his personal safety; no help could be looked for from without and a ruthless enemy was battering at his gates. His only hope, a faint one, lay in a last appeal to Rome; but the invader's lines were drawn so close that even a chance of communicating with the protecting city seemed denied. At length, by urgent appeals to pity and to avarice, he induced two of the comrades who had joined his flight from the field of battle, to risk the venture of penetrating the enemy's lines and reaching the sea.[908] The venture, which was made by night, succeeded; the two bold messengers stole through the enclosing fortifications, rapidly made for the nearest port, and thence took s.h.i.+p to Rome. Within a few days they were in the presence of the senate,[909] and the despairing cry of Adherbal was being read to an a.s.sembly, to whom it could convey no new knowledge and on whom it could lay no added burden of perplexity. But emotion, although it cannot teach, may focus thought and clarify the promptings of interest. To many a loose thinker Adherbal's missive may have been the first revelation, not only of the shame, but of the possible danger of the situation. The facts were too well known to require detailed treatment. It was sufficient to remind the senate that for five months a friend and ally of the Roman people had been blockaded in his own capital; his choice was merely one between death by the sword and death by famine. Adherbal no longer asked for his kingdom; nay, he barely ventured to ask for his life; but he deprecated a death by torture--a fate that would most certainly be his if he fell into the hands of his implacable foe. The appeal to interest was interwoven with that made to pity and to honour. What were Jugurtha's ultimate motives? When he had consummated his crimes and absorbed the whole of Numidia, did he mean to remain a peaceful client-king, a faithful va.s.sal of Rome? His fidelity and obedience might be measured by the treatment which he had already accorded to the mandate and the envoys of the senate. The power of Rome in her African possessions was at stake; and the majesty of the empire was appealed to no less than the sense of friends.h.i.+p, loyalty, and grat.i.tude, as a ground for instant a.s.sistance which might yet save the suppliant from a terrible and degrading end.

The impression produced by this appeal was seen in the bolder att.i.tude adopted by that section of the senate which had from the first regarded Jugurtha as a criminal at large, and had never approved the policy of leaving Numidia to settle its own affairs. Voices were heard advocating the immediate despatch of an army to Africa, the speedy succour of Adherbal, the consideration of an adequate punishment for the contumacy of Jugurtha in not obeying the express commands of Rome.[910] But the usual protests were heard from the other side, protests which were interpreted as a proof of the utter corruption of those who uttered them,[911] but which were doubtless veiled in the decent language, and may in some cases have been animated by the genuine spirit, of the cautious imperialist who prefers a crime to a blunder. The conflict of opinion resulted in the usual compromise. A new commission was to be despatched with a more strongly worded message from the senate; but, as rumour had apparently been busy with the adventures of the ”three young men” whom Jugurtha had turned back, it was deemed advisable to select the present envoys from men whose age, birth and ample honours might give weight to a mission that was meant to avert a war.[912] The solemnity of the occasion was attested, and some feeling of a.s.surance may have been created, by the fact that there figured amongst the commissioners no less a person than the chief of the senate Marcus Aemilius Scaurus, beyond all question the foremost man of Rome,[913] the highest embodiment of patrician dignity and astute diplomacy. The pressing appeal of Adherbal's envoys, the ugly rumours which were circulating in Rome, urged the commissioners to unwonted activity.

Within three days they were on board, and after a short interval had landed at Utica in the African province. The experience of the former mission had taught them that their dignity might be utterly lost if they quitted the territory of the Roman domain. They did not deign to set foot in Numidia, but sent a message to Jugurtha informing him that they had a mandate from the senate and ordering him to come with all speed to the Roman province.

