The Myth of Numidian Origins in Sallust's African Excursus (Iugurtha 17.7-18.

12)
Author(s): Robert Morstein-Marx
Source: The American Journal of Philology, Vol. 122, No. 2 (Summer, 2001), pp. 179-200
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1561758
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 THE MYTH OF NUMIDIAN ORIGINS IN SALLUST'S
AFRICAN EXCURSUS (IUGURTHA 17.7-18.12)

ROBERT MORSTEIN-MARX

The excursus on theethnography and geography of North Af-

rica in Sallust's lugurtha (17-19) has lately attracted much attention.
Until recently there seemed to be little to say but that it demarcated the
structure of the narrative and relieved the reader with "Greek erudition
and fancies."1 On one level, that is surely true enough, and consistent
with the conventions of Roman historiography.2 But a series of more
probing studies of aspects of the digression by Carin Green, Renato
Oniga, Thomas Scanlon, and Thomas Wiedemann has done much to lay
bare the web of allusions and ethnographic typologies at work in the text
and to demonstrate its thematic links with the larger narrative of the
lugurtha? Yet while each of these studies has cast new light on the
African excursus and demonstrated its considerable interest, no convinc-
ing reinterpretation of the digression's function in the monograph has
emerged.4 Another try, building on some of the best recent work, is
warranted. I shall concentrate on the myth of Numidian origins that
forms the core of the African excursus (Iug. 17.7-18.12). Its importance
is clearly signaled by its central position in the digression; by the appear?
ance of a "second introduction" of its own containing an eye-catching

I am grateful to the anonymous readers of AJP for many helpful suggestions that
much improved this paper. The text used is the OCT of L. D. Reynolds, though I have
retained the traditional "v" in my quotations.
1
Syme 1964,152. For the former state of the question, see the commentaries of Paul
1984,71-72; Koestermann 1971, 87.
2 On
historiographical digressions, see the general comments in Martin and Woodman
1989,169-70; further details and references offered in Woodman 1988,106-7 n. 51; 1998,
128-35; Woodman and Martin 1996,168.
3 Green 1993;
Oniga 1995; Scanlon 1987,38-41, and 1988,138-43; Wiedemann 1993.
4 See text at notes 44-46, and notes 25, 51, for criticism of Green, Wiedemann, and
Scanlon. This article could not have been written without Oniga's learned and valuable
discussion of the influences of Hellenistic, ethnographic background on the excursus; but
he offers little on the literary function of the digression beyond noting (rightly) that
Sallust's use of ethnographic conventions establishes the Numidians as a fearsome oppo-
nent (1995,46-49, cf. 93).

American of Philology
Journal ? 2001byTheJohnsHopkins
122(2001)179-200 Press
University
180 ROBERT MORSTEIN-MARX

claim to be contributing a heterodox, native account on the basis of

original research (17.7); by its narrative form, through which it stands out
from the surrounding descriptive material; and indeed by its length, far
greater than the other parts of the excursus. I begin with a reexamination
of the underlying structure of ideas that drives the narrative of 18.1-12
and characterizes the Numidian people against a complex background of
ethnographic thought. Ultimately I wish to show that this deceptively
rich narrative defines the Numidian people as an African counterpart to
the Romans, yet also their polar opposite?a natural enemy with no-
madic traditions and a heritage that makes them brothers to the Parthians,
who at Sallust's time of writing were posing an extraordinary threat to
Rome's eastern provinces and allies. The myth sets the Jugurthine con-
flict within a wider cultural context: this will be a war not merely between
the Roman people and a particularly energetic and cunning African
prince, but between Roman civilization and the mobile, treacherous,
seminomadic "Other" whose dangerous intractability and capacity to
erode the bases of civilized order were to be proven not for the last time
in 112-105 B.C.5

The narrative begins with the aboriginal Libyes and Gaetuli, both tribes
"savage and uncivilized, whose food was raw flesh and fodder on the
ground, as for cattle.They were not controlled by customs, law, or anyone's
power: scattered wanderers, they stayed wherever night forced them"
(18.1-2). The traditional (and conventional) polarity between primitive
savagery and civilization is thus implicitly invoked.6 As far back as
Odysseus' account of the Cyclopes (Od. 9.106-15), uncivilization was
defined above all by the absence of agriculture and the constraint of law.7
We may note, too, that native Africans are described by Sallust as eating
like animals (uti pecoribus); they are thus explicitly living in a bestial
condition. In our author's historiographical thought, certain other asso?
ciations emerge from such a categorization. We may recall that in the

5 Henceforth all dates are b.c. unless otherwise noted.

6 Green 1993,189-93. Note that still, at the time of the
Jugurthine War, the Gaetuli
are a "genus hominum ferum incultumque et eo tempore ignarum nominis Romani" (80.1).
7 Cf.
Virg. Aen. 8.314-32, which Thomas (1982,96) is inclined to see as a "conscious
reminiscence of Sallust's Libyan ethnography,"but in view of the ethnographic background
sketched out by Oniga (1995, 23-36 and 69-75), the parallels seem more likely to be
conventional elements of a traditional mode of explanation. The two criteria mentioned in
the text are prominent as weil in the other nearly contemporary parallel, Lucretius' ac?
count of mankind's earliest state (5.925-1012).
 MYTH OF NUMIDIAN ORIGINS IN SALLUST 181

prologue of the Catilina we are told that the properly human state differs
from the animal according to the degree to which men strive "not to pass
their lives unnoticed, like cattle [veluti pecora] which nature has made to
face the earth and obey their stomach" (Cat. 1.1). In Sallust's moral
matrix, primitives such as the Gaetuli and Libyes are aligned on the side
of corporis servitium rather than animi imperium, dependent on vires
rather than ingenium; "warlike" they may be, but they lack the social
organization necessary for the cultivation of virtus and the achievement
of gloria through the practice of bonae artes.8
We learn later that the Libyes lived near the Mediterranean, with
the Gaetuli to the south (literally "more under the sun"), near the desert
(18.9);9 and further, that the Gaetuli were the more warlike of the two
(18.12). Thus, a second polar opposition distinguishes these nomadic
tribes by means of a hierarchy of martial qualities, in which the Gaetuli
are superior to the Libyes. Since the Gaetuli also live deeper in the harsh
African interior, it seems evident that underlying this part of the account
is the ancient commonplace, going back at least to the fifth century and
weil expressed by the Herodotean story of Cyrus' rejection of emigra-
tion, that harsher circumstances of life produce tougher and more war?
like men.10 The implied superiority of the Gaetuli over the Libyes also
recalls a strain of Roman ethnography in particular that tends to elevate
the moral status of primitives to the extent that they are free of the
effects of luxuria; Sallust's inclination toward this belief is certainly evi?
dent elsewhere in the monograph.11

