Barbarian and king: The character and historiographical genesis of Jugurtha in Sallust's 'Bellum Jugurthinum'

The problematical character of Sallust's Jugurtha is examined as an imitatio of the character of Cyrus the Persian, the idealized "Barbarian King" in Xenophon's Cyropaedia. A detailed correspondence between the two characters in their youth is demonstrated. Close analysis of Sallust's Bellum Jugurthinum chs. V-X shows how the portrait of this Numidian prince, with its initial virtues, is carefully undermined by hints of barbarism--finally confirmed by Jugurtha's reaction to Micipsa's deathbed speech as ficta. This reaction is revealed, in addition, as a rejection of the idealized portrait, and Jugurtha's character is thereafter described as bad, without qualification.;The first digression on Africa is shown to be yet another confirmation of this Jugurtha's derivation from Cyrus, since Sallust here makes the Persians the ancestors of the Numidians, and the Medes of the Mauri (Moors). Sallust further links the Numidians to Persia by describing their physical characteristics, their inland territory, and the expansion of their empire in terms used also by Xenophon and Herodotus of Cyrus the Elder and his people.;The second African digression is a fable exemplifying the morality of self-sacrifice which fixes boundaries in the wilderness, ends war, and achieves true glory. The fable stresses in what sense the barbarians fail (they are disloyal and self-interested) and the Romans succeed (Metellus, Marius, and Sulla all put the welfare of Rome ahead of personal interest).;Finally, the character of Marius is shown to exemplify the good qualities of Cyrus that Jugurtha lacks. Thus the imitatio of Cyrus--begun with the early portrait of Jugurtha, heightened by the two digressions, one confirming the Persian ancestry of Jugurtha, the other upholding the essential moral message of the Cyropaedia, that self-sacrifice is the path to glory and moral leadership--is finally used to make the figure of Marius an ideal Roman leader against the barbarian. The characters of Jugurtha and Marius are thus complementary, and the Bellum Jugurthinum demonstrates Sallust's subtle use of Xenophon's Cyropaedia to illustrate Roman moral problems.