Jugurtha was for the moment torn by conflicting resolutions. The very audacity of his acts had been tempered and in part directed by a secret fear of Rome. Whether in any moments of ambitious imagination he had dreamed of throwing off the protectorate and a.s.serting the unlimited independence of the Numidian kingdom, must remain uncertain; but in any case that consummation must belong to the end, not to the intermediate stage, of his present enterprise. His immediate plan had been to win or purchase recognition of an accomplished fact from the somnolence, caution or corruption of the government; and here was intervention a.s.suming a more formidable shape while the fact was but half accomplished and he himself was but playing the part of the rebel, not of the king. The dignity of the commissioners, and the peremptory nature of their demand, seemed to show that negotiations with Rome were losing their character of a conventional game and a.s.suming a more serious aspect. It is possible that Jugurtha did not know the full extent of the danger which he was running; it is possible that, like so many other potentates who had relations with the imperial city, he made the mistake of imagining that the senate was in the fullest sense the government of Rome, and had no cognisance of the subtle forces whose equilibrium was expressed in a formal control by the n.o.bility; but even what he saw was sufficient to alarm him and to lead him, in a moment of panic or prudence, to think of the possibility of obeying the commission. At the next moment the new man, which the deliberate but almost frenzied pursuit of a single object had made of Jugurtha, was fully rea.s.serted.[914] But his pa.s.sion was not blind; his recklessness still veiled a plan; his one absorbing desire was to see Adherbal in his hands before he should himself be forced to meet the envoys. He gave orders for his whole force to encircle the walls of Cirta; a simultaneous a.s.sault was directed against every vulnerable point; the attention of the defenders was to be distracted by the ubiquitous nature of the attack; a failure of vigilance at any point might give him the desired entry by force or fraud. But nothing came of the enterprise; the a.s.sailants were beaten back, and Jugurtha had another moment for cool reflection. He soon decided that further delay would not strengthen his position. The name of Scaurus weighed heavily on his mind.[915] He was an untried element with respect to the details of the Numidian affair; but all that Jugurtha knew of him--his influence with the senate, his uncompromising respectability, his earlier att.i.tude on the question--inspired a feeling of fear. Obedience to the demand which the commissioners had made for his presence might be the wiser course; whatever the result of the interview, such obedience might prolong the period of negotiation and delay armed intervention until his own great object was fulfilled. With a few of his knights Jugurtha crossed into the Roman province and presented himself before the commissioners. We have no record of the discussion which ensued. The senate's message was almost an ultimatum; it threatened extreme measures if Jugurtha did not desist from the siege of Cirta; but the peremptory nature of the missive did not prevent close and lengthy discussions between the envoys and the king. The plausible personality of Jugurtha may have told in his favour and may have led to the hopes of a compromise; for it is not probable that he ventured on a summary rejection of their orders or advice. But the commissioners could merely threaten or advise; they had no power to wring promises from the king or to keep him to them when they were made.

Thus when, at the close of the debates, Jugurtha returned to Numidia and the envoys embarked at Utica, it was felt on all sides that nothing had been accomplished.[916] The commissioners may have believed that they had made Jugurtha sensible of his true relations to Rome; they had perhaps threatened open war as the result of disobedience; but they had neither checked his progress nor stayed his hand; and the taint with which all dealings with the wealthy potentate infected his environment, clung even to this select body of distinguished men.

The immediate effect of the fruitless negotiations was the disaster which every one must have foreseen. Cirta and her king had been utterly betrayed by their protectress; and when the news of the departure of the envoys and the return of Jugurtha penetrated within the walls, despair of further resistance gave substance to the hope of the possibility of surrender on tolerable terms. The hope was never present to the mind of Adherbal; he knew his enemy too well. Nor could it have been entertained in a very lively form by the king's Numidian councillors and subjects.

But the Numidian was not the strongest element in Cirta. There the merchant cla.s.s held sway. In the defence of their property and commerce, the organised business and the homes which they had established in the civilised state, they had taken the lead in repelling the hordes of Western Numidians which Jugurtha led; and amongst the merchant cla.s.s those of Italian race had been the most active and efficient in repelling the a.s.saults of the besiegers. To these men the choice was not between famine and the sword; but merely between famine and the loss of property or comfort. For what Roman or Italian could doubt that the most perfect security for his life and person was still implicit in the magic name of Rome? Confident in their safety they advised Adherbal to hand over the town to Jugurtha; the only condition which he needed to make was the preservation of his own life and that of the besieged; all else was of less importance, for their future fortunes rested not with Jugurtha but with the senate.[917] It is questionable whether the Italians were really inspired with this blind confidence in the senate's power to restore as well as to save; even their ability to save was more than doubtful to Adherbal; still more worthless was a promise made by his enemy. The unhappy king would have preferred the most desperate resistance to a trust in Jugurtha's honour; but the advice of the Italians was equivalent to a command; and a gleam of hope, sufficient at least to prevent him from taking his own life, may have buoyed him up when he yielded to their wishes and made the formal surrender. The hope, if it existed, was immediately dispelled. Adherbal was put to death with cruel tortures.[918] The Italians then had their proof of the present value of the majesty of the name of Rome. Their calculations had been vitiated by one fatal blunder. They forgot that they were letting into their stronghold an exasperated people drawn from the rudest parts of Numidia--a people to whom the name of Rome was as nothing, to whom the name of merchant or foreigner was contemptible and hateful. As the surging crowd of Jugurtha's soldiery swept over the doomed city, ma.s.sacring every Numidian of adult age, the claim of nationality made by the protesting merchants was not unnaturally met by a thrust from the sword. If even the a.s.sailants could distinguish them in the frenzy of victory, they knew them for men who had occupied the fighting line; and this fact was alone sufficient to doom them to destruction. Jugurtha may also have made his blunder. Unless we suppose that his penetrating mind had been, suddenly clouded by the senseless rage which prompts the half-savage man to a momentary act of demoniacal folly, he could never have willed the slaughter of the Roman and Italian merchants.[919] If he willed it in cold blood, he was consciously making war on Rome and declaring the independence of Numidia. For, even with his limited knowledge of the balance of interests in the capital, he must have seen that the act was inexpiable. His true policy, now as before, was not to cross swords with Rome, but merely to wring from her indifference a recognition of a purely national crime. His wits had failed him if he had ordered a deed which put indifference and recognition out of the question. It is probable that he did not calculate on the fury of his troops; it is possible that he had ceased to lead and was a mere unit swept along in the avalanche which sated its wrath at the prolonged resistance, and avenged the real or fancied crimes committed by the merchant cla.s.s.