8 For the fundamental

oppositions that constitute Sallust's moral map, see Cat. 1-2
and lug. 1-2, with Earl 1961, 5-17.
9
According to Shaw (1982, 32 = Shaw 1995, chap. 7, 32), the term Gaetuli itself
"would seem to have the connotation of 'southerner.'"
10Green 1993,189-90,192-95; cf. Hdt. 9.122.3-4; cf.
Hp. Aer. 16,23-24. Probably the
moral threat posed by the sea also comes into play here: see below.
11In the
immediately preceding chapter of his book (17.6), Sallust makes the Afri?
can patiens laborum (cf. Koestermann 1971, 89). On the ethnographic convention of "bar-
barian" patientia and its relationship to?normally Roman?virtus, see Thomas 1982, 20-
21, and index, s.v.; Dauge 1981, 185, 208-209, 249-54. Note also that for the peculiarly
salubrious African genus hominum described in chap. 17, survival to old age is determined
not by morally indifferent causes such as illness but by confrontation of tests of courage:
"plerosque senectus dissoluit, nisi qui ferro aut bestiis interiere, nam morbus haud saepe
quemquam superat" (17.6). (On the ideas of chap. 17 in general, see now the exhaustive
analysis in Oniga 1995,37-50.) For the freedom of the Numidian nomad from the corrupt-
ing effects of luxury,see lug. 89.7-8: "Numidae plerumque lacte et ferina carne vescebantur
[the standard "alimentary" marker of nomadism] et neque salem neque alia inritamenta
gulae quaerebant: cibus illis advorsum famem atque sitim, non lubidini neque luxuriae
182 ROBERT MORSTEIN-MARX

The final ethnographic map of northwest Africa, however, is the

result of the arrival of a new, more civilized element from outside which
partially intermingles with these native peoples. According to the ac?
count, Persians, Medes, and Armenians from the army of Hercules, who
"as the Africans believe" had died in Spain, were impelled by a quest for
empire to cross to Africa ("multis sibi quisque imperium petentibus,"
18.3-4). These eastern immigrants are of course representatives of great,
if "barbarian," empires, and the imperial impulse which is said to drive
them?in contrast to the prelapsarian inertia of the natives, who "were
not controlled by customs, law or anyone's power" (18.2)?further char-
acterizes them as the standard-bearers of a more developed social order.
The opposition between noncivilization and civilization implied from the
beginning of the narrative is now given substance. At the same time, the
immigrants bring with them a new hierarchical polarity. The Persians of
old had dominated their neighbors the Medes and Armenians, as could
also be said of their contemporary heirs, the Parthians.12 What at first
looks like a three-way division, then, turns out to be a familiar binary
one, for the Medes and Armenians?the less-distinguished strain?settle
together near the straits of Gibraltar (18.9), blending into one people
under the name of "Medi" (subsequently to be mispronounced by the
native Libyans as "Mauri," 18.10), while the Persians make their landfall
separately, intra Oceanum magis (18.5), that is, on the Atlantic coast.13
When the Persians intermarry with portions of the Gaetuli to produce
the Numidians (18.7, cf. 18.11) and the Medes and Armenians blend with
neighboring Libyes (18.9), the superimposed oppositions establish a com-
plicated matrix of hierarchies: within the uncivilized, the Gaetuli over the

erat." Some modification would seem to be necessary to Shaw's claim that the ancient
ethnographic type of the nomad was exclusively and consistently negative (Shaw 1982-83
= Shaw 1995, chap. 6); cf. Thomas 1982, esp. 53-54, 98-99,108-12.
12Below, notes 39 and 43.
13Koestermann 1971, 92. For the
Pharusii, a people of this region also given (by
Pliny) Persian ancestry, see below, note 37. According to a fragment attributed to Sallust's
lug. by the grammarians Censorinus and Nonius, but listed by Maurenbrecher among his
dubia velfalsa (F3), the "untrustworthy" Mauri held that the Antipodes, beyond Ethiopia,
lived just and moral lives cultu Persarum?perhaps another allusion to a tradition of
Persian migration to Africa. Oniga (1995, 117-31) argues forcefully that the fragment
belongs indeed in the lug., and to provide a place for it conjectures a lacuna in our texts
immediately following 19.6. Though attractive at first glance, the "fit" is not really compel-
ling: such emphasis on the Mauretanian source of the claim and on the moral quality of the
Antipodes' lives seems out of place here. Perhaps the sentence was an interpolation in
Censorinus' and Nonius' texts of the lug.
 MYTH OF NUMIDIAN ORIGINS IN SALLUST 183

Libyes, as we have seen; the composite, half-civilized Numidians (18.7)

and Mauri over both the Gaetuli and Libyes;14 and within the half-
civilized, the Numidians over the Mauri. The Numidians draw on the
better of both worlds; the Mauri, the lesser.
The superiority of the Numidians over the Mauri appears to be
based not only on racial composition but also on environmental theory.15
Here some background is needed, I think, to east a fairly subtle feature
of the narrative in its proper light. Anxiety about maritime influence on
the moral condition of cities and peoples goes at least as far back as a
famous passage in Plato's Laws (4.704a-705b), whence it is picked up,
and given a patriotically Roman twist, by Cicero in the De Republica
(2.7-9).16 A version of the same idea emerges repeatedly in Caesar's
nearly contemporary Bellum Gallicum: distance from the sea and from
maritime commerce preserves the pristine valor of the "barbarian."17 As
Caesar and Cicero show, in Rome the concept of the sea as a source of
corruption was already implicated in the discourse about luxuria and
moral and physical decline that is so dear to Sallust's heart.18 Indeed, his
description of the event which precipitates the African excursus?that is,
the division of the Numidian kingdom between Jugurtha and Adherbal
in 116?seems to draw on this supposed connection between openness to
the sea and weakness. The portion which the Romans confer on Adherbal
is portuosior and "more embellished with buildings" than Jugurtha's
part, which is however "richer in land and men"; notoriously, Sallust

14That not all Gaetuli

joined with the Persians to blend into the new people, the
Numidae (18.7), is evident from their continued survival under their own name, if partly
under Numidian authority (19.7). The Libyes, however, disappear from the narrative once
some of them have been subsumed into the Mauri (18.10), and others, who had inhabited
the area near the coast, were conquered and absorbed (18.12).
15Cf.
Oniga 1995, 92.
16Cf. also Arist. Pol. 7.6, 1327a. The
complete, or near complete, loss of the great
works of Hellenistic ethnography (esp. Posidonius) makes it unfortunately difficult to trace
the precise form in which this idea was received by the Romans, but Strabo's comments at
7.3.7-9, C300-303, suggest that the idea of corruption of the "noble savage" through
maritime influences was already to be found in Hellenistic ethnography (note citation of
Posidonius at 7.3.7, C300).
17"Horum omnium fortissimi sunt
Belgae, propterea quod a cultu atque humanitate
provinciae longissime absunt, minimeque ad eos mercatores saepe commeant atque ea
quae ad effeminandos animos pertinent important" (Caes. BG 1.1.3). Cf. esp. 2.15.4-5,
6.24.5-6; also 2.4.8, 4.2-3, 5.14. Mttller 1980, 2.78-79; Vasaly 1993,148-50.
18Cf. Cat. 10-13. It is
interesting to note that the beginning of Roman decline is
marked by the opening of "all seas and lands" to the Romans ("cuncta maria terraeque
patebant," Cat. 10.1).
184 ROBERT MORSTEIN-MARX

considers Adherbal's half "better/stronger in appearance rather than in

usefulness."19 Green rightly saw that this is not to be dismissed as arrant
nonsense but understood as an expression of moralizing ethnographic
convention;20 the complex of ports and buildings in Adherbal's portion,
however, suggests not so much a vague "soft lands-soft men" ideology as
a specific association between moral decline and exposure to seaborne,
urban luxury.21 Here Sallust tellingly differs from his great Greek model,
Thucydides. For in the Athenian historian's "archaeology"?a source
text for Sallust elsewhere and I suspect here as well?proximity to the
sea, commerce, and the accumulation of wealth are essential factors for
the development of organized imperial power.22 Sallust betrays his mor-

