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But upon his return to Rome, Metellus found that his honor was not totally besmirched. Though Marius had seized the consulship, the Metelli were still powerful, and so the family arranged for Metellus to be met by jubilant crowds and induced the Senate to vote him a triumph. There was a ham-fisted effort to prosecute Metellus for the same charges of extortion and corruption that the Mamilian Commission had used so effectively, but it went nowhere. The jury refused to even consider the charges and Metellus was acquitted on all counts. The Metelli family then induced the Senate to award Metellus the title Numidicus for his work. Despite what he must have thought would be a lasting disgrace, Metellus Numidicus maintained his political stature and remained a powerful force in the Senate.⁸

Marius, meanwhile, had to make good on his promise to end the war quickly. But now that he was actually running the army and not just carping from the peanut gallery, he realized there was no magic strategy that would work better than what Metellus had already been doing. Jugurtha popped up and disappeared at will, and always danced just beyond the reach of the legions. During that first year, Marius managed to force a few encounters with Jugurtha, but the king always seemed to get away. So despite his promises of ending the war in a matter of days, Marius was still chasing the Numidian king as 107 gave way to 106.⁹

The Assembly kept its faith in him, however, and Marius managed to secure an extension for his command. But as he marched out in 106 he had a major problem on his hands: Jugurtha was nowhere to be found. The Numidian king’s whereabouts during the entirety of 106 are unknown. We can say with a fair bit of certainty that he withdrew with his mercenary nomads across the Atlas Mountains to the southern desert country. Marius marched on the city of Capsa and then followed the mountains east, attacking cities and trying to force Jugurtha out of hiding. Finally, he reached the border between Numidia and Mauretania and found along the river Muluccha one of the last remaining strongholds Jugurtha could possibly rely on. Most importantly, it was where Jugurtha had dumped most of his remaining treasure before taking off across the mountains.¹⁰

SULLA HAD SPENT the beginning of the campaign in Italy gathering more cavalry. But with his units now filled, he joined Marius’s army just as the siege of the fortress along the Muluccha began. Despite Marius’s earlier doubts, Sulla turned out to be bright, talented, and a quick study. Sulla threw himself headlong into the soldier’s life, never avoided hardship, and was soon regarded as the “best soldier in the whole army.” Because he had spent his youth among the lower rungs of Roman society, Sulla had a natural rapport with the men. He laughed and joked with them, shared their toils, and was generous with favors and money without ever asking repayment—though the ever-cynical Sallust hints that this was just so Sulla could have as many men in his debt as possible. By the time the legions captured the fort of Muluccha, even Marius considered Sulla one of the best officers under his command.¹¹

As the legions marched back to Cirta for the winter, the long-absent Jugurtha decided to finally strike. He had revived his alliance with Bocchus and the two massed an army and waited to hit the Romans by surprise. The legions narrowly escaped the ambush, though, thanks to a level-headed flanking move led by Sulla, which drove the combined Numidian/Mauretanian army into retreat. Two days later a second battle erupted, and this time the compact and disciplined legions scattered the Africans to the four winds. Bocchus fled back to the safety of Mauretania and Jugurtha disappeared yet again.¹²

AS MARIUS TIGHTENED the Roman hold on Numidia, the northern border once again began to crack. Roman authority in southern Gaul had been a relatively new phenomenon; it was not until the late 120s that the legions established a presence, and even then the province of Gallia Narbonensis was nothing but a thin strip of coastline connecting the Alps to the Pyrenees. The Romans had established their hegemony over the region after inflicting a string of defeats on the local Gallic tribes, but in the ruthlessly predatory world of war and politics, you were only on top if you could stay on top. The crushing defeats at the hands of the Cimbri in 113 and 109 crippled Roman prestige.¹³