Chapter 27

When this outrage was reported at Rome, and became a matter of discussion in the senate, the former partisans of Jugurtha applied themselves, by interrupting the debates and protracting the time, sometimes exerting their interest, and sometimes quarreling with particular members, to palliate the atrocity of the deed. And had not Caius Memmius, one of the tribunes of the people elect, a man of energy, and hostile to the power of the nobility, convinced the people of Rome that an attempt was being made, by the agency of a small faction, to have the crimes of Jugurtha pardoned, it is certain that the public indignation against him would have passed off under the protraction of the debates; so powerful was party interest, and the influence of Jugurtha's money. When the senate, however, from consciousness of misconduct, became afraid of the people, Numidia and Italy, by the Sempronian law, were appointed as provinces to the succeeding consuls, who were declared to be Publius Scipio Nasica, and Lucius Bestia Calpurnius. Numidia fell to Calpurnius, and Italy to Scipio. An army was then raised to be sent into Africa; and pay, and all other necessaries of war, were decreed for its use.