19"In divisione
quae pars Numidiae Mauretaniam adtingit, agro virisque opulentior,
Iugurthae traditur; illam alteram specie quam usu potiorem, quae portuosior et aedificiis
magis exornata erat, Adherbal possedit" (16.5). Sallust's description of Jugurtha's portion
as agro ... opulentior means not only larger but more fertile; cf. 17.5, making a similar link
between the mare saeuom, inportuosum and the ager frugum fertilis. On the fertility of the
coastal "Tell,"extending inland as much as 300 km in places (Cherry 1998,5 with fig. 1.2),
see Strabo 17.3.9, C829, and 17.3.15, C833 (xcopav yap oiKcruvieq?i)5a{uova); cf. Cherry
1998,13-18, for a recent assessment.
20Green 1993,
esp. 194-95. Tacitus, who clearly modeled his account of the division
of the Thracian kingdom in a.d. 19 on this passage (Ann. 2.64.2; Koestermann 1971,86-87),
confirms the ideological nature of Sallust's judgment by adopting a virtually identical
dichotomy between uncivilized toughness and its opposite (where vicina Graecis takes the
part of Sallust's portuosior). It is interesting to compare Sallust's description of the division
with Strabo's superficially similar contrast between western and eastern Numidia
(7rpoao5iKC0T?pa te Kai 5i)vauiKC0T?pa / avGnpoiEpaxe Kai KaiEOKE-uaauivri pe^nov, 17.3.12,
C831), probably drawn from Posidonius, which was very likely also Sallust's ultimate
source (Paul 1984, 70). Sallust's reference to ports is not echoed at all by Strabo, and in
place of his emphasis on the populousness and fertility of Jugurtha's portion Strabo makes
western Numidia "richer in revenues"; both differences might be accounted for by Sallust's
assumptions about the moral consequences of commerce and wealth.
21Note also that at 17.5-6, Sallust includes a mare
saevum, inportuosum among the
factors (along with fertile, yet arid land, suitable for cattle but bare of trees, and a plethora
of wild beasts) that give rise to the peculiar health, energy, and hardiness of the North
Africans.
22Thuc. 1.1-21, with Kallet-Marx 1993, 21-36. That Sallust's Roman
"archaeology"
in the Cat. is modeled on Thucydides' account of the development of Greek power is of
course recognized by all (Perrochat 1949,21-22; Scanlon 1980,93-94). Given his interest in
that passage, thematic links between lug. 18 and the Thucydidean "archaeology" (note, for
example, the description of the unsettled condition of early Greece [1.2.2], and how the
relative poverty of Attic land leads, somewhat paradoxically, to a growth in population and
finally overpopulation and colonization of Ionia [1.2.6]; also cf. Wiedemann 1993, 52)
suggest that Sallust now returned to those chapters for inspiration. Scanlon, however, cites
only Thucydides' survey of Sicilian antiquities (6.1-5) as Sallust's model for the African
excursus (Scanlon 1980,131-32).
 MYTH OF NUMIDIAN ORIGINS IN SALLUST 185

alizing attitude by pointedly turning the Thucydidean argument on its

head:23 commercium, maritime exchange, and settled, urban life are im-
plied to be enervating factors; power comes not from material resources
but from the moral quality of men.
Thus, when we hear that the Mauri embraced the coastal, urban
life, quickly establishing towns and engaging in commerce across the
straits with Spain ("iique mature oppida habuere; nam freto divisi ab
Hispania mutare res inter se instituerant," 18.9), we may sense that the
notion of civilized corruption from urban and maritime sources has
reemerged, particularly as the references to towns and maritime ex?
change loosely echo the features of Adherbal's "weaker" portion of
Numidia ("portuosior et aedificiis magis exornata," 16.5). By contrast,
the Persian adventurers who come ashore farther west and south were
prevented from engaging in commerce with Spain because of their re?
mote location and the language barrier (18.5); their rejection of maritime
life and indeed of all commercial exchange could hardly be more force-
fully expressed than by their expedient of turning their ships over to
provide nomadic shelters for their landward migration (18.5, 8). The
Persians' use of such outlandish mapalia rather than building proper
towns like the Mauri equally emphasizes their unsettled, nonurban char?
acter; becoming nomads, even calling themselves
"Nomades" (appar-
ently they knew Greek!), they restlessly explore the land, continually
searching out new places (18.7).24 In the sequel, we observe the effects of
the divergent influences on the Numidians and the Mauri. The power of
the "Persian" Numidians rapidly increases (18.11); so does their popula?
tion, which leads in turn to the conquest of the future Numidia by a
younger offshoot continuing the migratory tradition of the people
("propter multitudinem a parentibus digressi, possedere ea loca quae
proxuma Carthaginem Numidia appellatur," 18.11). Having arisen out of
the inhospitable terrain of the African interior, they come to dominate

23For Sallust's
moralizing inclination as a central point of contrast with Thucydides,
see Scanlon 1980, 25-34.
24Green
(1993, 191) claims that the phrase temptantes agros implies that these
proto-Numidians are shown not to be nomads strictly but "farmers on the move ... more
civilized than the indigenous people, because they are agricultural."This seems to go too
far, given that Sallust in this very sentence associates precisely this custom of constant
movement with the adoption of the name Nomades. The mapalia here mentioned are
mobile homes, another traditional marker of nomadism: "Numidae vero Nomades [sc. a
Graecis appellati] a permutandis pabulis, mapalia sua, hoc est domos, plaustris
circumferentes" (Plin. HN 5.22; cf. Oniga 1995,90-91). Following Pliny, I would suggest that
the agros they "probe" in Sallust are pastures.
186 ROBERT MORSTEIN-M ARX

the north west part of the continent, imposing their sway over their neigh-
bors "by arms or fear" and winning "fame and glory" for themselves.25
Nothing more is said here about the Mauri, but the primacy of the
Numidians is clear, and the reasons for that primacy are clearly implied:
the Numidians had maintained the nomadic hardiness of the native
Gaetuli, and, like them, had remained free of the enfeebling effects of
sea-borne luxuria.

