As a politician there are those who say that it was not a great success, the fact is that accumulated a huge wealth and when he could no longer exercise, due to a certain number of scandals, he abandoned all political activities to devote himself to the idleness of the historian and the writer ...
He is the author of the Conjure of Catiline, the Giugurtina war and the Stories, of which numerous fragments remain ... and thanks to his works he became one of the most famous historians of Latinity.
After reading the conspiracy of Catiline (63 BC) I went to the war of Jugurtha and in this work I found the food for thought that I usually look for in ancient texts, particular news, names of peoples and nations, their origins, invasions.
But let's go for order.
Who was Jugurtha?
In what period did he live?
What big companies did?
To answer these questions you have to go back in time, until the 230 ahead of Christ, when the Romans fought against Carthage for the conquest of the Mediterranean!
At that time, alliances were created and disintegrated just like today. One of the Roman allies was the King of Numidia, a kingdom that occupied part of North Africa.
One of the kings of Numidia who supported Rome in its war against Carthage was called Masinissa who, upon his death, left the kingdom to his only surviving son, Micipsa. Micipsa in turn fathered two children, Aderbale and Lempsale and adopted his nephew Giugurta, the son of one of his brothers who died of illness. On the death of Micipsa, Giugurta, valiant in war and well-liked by his men, thinks well of taking the kingdom by force and does not hesitate to eliminate his half-brothers by buying the support of the Roman Senators so that no one would worry about him and what happened in the distant province of Numidia. We are in 111 BC and the war of Rome against Jugurta is starting.
Why did Sallustio deal with this war? You can ask.
Simple, Sallustio after the civil war of 49 BC, which sees Caesar victorious to come to power, as a reward for his services he was appointed governor of the province of Africa nova and here probably had plenty of time to collect books and oral traditions.
It is precisely these news, however Sallustio has obtained them, which interest me!
But let's talk about Sallust: "although he does not share the opinion popularized by most, nevertheless I will report as briefly as possible, according to what has been translated to us of the Punic books, which are attributed to King Iempsale, and according to the opinions of the inhabitants of that land ".
Here is where the news comes from.
So Sallustio tells us that the first peoples who inhabited Africa were called Getuli and Libii and were rude and barbaric, they had no laws or chiefs, and they were vagabonds. Then Hercules arrived at the head of his army composed of Medes, Persians and Armenians, a strangely assorted army and in fact, the great leader died, which according to the Africans happened in Spain, the army broke up and so happened of his kingdom, if he ever had one!
The Persians settled near the ocean, in the territory of Getuli, and used the keels of their ships as huts as it seems there was no wood nearby. Time passed and Persians and Getuli became a single people who used to move frequently, hence the name "Nomads", perhaps from the Greek "nomades", meaning "wandering". In time the name became "Numidi" and their territory "Numidia". Even at the time of Sallustius their huts were built like an inverted ship keel, the name of these houses was "mapalia".
The Middle and Armenians instead mingled with the Libi and began to develop business relations with Spain. The Libi, in their language, called Mauri the newcomers who slowly took to call themselves "Mauri" and forgot that of Medi.
Later, says Sallust, came the Phoenicians who founded some cities along the coast, including Hippo, Adrumento and Leptis, between the two Sirti, and then Carthage. South of Numidia there were still Getuli and even further south the Ethiopians , on the border with the so-called "burnt lands", the desert! In fact, Ethiopia means "with a burnt face".
And so we spoke briefly of the ancient peoples of North Africa, as Sallustio claimed to have learned from the translations of the Punic books.
Yet from a book like the Giugurtina war we can also draw other, more profound lessons of politics and strategy. Teachings that derive from general considerations on the facts and on the political situation in the world of those times and of the forces at stake.
To you the witness, dear reader ...
Alessandro Rugolo
