Jugurtha (born c. 160 bc—died 104, Rome) was the king of Numidia from 118 to 105, who struggled to free his North African kingdom from Roman rule.
Jugurtha was the illegitimate grandson of Masinissa (d. 148), under whom Numidia had become a Roman ally, and the nephew of Masinissa’s successor, Micipsa. Jugurtha became so popular among the Numidians that Micipsa tried to eliminate his influence by sending him in 134 to assist the Roman general Scipio Africanus the Younger in the siege of Numantia (Spain). Jugurtha, however, established close relations with Scipio, who was the hereditary patron of Numidia and who probably persuaded Micipsa to adopt Jugurtha in 120.
After Micipsa’s death in 118, Jugurtha shared the rule of Numidia with Micipsa’s two sons, Hiempsal and Adherbal, the first of whom Jugurtha assassinated. When Adherbal was attacked by Jugurtha, he fled to Rome for aid—Rome’s approval being required for any change in the government of Numidia. A senatorial commission divided Numidia, with Jugurtha taking the less-developed western half and Adherbal the richer eastern half. Trusting in his influence at Rome, Jugurtha again attacked Adherbal (112), capturing his capital at Cirta and killing him. During the sack of Cirta, a number of Italian traders were also slain. Popular anger in Rome at this action forced the Senate to declare war on Jugurtha, but in 111 the consul Lucius Calpurnius Bestia made a generous settlement with him. Summoned to Rome to explain how he had managed to obtain the treaty, Jugurtha was silenced by a tribune of the plebs. He then had a potential rival killed in the capital, and even the best of his Roman friends could no longer support him.
When war was renewed, Jugurtha easily maintained himself against incompetent generals. Early in 110 he forced the capitulation of a whole army under Aulus Postumius Albinus and drove the Romans out of Numidia. Antisenatorial feeling caused the terms of this surrender to be disavowed by Rome, and fighting again broke out. One of the consuls for 109, Quintus Caecilius Metellus Numidicus, won several battles but did not drive Jugurtha to surrender. After the arrival of a new consul, Gaius Marius, in 107, Jugurtha continued to achieve successes through guerrilla warfare. Bocchus I of Mauretania, however, encouraged by Marius’ quaestor, Lucius Cornelius Sulla, trapped the Numidian king and turned him over to the Romans early in 105. He was executed the following year.
In vigour and resource he was a worthy grandson of Masinissa but lacked his political insight. Misled by signs of corruption in the Roman governing class, he failed to realize that there were limits beyond which Rome’s satellite rulers could not go without provoking decisive intervention. The Jugurthine War gave Marius the excuse to reform the army by recruiting soldiers who were not property owners. As the Roman historian Sallust’s monograph The Jugurthine War makes clear, the Senate’s handling of Jugurtha, characterized by a mixture of corruption and incompetence, led to the loss of public confidence, which was an important factor in the eventual fall of the Roman Republic.