The myth, then, sets the rise of Numidia against a wider background of
North African history that is characterized by a struggle between the
hardy, warlike, restless nomad of the interior, toughened by a difficult
environment and free from the enervating effects of towns and the sea,
and the sedentary populations along the more hospitable parts of the
Mediterranean coast. What then of the Numidians themselves, who by
the end of chapter 18 have reached the Mediterranean coastal strip ("ad
nostrum mare processerant," 18.12)? The alert reader who has picked up
on the ethnographic ideas operative in the narrative thus far might now
suspect that the conquerors' very success has exposed them to precisely
the enfeebling influence they had thus far escaped. Although the myth
ends ostensibly on a triumphant note ("Africae pars inferior pleraque ab
Numidis possessa est, victi omnes in gentem nomenque imperantium
concessere," 18.12), there are hints of emerging stress within the Numidian
people in its new environment. The Numidians diverge into two parts:
one a younger offshoot from the old stock that occupies the area next to
Carthage (18.11), conquering the coastal Libyes; the other still the imme-
diate neighbor of the more warlike Gaetuli to the south. The two parts
cooperate effectively ("utrique alteris freti") to impose their power upon
their neighbors, but while the young, coastal branch expands more dra-
matically, apparently this is only because their neighbors, the Libyes, are
less formidable than those of the southern branch,26 and their absorption

25Note the
triumphant conclusion: "Denique Africae pars inferior pleraque ab
Numidis possessa est, victi omnes in gentem nomenque imperantium concessere" (18.12).
The weakness of Wiedemann's short treatment (1993) is to neglect the progress of the
narrative's major theme?Numidia's rise to greatness?while isolating and overemphasiz-
ing any signs of discord. As I myself shall argue, in a variety of ways discord is certainly a
part of this story; but the claim that the central function of the myth is to "explain[s] the
discord endemic in North Africa" (Wiedemann 1993,52) is simply too vague and lacking in
nuance to be helpful.
26"finitumos armis aut metu sub
imperium suom coegere, nomen gloriamque sibi
addidere, magis ii qui ad nostrum mare processerant, quia Libyes quam Gaetuli minus
bellicosi" (18.12).
 MYTH OF NUMIDIAN ORIGINS IN SALLUST 187

of the defeated Libyes, about whose relative lack of valor we have

already heard, may well suggest a decline in martial vigor.
However that may be, by the time of Jugurtha and Adherbal the
stresses adumbrated at the end of the myth have actually come to a head.
Seen against the background of the Numidian logos, Adherbal and
Jugurtha are avatars of the ancient struggle between the expansionist
peoples of the desert and the urbanized folk of the coast which now, in its
latest version, emerges within the Numidian nation that has annexed and
absorbed much of the northwest African coast.27 Despite the ancient
tradition that King Massinissa had turned his people from nomads into
farmers, and the historical realities of increasing urbanism, developing
agriculture, increasing wealth, and the rise of a remarkably Hellenized
royal dynasty, the "true" Numidian in the lugurtha is still the desert
nomad.28 Adherbal's passive, sedentary nature is matched by the more
urbanized, maritime portion of the kingdom given him by the Romans in
the passage that precipitates the excursus (16.5); he and his people thus
go down the path of corruption by the very factors that had made the
Mauri a second-rate people. Jugurtha?restless, aggressive, and trans-
gressive, the very embodiment of the ancient Numidian character29?is
on the other hand thrown back on what had made his people powerful:
men and the land, not cities, ports, and maritime exchange.30 Adherbal's
receipt of the portion of the kingdom more open to the sea and the influx

27Green
(1993, 194-95) rightly observed the link between the nature of the two
Numidian rivals and the character of the land they receive. Again Tacitus picks up on this
aspect in his account of the division of Thrace (Ann. 2.64.2; cf. above, note 20).
28Massinissa: Strabo 17.3.15, C833, who
interestingly blames the abundance of wild
animals (cf. Sallust, Iug. 17.6, with note 11 above) for the late persistence of nomadism in a
Xcopav. . . e\)5a(uova; cf. Polybius 36.16.7-8, Diod. 32.16.4. On agriculture, commerce, and
development of urban centers, especially the great city of Cirta (Strabo 17.3.13, C832), see
Walsh 1965,152-55; Fentress 1979,18-42,50-57; R.-Alfoldi 1979,55-58; Cherry 1998,1-23.
On the dynasty, see below. On "true"Numidians: note that at 89.7 and 90.1 "the Numidians"
tout court are said to live off milk and raw flesh, and to use their land for pasturage rather
than agriculture?classic markers of nomadism.
29For his adherence to Numidian tradition, see
esp. 6.1, "non se luxu neque inertiae
corrumpendum dedit, sed, uti mos gentis illius est, equitare iaculari, cursu cum aequalibus
certare." In consequence, "studia Numidarum in Iugurtham adcensa" (6.3; cf. 7.1). For
Jugurtha as a representative of instability and disorder, see Kraus 1999. These are, of
course, nomadic qualities too (see below, note 53).
30It is
noteworthy as weil that after the fall of Thala, to sustain his war effort
Jugurtha turns to the Gaetuli (80.1-2), representatives of the more primitive and warlike
strain of the Numidian blend. He thus turns "inward" (note per magnas solitudines), back
to the rudest nomadic roots of his people (genus hominum ferum incultumque).
188 ROBERT MORSTEIN-MARX

of wealth foreshadows and implicitly determines his swift and humiliat-

ing defeat?made by Sallust to appear swifter and perhaps more humili-
ating as well than was the case in truth.31

One of the most interesting aspects of this myth of the origins and rise of
the Numidians is its combination of a peculiar variant of Greek mythol-
ogy (Hercules' death in Spain) with the intrusion of exotic, oriental
elements (the Persians, Medes, and Armenians). Now of course, the great
voyages westward of the great Greek culture-hero were a favorite source
for the foundation stories excogitated for the peoples and cities of the
west: Spain, Gaul, and Italy, as well as North Africa.32 Yet this story
differs fundamentally from the conventional mythic pattern of the spread
of civilization by a culture-hero, and indeed nearly all of the other stories
of Heracles' foundations in the west, including Africa, in that here Her?
cules is only the vehicle that accounts for this remarkable eastern influx:
it is not Hercules himself or his rapidly proliferating offspring who "found"
the great peoples of northwest Africa but the remnants of his army,
driven by a desire to win empire for themselves after the hero's death in
Spain.33 Given the way in which the Hercules myth is so often used to
establish a direct link with Greece,34 the breach of that conventional link
seems suggestive of a move toward cultural differentiation rather than
appropriation. Indeed, this is a very odd Hercules, for he dies in Spain?
"sicuti Afri putant" (18.3). The foreign attribution of this bizarre variant
once again emphasizes differentiation from the Hellenic cultural heri-
tage. And the reference to death in Spain reveals that this is not really
the Greek Herakles at all, but the Punic-Phoenician god Melqart with

31Green 1993,194. Koestermann

(1971) observes that, contrary to the implication of
the text at 20.1, the war came some four to five years after the division. When war did break
out, Cirta held out against Jugurtha for some five months (24.3).
32
Oniga 1995,79-80 (for Africa, see also 65-66); more detail on the European leg of
the journey in Jourdain-Annequin 1989, 307-10.
33Strabo
reports a legend tracing the origin of the Mauretanians to the Indians in
Hercules' army (17.3.7, C828; for Ritter's proposal to emend to Mt|8od<;,see Oniga 1995,84
n. 72); Solinus (25.17) reports the story, based on etymological play, that Icosium was
founded by twenty soldiers who had broken off from Hercules' army. The myth of
Mauretanian descent reported by Plut. Sert. 9.4 (presumably from Juba 11:9.5) adheres to
the standard pattern, for Hercules had personally settled the place with Greek soldiers and
fathered a royal line.
34
Jourdain-Annequin 1989, 301-19.
 MYTH OF NUMIDIAN ORIGINS IN SALLUST 189

whom he was syncretized in antiquity: Melqart's grave at Gades was one

of the most celebrated shrines in Roman Spain.35
Nor are Persians, Medes, and Armenians the standard stuff of Hel?
lenistic foundation legends.The old suggestion, recently revived by Oniga,
that the selection of Persians, Medes, and Armenians was largely deter-
mined by etymological play on the names of North African tribes is not
very illuminating.36 Of course etymological games are certainly present
in our text, as the explanations of the origin of the names Numidae and
Mauri show (18.10-11).37 My point is simply that such uncontrolled specu-
lationcould accommodate virtually any antecedents, and cannot have
been the basic criterion of selection. Dubious onomastic associations
might have been ventured with any number of foreign peoples; the real
question is, why specifically these three?
It is, of course, a coherent assemblage. Persians and Medes immedi-
ately evoke the Achaemenid Persian Empire: to establish a prestigious,
yet distinctly non-Hellenic, even anti-Hellenic identity one could not do
better than this (the Trojans having already been claimed by others).38
But by Sallust's time the ancient glory of the Achaemenid Persians had
been revived by the Arsacid Parthians who, adopting the Achaemenid
heritage, were the Persae of the age, and could readily be referred to thus

