Part 38 (1/2)

[1104] Sall. _Jug_. 80. 2.

[1105] Ibid. 80. 1.

[1106] Ibid. 80. 6 Ea necessitudo apud Numidas Maurosque levis ducitur, quia singuli pro opibus quisque quam plurumas uxores, denas alii, alii pluris habent, sed reges eo amplius. Ita animus mult.i.tudine distrahitur: nulla pro socia optinet, pariter omnes viles sunt.

[1107] Sall. _Jug_. 81. 1.

[1108] Ibid. 82. 1.

[1109] Cf. p. 349.

[1110] Sall. _Jug_. 81. 2.

[1111] Ibid. 82. 1.

[1112] Ibid. 82. 2.

[1113] Sall. _Jug_. 83. 1.

[1114] Sall, _Jug_. 86. 5.

[1115] Ibid. 88. 1.

[1116] Vellei. ii. II Metelli ... et triumphus fuit clarissimus et meritum ex virtute ei cognomen Numidici inditum. Cf. Eutrop. iv. 27.

[1117] Sall. _Jug_. 88. 5.

[1118] Sall. _Jug_. 88. 3.

[1119] Sall.u.s.t uses the historic infinitive (Ibid, 89. 1 Consul, uti statuerat, oppida castellaque munita adire, partim vi, alia metu aut praemia ostentando avortere ab hostibus), but the reduction of some of these places may perhaps be a.s.sumed.

[1120] Cf. p. 426.

[1121] Capsa (Kafsa or Gafsa) may have been once subject to Carthage and have been added to the kingdom of Masinissa after the Hannibalic war.

Strabo (xvii. 3. 12) mentions it amongst the ruined towns of Africa, but it revived later on, received a Latin form of const.i.tution under Hadrian, and was ultimately the seat of a bishopric. See Wilmanns in C.

I. L. viii. p. 22. Its commercial importance was very great. It was, as Tissot says (_Geogr. comp_. ii. p. 664), placed on the threshold of the desert at the head of the three great valleys which lead, the one to the bottom of the Gulf of Kabes, the other to Tebessa, the third to the centre of the regency of Tunis. He describes it as one of the gates of the Sahara and one of the keys of Tell, the necessary point of transit of the caravans of the Soudan and the advanced post of the high plateau against the incursions of the nomads. Strabo (l.c.) describes Capsa as a treasure-house of Jugurtha, but it has been questioned whether this description is not due to a confusion with Thala (Wilmanns l.c.).

[1122] Sall. _Jug_. 89. 6.

[1123] Ibid. 89. 5 Nam, praeter oppido propinqua, alia omnia vasta, inculta, egentia aquae, infesta serpentibus, quarum vis sicuti omnium ferarum inopia cibi acrior. Ad hoc natura serpentium, ipsa perniciosa, siti magis quam alia re accenditur. Tissot says (op. cit. ii. p. 669) that the solitudes which surround the oasis make a veritable ”belt of sands and snakes” (cf. Florus iii. 1. 14 Anguibus harenisque vallatam).

[1124] Sal. _Jug_. 90. 1.

[1125] Aulus Manlius was sent with some light cohorts to protect the stores at Lares (Ibid. 90. 2). These stores were, therefore, not exhausted.

[1126] The Tana has often been identified with the Wad Tina, but this identification would take Marius along the coast by Thenae--a course which he almost certainly did not follow. Tissot holds (_Geogr. comp_.

i. p. 85) that Tana is only a generic Libyan name for a water-course. He thinks that the river in question is the Wad-ed-Derb. (Ibid. p. 86).

[1127] This _locus tumulosus_ (Sall. _Jug_. 91. 3) is identified by Tissot (op. cit. ii. p 669) with a spur of the Djebel Beni-Younes which dominates Kafsa on the northeast at the distance indicated by Sall.u.s.t.