The Jugurtha War is the name of a conflict between the Roman Republic and the Numidian king Jugurtha between 112 and 105 BC. This conflict is named after a work by the historian Sallust.
Jugurtha is the nephew then the adopted son of Micipsa, perhaps under Roman pressure. When he died in 118 BC. J.-C., Micipsa wants the kingdom to be separated between his two sons and Jugurtha. Jugurtha has one of the two heirs, Hiempsal, assassinated. Adherbal, the other son, then fled to Rome to ask for help. In 116 BC. BC, Roman emissaries obtain a treaty. This one, probably by corruption of Romans, is very favorable to Jugurtha. In 113 BC. J.-C., he attacks his brother in his capital of Cirta. A second Roman commission allows Jugurtha to take the city. Jugurtha then has his brother and the Italics who had helped defend the city killed.
The Roman Senate, hands free after the end of the Cimbrian War, declares war on Numidia, the region it has dominated since the end of the Third Punic War.
After commanding in Hispania as propraetor in 114 BC. AD, Marius went to Africa to fight Jugurtha alongside his patron Quintus Caecilius Metellus, the consul of 109 BC. Popular with his soldiers and the Roman population, he had allies in the tribunate.
In 111 BC. BC, the Roman consul Lucius Calpurnius Bestia travels to Numidia, and Jugurtha surrenders on customary terms in the face of a victor, corrupting Bestia. Jugurtha then goes to Rome where he corrupts tribunes and has his cousin Massiva, a potential rival, assassinated. End -110, Jugurtha defeats Aulus Postumus Albinus, by ruse, according to the Roman chronicles. He then asks to be recognized as sovereign of Numidia. The Senate refuses. The Numidians and the Romans meet at the battle of Muthul, the losses are heavy for the Romans. They then decide to attack the cities, forcing the Numidians into guerrilla warfare, but Metellus is beaten at Zama and has to fall back on Carthage.
Marius leaves for Rome and is elected consul. Mettellus, says Numidicus, must suffer the affront of seeing his former client appropriate his troops and win a war he himself had already almost won. Jugurtha then allies himself with his father-in-law Bocchus, king of Mauritania. Marius then wins a few victories by continuing the strategy of Metellus, but without being able to win. Bocchus negotiates a separate peace treaty, delivering Jugurtha in 106 BC. J.-C., and receives in return a part of Numidia. In 104 BC. J.-C. Jugurtha is strangled in the Tullianum in Rome.
The year of Marius' victory, 105, was also that of his re-election to the post of consul, without his needing, contrary to all tradition, to appear in Rome. This war revealed the corruption reigning in the army and the Roman political class. The Cimbrian War and the War of Jugurtha had a particular influence on the career of Consul Marius as well as on the important reforms he introduced in the institutions of the Roman Republic and in the army (Marianic reform).
In a certain Amazigh tradition, despite Rome's patience with him, Jugurtha, the humble son of a slave, is seen as the defender of Numidian traditions and close to his people in the face of Adherbal, proud and protective of the Italic colonists.