35
Already Gsell 1918-28, 1.332-33; cf. now Oniga 1995, 67-68. The Afri to whom
Sallust attributes this version of the death of "Hercules" need not, however, have been
Carthaginians: the cult of Melqart, via Carthage, had long taken root all along the coast of
northwest Africa (Gsell 4.301-14; Bonnet 1988,186-200; Jourdain-Annequin 1989,119-35);
indeed, Corbier (1974, 99-101) interestingly speculates that the Punic Melqart had already
long been syncretized with a preexisting Numidian national god (note Hercules Libys at
lug. 89.4.). For Melqart in general, see Bonnet-Tzavellas 1983,195-207; on the "Herculeum"
at Gades, see Hiibner 1910, 448-50, Piccaluga 1974, 111-32, Bonnet 1988, 203-30; on
"Hercules"' grave there, Mela 3.46; Arnob. Adv. gent. 1.36; cf. App. Ib. 2.
36
Oniga (1995, 82-90), who finds in the fourteenth-century historian Ibn-Khaldun
suggestive names of Berber tribes such as "Medouna," "Ourmana,"and "Beni-Feraoucen"
(82). Cf. Gsell 1918-28,1.334-35, citing Vivien de St. Martin (335, nn. 1-2).
37Note too that, in what seems
very likely to be another version of this aspect of the
myth, Pliny on transparently etymological grounds makes the Pharusii?an African tribe
placed south of the Gaetuli but reaching the coast of Ocean (thus suggestively near the
"Persians"' landfall in Sallust [18.5])?Persians by origin (Pliny, HN 5.46, cf. Mela 3.103;
Windberg 1938,1870-71; Oniga 1995, 83-84).
38Cf. Gruen 1992, 31, on Rome's
appropriation of the Aeneas legend: "It enabled
Rome to associate itself with the rich and complex fabric of Hellenic tradition, thus to enter
that wider cultural world, just as it had entered the wider political world. But at the same
time, it also announced Rome's distinctiveness from that world."
190 ROBERT MORSTEIN-M ARX

in contemporary Latin;39 equally to the point, then, may be the connec?

tion that the myth forges between the great mounted warriors of Iran,
past and present, and their equestrian counterparts of northwest Af?
rica.40 That association is also suggested outside the excursus: Sallust's
reference to the national pastimes of Numidian youth, most notably
horsemanship and hunting, echo Herodotus and Xenophon on those of
ancient Persia, or Tacitus on the Parthians,41 while his description of their
style of fighting, imputations of treachery, instability, and unsteadfastness
are clearly reminiscent of Parthian tactics.42 Furthermore, for a Roman
writer of the later first century B.C., Parthians, Medes, and Armenians go
naturally together in a roster of the great equestrian nations of the
eastern marches of the imperium.43 Indeed, only the hypothesis of a

39For Persae = Parthi, see Cic. Dom. 60; Hor. Od. 1.21.15, 3.5.4, 4.15.23. For the
Arsacid claim to the Achaemenid heritage, see Arrian, FGrH 156 F31 and Tac.Ann. 6.31.1,
with Neusner 1963; Wolski 1966, and 1969.
40
Triidinger (1918,129) saw the essential point (strangely neglected by Ritter 1978);
but it is an open question whether, as he seems to believe, the association of the great
equestrian nations of Africa and Asia, past and present, was Sallust's own invention or the
proud fancy of his native source (below).
41"uti mos
gentis illius est, equitare, iaculari, cursu cum aequalibus certare ... ad hoc
pleraque tempora in venando agere, leonem atque alias feras primus aut in primis ferire"
(lug. 6.1). I suspect that this is an allusion to the conventional characterization of the
Iranian horseman rather than a specific and direct literary reminiscence: cf. Hdt. 1.136.2
(with Renehan 1962, 257-58; 1976,100, noting as well Hp. A'er. 17: the Sauromatae); Xen.
Cyr. 1.4.4-5 and An. 1.9.5 (with Vretska 1955, 113; Avenarius 1957, 60); Tac. Ann. 2.2.3
(Vonones rejected because of raro venatu, segni equorum cura). On Parthian horseman-
ship, see also Suet. Gai. 5; Justin 41.2.5, 3.3^1. See also below, note 45.
42For Numidian national characteristics in the
lug., see below, note 53; for their
tactics, see Paul 1984, 93-94; Gsell 1918-28, 7.157?in which note esp. the combination of
ambush, envelopment, and harassment from a distance exemplified by the battle at the
Muthul (lug. 50.3-52.4): "les javelots . . . chez les vieux Africains, jouaient dans cette
tactique le meme role que les fleches chez les Parthes." Sallust will have had personal
knowledge of the Numidian style of fighting from the Thapsus campaign and must have
read Caesar's account of Curio's disaster in 49; here the essential characteristics of Numidian
warfare familiar from the lug. are already established (BAfr. 14-18, 69-72 [note also
"insidiosae nationis equitatum innumerabilem," 10.3, and "laborandum ut consuefaceret
milites hostium dolos, insidias, artificia cognoscere et quid sequi, quid vitare conveniret,"
73.2]; BC 2.38-41). For the Parthians, see, e.g., the accounts of Carrhae (Plut. Crass. 18-31,
Dio 40.12-20) or of Antony's campaign of 36 (Plut. Ant. 37-51, with Pelling 1988,220^13;
Dio 49.25-31); also Justin 41.2.7-10.
43On the intertwined
history of Armenia (ambigua gens ea antiquitus: Tac. Ann.
2.56.1) and Media Atropatene and their relations with Rome in the first century b.c, see
Sullivan 1990,96-105,280-91,293-300. Armenia and Media (both Atropatene and "Greater"
Media) were of course famous equestrian lands: Plb. 5.44.1,8.23.5,10.27.1-2, Strabo 11.13.2,
 MYTH OF NUMIDIAN ORIGINS IN SALLUST 191