The ma.s.sacre of the merchants caused a complete change in the att.i.tude with which Numidian events were viewed at Rome. It cut the commercial cla.s.ses to the quick, and this third party which moulded the policy of Rome began closing up its ranks. The balance of power on which the n.o.bility had rested its presidency since the fall of Caius Gracchus, began to be disturbed. It was possible again for a leader of the people to make his voice heard; not, however, because he was the leader of the people, but because he was the head of a coalition. The man of the hour was Caius Memmius, who was tribune elect for the following year. He was an orator, vehement rather than eloquent, of a mordant utterance, and famed in the courts for his power of attack.[920] His critical temperament and keen eye for abuses had already led him to join the spa.r.s.e ranks of politicians who tried still to keep alive the healthy flame of discontent, and to utter an occasional protest against the manner in which the n.o.bility exercised their trust.[921] His influence must have been increased by the growing suspicion of the last few years and the scandal that fed on tales of bribery in high places; it was a.s.sured by the latest news which, through the illogical process of reasoning out of which great causes grow, seemed to make rumour a certainty and to justify suspicion by the increased numbers and respectability of the suspecting. A pretext for action was found in the s.h.i.+fty and dilatory proceedings of the senate. Even the latest phase of the Numidian affair was not powerful or horrible enough to crush all attempts at a temporising policy.[922] Men were still found to interrupt the course of a debate which promised to issue in some strong and speedy resolution, by raising counter-motions which the great names of the movers forced on the attention of the house; every artifice which influence could command was employed to dull the pain of a wounded self-respect; and when this method failed, idle recrimination took the place of argument as a means of consuming the time for action and pa.s.sing the point at which anger would have cooled into indifference, or at least into an emotion not stronger than regret. It was plain that the stimulus must be supplied from without; and Memmius provided it by going straight to the people and embodying their floating suspicions in a bald and uncompromising form. He told them[923] that the prolonged proceedings in the senate meant simply that the crime of Jugurtha was likely to be condoned through the influence of a few ardent partisans of the king; and it is probable that he dealt frankly and in the true Roman manner with the motives for this partisans.h.i.+p. The pressure was effectual in bringing to a head the deliberations of the senate. The council as a whole did not need conversion on the main question at issue, for most of its members must have felt that it had exhausted the resources of peaceful diplomacy, and it showed its characteristic aversion to the provocation of a const.i.tutional crisis, which might easily arise if the people chose to declare war on the motion of a magistrate without waiting for the advice of the fathers; while the obstructive minority may have been alarmed by the distant vision of a trial before the a.s.sembly or before a commission of inquiry composed of judges taken from the angry Equites. The senate took the lead in a formal declaration of war; Numidia was named as one of the provinces which were to be a.s.signed to the future consuls in accordance with the provisions of the Semp.r.o.nian law. The choice of the people fell on Publius Scipio Nasica and Lucius Calpurnius Bestia as consuls for the following year.[924] The lot a.s.signed the home government and the guardians.h.i.+p of Italy to Nasica, while Bestia gained the command in the impending war. Military preparations were pushed on with all haste; an army was levied for service in Africa; pay and supplies were voted on an adequate scale.

The news is said to have surprised Jugurtha.[925] Perhaps earlier messages of a more cheerful import had reached him from Rome during the days when successful obstruction seemed to be achieving its end, and had dulled the fears which the ma.s.sacre of Cirta most have aroused even in a mind so familiar with the acquiescent policy of the senate. Yet even now he did not lose heart, nor did his courage take the form, prevalent amongst the lower types of mind, of a mere reliance on brute force, on the resources of that Numidia of which he was now the undisputed lord.

With a persistence born of successful experience he still attempted the methods of diplomacy-methods which prove a lack of insight only in the sense that Rome was an impossible sphere for their present exercise. The king had not gauged the situation in the capital; but subsequent events proved that he still possessed a correct estimate of the real inclinations of the men who were chiefly responsible for Roman policy.

The Numidian envoy was no less a person than the king's own son, and he was supported by two trusty counsellors of Jugurtha.[926] As was usual in the case of a diplomatic mission arriving from a country which had no treaty relations, or was actually in a state of war, with Rome, the envoys were not permitted to pa.s.s the gates until the will of the senate was known. An excellent opportunity was given for proving the conversion of the senate. When the consul Bestia put the question ”Is it the pleasure of the house that the envoys of Jugurtha be received within the walls?” the firm answer was returned that ”Unless these envoys had come to surrender Numidia and its king to the absolute discretion of the Roman people, they must cross the borders of Italy within ten days”.[927] The consul had this message conveyed to the prince, and he and his colleagues returned from their fruitless mission.