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Despite the introduction of the secret ballot, there were still plenty of ways for a patron to make sure his clients voted the way they were supposed to. One common practice was to confront a voter after he had filled out his ballot, but before he deposited it in the ballot box. Over the objections of his Metelli patrons, Marius introduced a bill to redesign the voting stalls to prevent such confrontations. One of the consuls—who happened to be a Metelli—induced the Senate to condemn Marius’s bill and order Marius to present himself. Unintimidated, Marius threatened to toss the consul in prison if he stood in the way of the Assembly. The consul backed down, but the Metelli were furious their dog was biting the hand that fed him.¹⁶

Having angered his principal senatorial patrons, Marius then refused to cater to the plebs urbana, who had supported his voting reform efforts. Another tribune introduced a bill expanding a citizen’s allotment of Gracchan price-controlled grain. The bill was extremely popular in Rome, but Marius vetoed it on the grounds that it was a needless handout that ruined the moral fiber of the Republic. The plebs urbana had asked for cheap grain, not moral hectoring, and thus Marius managed to leave the tribunate as disliked in the Forum as he was on the Palatine Hill.¹⁷

But despite his shaky political instincts, Marius let his ambition propel him forward and he stood for an aedileship in either 118 or 117. Marius may have viewed a year as aedile as a good way to build back public goodwill, but elections for the aedileship were much more competitive than the lower offices. Rather than ten annual tribunates or ten annual quaestorships, there were just four aedileships available. Being a well-connected noble with money was not a guarantee to winning—there was certainly no guarantee for a novus homo Italian who had just angered both the optimates and populares.¹⁸

Marius entered his name first for the senior aedile seat, but as the voting proceeded his announced vote totals were alarmingly small. Seeing that he faced certain defeat, Marius withdrew his name and put it in for junior aedileship. It was an unconventional gamble, but not against the law. Not that it mattered. Marius promptly lost that election, too. Marius’s humiliating double defeat left his budding political career near death. But on the other side of the Mediterranean, events unfolded that would propel him to the inner circle of Roman power.¹⁹

THE KINGDOM OF Numidia lay on the north coast of Africa, corresponding roughly to modern-day Algeria. The kingdom was built on animal husbandry and maritime trade, but was famous for its expert horsemanship. The Numidians produced some of the finest cavalry in the Mediterranean. For generations, that cavalry had been at the disposal of the neighboring Carthaginians, but in the midst of the Second Punic War, the great Numidian king Masinissa defected to the Romans, and joined Scipio Africanus for the final battle against Hannibal in 202. Masinissa then ruled North Africa on Rome’s behalf for the next fifty years and did not die until 148, just as Rome was returning to destroy Carthage once and for all. As proconsul of Rome, and personal friend of the Numidian royal family, Scipio Aemilianus settled the late king’s estate between his three sons but by either luck or foul play one of the sons, Micipsa, emerged as the sole king of Numidia.²⁰

King Micipsa was among those Aemilianus called in 133 to provide auxiliary units for the final conquest of Numantia. Not only was Micipsa happy to oblige, he had the perfect man to lead the expedition—his illegitimate nephew Jugurtha. Though the product of an extramarital liaison, Jugurtha remained in the royal family’s orbit and was popular at court. Jugurtha was blessed with “physical strength, a handsome person, but above all with a vigorous intellect.” For a few years, Micipsa saw Jugurtha as a potential heir, but when the king had sons of his own, Jugurtha became a problem. Sending the dashing prince to war might get him killed, which would be a convenient solution to the problem. But it was a gamble with a clear risk—what if Jugurtha came back more popular than ever?²¹

Once at Numantia, Jugurtha impressed everyone. “The young Numidian failed neither in judgment nor in any enterprise. He had, besides, a generous nature and a ready wit, qualities by which he had bound many Romans to him in intimate friendship.” As he interacted with Romans, Jugurtha learned how Roman war and politics really worked. He learned their military tactics. He learned their political fault lines. Most especially he learned their vices. Aemilianus noticed the lessons Jugurtha was learning and took the young Numidian prince aside to caution him against relying too much on bribes and gifts to get his way. “It is dangerous,” Aemilianus said, “to buy from a few what belonged to the many.” This was not a lesson Jugurtha would learn.²²