contemporary allusion makes sense of the otherwise anomalous inclu-

sion of Armenians in the company of "Persians" and Medes, for the
Armenians were not mainstays of the ancient Persian empire, as were
the Medes, and only in the nineties and eighties, under Tigranes the
Great, did they became a major power for Rome and the Parthians to
reckon with. The king's harboring of Mithridates provoked Lucullus'
bold invasion in 69 and further conflict with Rome until Pompey re-
stricted him to his former boundaries of Armenia in 66; thenceforward,
down to Sallust's day and beyond, the Armenian kingdom, like its neigh-
bor Media Atropatene, wavered dubiously between the great powers to
its east and west, often struggling to maintain at least nominal indepen-
dence against Parthia but drawn to their Iranian cousins by cultural and
dynastic ties, and a more persistent and proximate threat. Indeed, the
uncertain position and two-faced attitude of Armenia and Media toward
Parthia and Rome offer a suggestive parallel to the role of their suppos-
edly cognate Mauri and King Bocchus in the Jugurthine War.
Green has argued that the intrusion of Persians, Medes, and Arme?
nians into the Numidian myth is part of a textual strategy through which
Jugurtha is fashioned as a new Cyrus, through whom a new Persian
empire is established in North Africa, leading finally to "a second, Ro?
man edition of the great war of the Greeks against the Persians, the war
of the defenders of civilization against the barbarians, the war of Greece
against Asia, all being replayed by Italy against Africa."44 She founds her
argument on a supposed correspondence between Jugurtha and Cyrus
the Great, the best evidence for which is a literary echo of Xenophon's
Cyropaedia.45 But the parallel, slight as it is, is not sustained and seems
too thin to hold up the argument.46 Still, Green's idea that a larger

C523,11.13.7, C525,11.14.9, C530; Sherwin-White and Kuhrt 1993,15-16. For the similarity
of their customs, see Strabo 11.13.9, C525-26.
44Green 1993,197.
45Green 1993,192-95.
Jugurtha's youthful competition with his peers in traditional
Numidian pursuits (Iug. 6.1) is comparable to Xenophon's picture of Cyrus the Great at
Cyr. (1.4.4-5): Vretska 1955, 113, and Avenarius 1957, 60. As suggested above, the list of
traditional Numidian pastimes in Iug. 6.1 helps broadly to apply Iranian coloring to the
Numidians (above, note 41); but, in the absence of further parallels it remains dubious that
anything as specific as a sustained identification between Cyrus and Jugurtha is suggested.
Micipsa's speech on the succession contains a particularly noteworthy allusion to Cyrus the
Younger's deathbed speech (compare 10.3^1 and Xen. Cyr. 8.7.13-14; see Koestermann
1971, 54)?but he is hardly thus made a "Cyrus."
46We
hardly perceive an echo of Cyrus' famous refusal to migrate to the "soft lands"
of the conquered peoples (Hdt. 9.122) in Jugurtha's receipt of the part of the Numidian
192 ROBERT MORSTEIN-MARX

cultural clash is being hinted at remains intriguing, and gains force, I

think, when we consider the association between Persians and Parthians
natural to a mid-first-century reader. The allusion may then be much
more immediate, even topical: the disaster at Carrhae in 53 had precipi-
tated a sustained crisis on Rome's eastern flank right through Sallust's
own time of writing (probably very shortly before 40 for the Iugurtha)47
and beyond. After the slaughter of Crassus' legions we hear of Parthian
incursions into Cilicia and Syria and of Roman fears of a wider war;
Julius Caesar planned a Parthian campaign, aborted only by his assassi-
nation and subsequent civil war; by 41 Antony had begun operations
against them, to which the Parthians replied in 40 with their deepest
invasion of Roman territory, overrunning Syria and penetrating even to
western Asia Minor, led by the Roman refugee Q. Labienus. Although
the position was quickly restored by Antony's marshal Ventidius Bassus,
Antony's own counterattack in 36 ended badly.48 Written, and read, in
such a historical milieu, a story that traces the Numidian heritage to
Persia forges a suggestive link between two great threats to Rome on the
"barbarian periphery": Numidia is made a natural opponent and rival to
Rome, the Jugurthine War a prefiguration of the drawn-out fighting of
Sallust's own time with the Parthians, it too magnum et atrox variaque
victoria.

If the Persian/Parthian allusions set up, in this way, a "natural" opposi?

tion between Rome and Numidia, this only reinforces the overall effect
produced by a comparison of the myth of Numidian origins with the
broadly similar account of a great state's rise to power which Sallust had
already given elsewhere: the "Roman archaeology" put in a similarly
forward position in the Catilina (6-13).
The "family resemblance" is obvious: the story of how the domi-
nant power of "Africa" was descended from a mixture of an indigenous
people living in a state of nature with an eastern, civilizing element
brought west by a mythological hero immediately suggests a parallel

kingdom that is stronger, though less civilized; Cyrus' subjugation of the Medes hardly
seems reflected in the rise of the Numidian power relative to that of the Mauri (descended
from Medes); Cyrus' uniting Persian and Mede in his own person is rather a different thing
from Jugurtha's marriage to the Mauritanian king's daughter (a connection that Sallust
explicitly plays down, perhaps overmuch, contra Green 1993, 193: cf. Iug. 80.6 with Paul
1984, 201).
47Ca. 43^12: Koestermann 1971, 33-34; 41^10: Paul 1984, 2.
48For these events, see Bivar 1983, 48-66; Sherwin-White 1984, 279-321.
 MYTH OF NUMIDIAN ORIGINS IN SALLUST 193

with Rome's myth of Aeneas, Trojans, and Aborigines;49 and as in the

"Roman archaeology," the new people formed by the confluence of two
strains swiftly rises to power, dominates its neighbors, and develops the
love of glory that is essential for any imperial people.50 The points of
comparison have the effect of elevating the Numidians' stature into a
formidable opponent whose history and traditions bear conspicuous simi-
larities with the Romans' own:51 in some basic ways, Numidians are like
Romans.52 Yet ultimately the differences that the parallel "archaeologies"
establish are more telling. Roman civilization is identified with the city
from its very beginning: urbem Romam are indeed the first words of the
digression (Cat. 6.1). Once its divergent and wandering elements
("multitudo divorsa atque vaga") have come together within a single
wall ("in una moenia convenere") they swiftly ("brevi") coalesce into a
true civitas (6.2). The contrast could hardly be greater with the "Persian"
Proto-Numidians, whose rejection of urban life, as we have seen, is so
powerfully emphasized by their use of their inverted ships' hulls as

49Cf. Cat. 6.1: "Urbem Romam, sicuti

ego accepi, condidere atque habuere initio
Troiani qui Aenea duce profugi sedibus incertis vagabantur, cumque iis Aborigines, genus
hominum agreste, sine legibus, sine imperio, liberum atque solutum." With the description
of the Aborigines, cf. lug. 18.1-2: "incultique . . . neque moribus neque lege aut imperio
quoiusquam regebantur"?in itself, of course, a conventional description, as we have seen,
yet for all that no less an echo of the prior account.
50"Sed res Persarum brevi adolevit"
(lug. 18.11); cf. Cat. 6.2-3: "ita brevi multitudo
divorsa atque vaga concordia civitas facta erat. Sed postquam res eorum civibus moribus
agris aucta satis prospera satisque pollens videbatur." On domination of neighbors: lug.
18.12; Cat. 6.4-5 (cf. 10.1). On love of glory: lug. 18.12: "nomen gloriamque sibi addidere"
(language strikingly reminiscent of the Sallustian vocabulary of virtus: Earl 1961, 5-17);
Cat. 7.3: "Sed civitas incredibile memoratu est adepta libertate quantum brevi creverit:
tanta cupido gloriae incesserat."
51The
parallel with Cat. 6-13 was rightly emphasized, to very different effect, in
Scanlon 1987, 38-41, and 1988, 138^13. However, Scanlon fails to distinguish with the
necessary clarity between the northwest African peoples whose origins are related in chap.
18 and the Carthaginians, touched upon evasively at 19.1-2?a conflation which ends in
confusion when Carthaginian failings (19.1) are foisted onto Numidians ("the African
excursus is both programmatic and paradigmatic by its narration of cupido imperi and res
novae in the early history of Numidia" [sic], Scanlon 1987, 40)?or, vice versa, Numidian
traditions are transferred to Carthage (Scanlon 1988,143, on the story of Persian immigra-
tion). If the distinction between Numidians and Carthaginians is properly observed, the
"warnings"for Roman readers which Scanlon teases out of the excursus seem to dissipate.
52The idea is
perhaps reinforced by the way in which the young Jugurtha is made
remarkably "Roman" (Earl 1961,62; Kraus 1997,27). In particular, he is assimilated at lug.
6.1 to the image of early Roman virtus sketched by Sallust at Cat. 7. (With "plurumum
facere, minimum ipse de se loqui" [lug. 6.1], cf. "optumus quisque facere quam dicere, sua
ab aliis bene facta laudari quam ipse aliorum narrare malebat" [Cat. 8.5]).
194 ROBERT MORSTEIN-M ARX

mobile homes (18.5,8) and whose nomadic instability ("saepe temptantes

agros alia, deinde alia loca petiverant," 18.7) is sharply distinguished
from the rootedness of the Proto-Moors on the coast in their oppida
(18.9). Their nomadic tradition (compounded, of course, by their deriva-
tion from two such alien sources as Persia and the Gaetulians) stamps
the Numidians as the dangerous "Other" that threatens civilization, be?
cause of their bellicosity, mobility, and their destabilizing effect on civi-
lized categories.53 All of which, of course, are fundamental aspects of the
character of Jugurtha?the consummate Numidian.54
Other, related, differences emerge as weil. For the early Romans,
settlement within a single wall, when attended by remarkable concordia
between the contrasting constituents, produces power and prosperity,
which attracts the hostile attentions of their neighbors (Cat. 6.2-4). The
Proto-Numidians, however, are always on the move, always taking over
new land (Iug. 18.7). While the Romans expand because, having fought
off their dangerous neighbors due to their extraordinary virtus and love
of libertas,55 they offered
more assistance to their allies than they re?
quired themselves 6.5),56 the Numidians'
(Cat. rise is driven by over-
population (Iug. 18.11); and while the African imperial people indeed
possesses the requisite love of glory (Iug. 18.12), there is no explicit
reference to virtus or, of course, libertas?theirs or anyone else's. Indeed,
the representation of the nature of Numidian imperial power differs
strikingly from early Rome's, as it is based is explicitly on the defeat and
intimidation of their neighbors ("finitumos armis aut metu sub imperium

53The
literary type of the nomad remains remarkably similar from the Scythians to
the Huns, for they always represent the irreconcilably "Other"?see Dauge 1981, 620-26;
Shaw 1982-83 (= Shaw 1995, chap. 6); Hartog 1988, 193-206. Cf. Sallust's association of
nomadism with poverty, pillaging, and ferocity in two fragments of the Histories, 2.85 and
3.74 Maurenbrecher; see Oniga 1995, 108. For the Numidians' inversion of "civilized"
values (leaving aside Jugurtha's personal qualities), note especially their faithlessness,
mercurial spirit (ingenio mobili), love of change (Iug. 46.3; cf. tanta mobilitate, 56.5; ingenio
mobili, 66.2; genus hominum mobile infidum, 91.7: further references in Paul 1984, 140),
their trickery in war (53.6,56.1: Paul 1984,143, cf. 93-94), and their custom of "shamelessly"
saving themselves by scattering after a fight (54.4; cf. 74.3). Interestingly, however, the
Numidians are never directly styled barbari, a term which appears to be reserved for the
Mauritanians (including their king, Bocchus) and the Gaetulians who take up Jugurtha's
cause after the Numidians have abandoned him: 98.2, 98.6,101.7,102.2,102.15,103.5.
54See now Kraus 1999.
55Cat. 6.5, 6.7, and
esp. 7.3: "Sed civitas incredibile memoratu est adepta libertate
quantum brevi creverit: tanta cupido gloriae incesserat."
56Note that their amici had earlier
largely failed them through fear (Cat. 6.4).
 MYTH OF NUMIDIAN ORIGINS IN SALLUST 195

suom coegere," lug. 18.12). No mention of "friends and allies" here; there
are only "rulers" and "the defeated."57
The story of Numidia's origins and rise to power related in Iugurtha
18, like the "Roman archaeology" of the Catiline, illustrates Sallust's
special interest in the peculiar environmental, social, and moral factors
that motivate the rise and fall of states. It also invites comparison with
the earlier, corresponding Roman myth?a comparison which reveals
that the Numidians are represented as archetypal "anti-Romans," paral-
lel to the Romans as an imperial people but occupying the opposite
cultural pole. The Jugurthine War is to be a clash not merely between two
centers of power but between cultures?the civilized center versus the
semibarbarous, seminomadic fringe, Europe versus Africa/Asia.58

The myth is heterodox, as Sallust

himself emphasizes in his introduction
by explicitly acknowledging its divergence from the generally prevailing
view?presumably that offered by recent Greek authorities on Africa
such as Posidonius59?and ostentatiously passing responsibility for its
veracity on to its sources.60 Indeed, Sallust insists, it is indigenous: he
names his sources as the "cultores eius terrae"?that is, the Numidians
themselves?and more specifically, the "Punic books which were said to
be by King Hiempsal," as they were translated for him personally.61

57"victi omnes in
gentem nomenque imperantium concessere" (Iug. 18.12).
58For the
tendency, based on climatic determinism, to divide the peoples of the
barbarous periphery into two broad groups, those of the northern, cold climates and those
of the southern, African-Asian heat, and to treat individual members of those groups as
more or less interchangeable, see Dauge 1981,467-81,654-76, and Oniga 1995,23-34. For
the assimilation of nomadic peoples to each other, see Shaw 1982-83 = 1995, chap.6.
59
Triidinger (1918,127-29), forcefully rejected a Posidonian origin for the material
in the African excursus. We should distinguish, however, between the narrative of chap. 18,
on whose specifically native origin Sallust insists at 17.7 (cf. also sicuti Afriputant, 18.3), and
the rest of the excursus, where there is no obvious objection to the natural assumption that
Sallust would have made use of Posidonius especially for his geographic information. The
Grecisms of Catabathmon (17.4) and Cyrene . . . , colonia Theraeon (19.3) are especially
noteworthy (Paul 1984, 73, with 2-3).
60
Iug. 11.1, concluding with ceterum fides eius rei penes auctores erit. This sort of
disavowal of responsibility is an old convention regarding native logoi (cf. esp. Hdt. 2.123,
7.152), but it seems superficial to read it here as indicating lack of interest (Marincola 1997,
85). Green (1993,192) interprets the formula, together with the reference to libri Punici, as
an allusion to Punica fides intended to alert the reader to the story's falsity; but this seems
overly subtle when in any case the bizarre (Persians, and their upside-down boats) and
mythical (Hercules) elements are enough to prevent his audience from being taken in.
61"uti ex libris Punicis
qui regis Hiempsalis dicebantur interpretatum nobis est"
(Iug. 17.7).
196 ROBERT MORSTEIN-MARX

Sallust's striking and rather emphatic claim to have made use of a native
account translated from the Punic (though registering some doubt about
authorial attribution: dicebantur) has received short shrift from some
modern authorities.62 But nothing here rings false. Hiempsal II was the
father of King Juba I, whose territory was taken over as a province upon
his defeat in 46 and first governed by Sallust himself; it is readily imagin-
able that volumes ascribed to him fell into the hands of the historian
during his North African sojourn.63 Although other works of Hiempsal
are unknown, a Numidian author-king is not unthinkable even before
the well-known example of Juba II, Hiempsal's grandson, in view of the
cultural ambitions or affectations of his antecedents: Hiempsal's grand-
father, Mastanabal, was not only victor in the Panathenaic horse race but
"Graecis litteris eruditus" (Liv. Per. 50); King Micipsa, Mastanabal's
brother, a devoted amateur philosopher, was "the most cultivated of the
kings of Africa" and maintained numerous Greek intellectuals at his
court.64 The use of the Punic language by a Numidian is perfectly plau-

62
Trudinger 1918, 127, cited with approval in Paul 1984, 74. Oniga (1995, 51-68)
building upon the suggestion of Krings 1990, argues that the libri Punici were in fact a
typical product of Hellenistic ethnography, written in Greek and claiming the authority of
indigenous origin in the person of Hiempsal. Particularly in the context I do not see how
libri Punici can be understood as a title (= <I>oiviKiKa); decisive, surely, is interpretatum
nobis, which Oniga, after first venturing the possibility that the verb may mean nothing
more than "interpret," finally suggests is merely an authorial fiction intended to cover up
the use of "un piu banale testo greco" (61-62, with n. 56). This begs the question, and
gratuitously makes Sallust a liar. The probable influence of Hellenistic ethnographic con-
ventions on the account (unless they are due, that is, to Sallust's own reshaping of the story)
can be sufficiently explained by the Greek cultural orientation of the dynasty.
63Gsell 1918-28,7.126; cf.
Syme 1964,38: "Plenty of tasks were left for the proconsul,
opportunities of traffic and sources of enrichment?above all, the royal estates, castles, and
depositories of treasure in different parts of Numidia, art collections, and libraries." On
Hiempsal II, see esp. Kontorini 1975, 89-99; cf. R.-Alfoldi 1979, 63-65; Paul 1984, 74. The
political geography of Numidia in the time of Hiempsal and Juba I is very obscure: cf.
Kontorini 1975,94-98, with R.-Alfoldi 1979,63-65. Matthews's revival of the view that the
genitive case of Hiempsalis does not indicate authorship but possession is very strained: see
already Gsell 1918-28,1.332; Ritter 1978,315-16. Contra, e.g., Syme 1964,153, Sallust's rex
Hiempsal is almost certainly this king rather than the short-lived, second-century Hiempsal
I, son of Micipsa: besides the reasons cited in Matthews 1972,331, and Kontorini 1975,94,
the appearance of the Armenians alongside Persians and Medes at 18.4 and 18.9?assum-
ing that they are not Sallust's own addition?points toward a first-century rather than
second-century date (see my discussion above).
64For Juba II,
king of Mauretania under Augustus and Tiberius: Jacoby 1916, 2384-
95 and FGrH 275; Mastanabal: IG II2 2316, lines 41^14; Micipsa: Diod. 34/35.35; Strabo
17.3.13, C832. Hiempsal himself was honored with a statue by the people of Rhodes?
perhaps on the occasion of a royal visit to this center of learning (Kontorini 1975, 98-99,
 MYTH OF NUMIDIAN ORIGINS IN SALLUST 197

sible,65 and a perceptibly Greektouch in the myth ("semet ipsi Nomadas

[NojiocSou;] appellavere," 18.7)66 after all not inconsistent with a Numidian
is
source, given the Hellenized cultural horizons of the ruling dynasty by
the first century. As for the content of the myth, one may weil suppose
that the assertion of Persian origins was a proud fancy of the Numidian
royal house.67
This, then, is supposed to be a native logos, whose appearance
temporarily refocalizes the text, reorienting its implied cultural view-
point from the Roman-centered "colonial discourse" that otherwise domi-
nates the monograph,68 and giving us a picture of a foreign world as it is
(allegedly) seen from within; we are invited to see the Numidians in the
context of their own traditions and beliefs about their history. Yet the
effect is, if anything, more one of alienation than of empathy, for the very
divergence of the (supposed) Numidian beliefs from the contemporary
Greek and Roman understanding of the history of northwest Africa
itself reinforces the cultural "otherness" of the Numidians that proves, I
have argued, to be the major underlying theme of the myth. Sallust has
clearly reshaped the indigenous story or stories?perhaps radically?in
accordance with his own historiographical preoccupations and the needs
of the wider narrative in which it is embedded. We would expect nothing
less from the author of the "Roman Archaeology" of the Catilina.
The fantastic and avowedly eccentric character of the myth long
distracted modern readers from the richness of its underlying ideas and
allusions. I hope to have shown that its strangeness is largely the point,
and that the curiosities it contains betray, upon examination, an underly?
ing coherence. The myth of Numidian origins makes use of deep-rooted
ethnographic conventions regarding the nomad and resistance to the

citing the visit of Hiempsal's great-grandson, Ptolemy, king of Mauretania). Note also the
monument of the Numidian royal family at Delos: Baslez 1981.
65Paul 1984, 74; conceded even
by Matthews (1971, 330-31), despite his inclination
to ascribe the books to a Carthaginian source.
66Paul 1984,76, and Koestermann 1971,95; cf. Plin. HN 5.22.
Again it is necessary to
distinguish the explicitly African tradition of 17.7-18.12 from the largely geographic survey
of 17.3-6 and 19, for which Greek sources are certainly to be presumed (above n. 59).
67Above, note 40. Ritter
(1978, 313-17) makes much of a reference in a context of
ca. 153 b.c. (Livy, Per. 48) to a Numidian prince, grandson of Syphax, named Arcobarzanes
(or Ariobarzanes). But the single appearance of such a jarring name might be no more than
a product of textual corruption.
68On which, see the
interesting deconstructive essay by J.-M. Claassen (1993). Dauge
(1981,111) is much too sanguine.
198 ROBERT MORSTEIN-MARX

corrupting influence of the sea, a remarkable "orientalizing" genealogy

reinforced by the contemporary Parthian crisis, dissonant echoes from
the "Roman Archaeology" of the Catilina and even claims of privileged
access to a heterodox, indigenous perspective, to characterize the adver-
sary in the monograph as an anti-Rome occupying the opposite cultural
pole from the shared standpoint of author and implied reader: an incar-
nation of the forces of disorder which, in a state of natural and perpetual
war, continually threaten to subvert or infect Roman civilization. Rome
would win this war; yet since it succeeds at last only by adopting the
methods of the Numidians, the disorder that they represent ultimately
prevails.69

University of California, Santa Barbara

e-mail: morstein@humanitas.ucsb.edu

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