Further Metellus Scipio demanded the supreme command for himself, because Pompeius had recognized him in the Thessalian campaign as on a footing of equality, more from the consideration that he was his son-in-law than on military grounds. The like demand was raised by Varus as the governor - self-nominated, it is true - of Africa, seeing that the war was to be waged in his province. Lastly the army desired for its leader the propraetor Marcus Cato. Obviously it was right. Cato was the only man who possessed the requisite devotedness, energy, and authority for the difficult office; if he was no military man, it was infinitely better to appoint as commander-in-chief a non-military man who understood how to listen to reason and make his subordinates act, than an officer of untried capacity like Varus, or even one of tried incapacity like Metellus Scipio. But the decision fell at length on this same Scipio, and it was Cato himself who mainly determined that decision.
He did so, not because he felt himself unequal to such a task, or because his vanity found its account rather in declining than in accepting; still less because he loved or respected Scipio, with whom he on the contrary was personally at variance, and who with his notorious inefficiency had attained a certain importance merely in virtue of his position as father-in-law to Pompeius; but simply and solely because his obstinate legal formalism chose rather to let the republic go to ruin in due course of law than to save it in an irregular way. When after the battle of Pharsalus he met with Marcus Cicero at Corcyra, he had offered to hand over the command in Corcyra to the latter - who was still from the time of his Cilician administration invested with the rank of general - as the officer of higher standing according to the letter of the law, and by this readiness had driven the unfortunate advocate, who now cursed a thousand times his laurels from the Arnanus, almost to despair; but he had at the same time astonished all men of any tolerable discernment. The same principles were applied now, when something more was at stake; Cato weighed the question to whom the place of commander-in-chief belonged, as if the matter had reference to a field at Tusculum, and adjudged it to Scipio.
By this sentence his own candidature and that of Varus were set aside. But he it was also, and he alone, who confronted with energy the claims of king Juba, and made him feel that the Roman nobility came to him not suppliant, as to the great-prince of the Parthians, with a view to ask aid at the hands of a protector, but as entitled to command and require aid from a subject. In the present state of the Roman forces in Africa, Juba could not avoid lowering his claims to some extent; although he still carried the point with the weak Scipio, that the pay of his troops should be charged on the Roman treasury and the cession of the province of Africa should be assured to him in the event of victory.
By the side of the new general-in-chief the senate of the "three hundred" again emerged. It established its seat in Utica, and replenished its thinned ranks by the admission of the most esteemed and the wealthiest men of the equestrian order.
The warlike preparations were pushed forward, chiefly through the zeal of Cato, with the greatest energy, and every man capable of arms, even the freedman and Libyan, was enrolled in the legions; by which course so many hands were withdrawn from agriculture that a great part of the fields remained uncultivated, but an imposing result was certainly attained. The heavy infantry numbered fourteen legions, of which two were already raised by Varus, eight others were formed partly from the refugees, partly from the conscripts in the province, and four were legions of king Juba armed in the Roman manner. The heavy cavalry, consisting of the Celts and Germans who arrived with Labienus and sundry others incorporated in their ranks, was, apart from Juba's squadron of cavalry equipped in the Roman style, 1600 strong. The light troops consisted of innumerable masses of Numidians riding without bridle or rein and armed merely with javelins, of a number of mounted bowmen, and a large host of archers on foot. To these fell to be added Juba's 120 elephants, and the fleet of 55 sail commanded by Publius Varus and Marcus Octavius. The urgent want of money was in some measure remedied by a self-taxation on the part of the senate, which was the more productive as the richest African capitalists had been induced to enter it. Corn and other supplies were accumulated in immense quantities in the fortresses capable of defence; at the same time the stores were as far as possible removed from the open townships. The absence of Caesar, the troublesome temper of his legions, the ferment in Spain and Italy gradually raised men's spirits, and the recollection of the Pharsalian defeat began to give way to fresh hopes of victory.
The time lost by Caesar in Egypt nowhere revenged itself more severely than here. Had he proceeded to Africa immediately after the death of Pompeius, he would have found there a weak, disorganized, and frightened army and utter anarchy among the leaders; whereas there was now in Africa, owing more especially to Cato's energy, an army equal in number to that defeated at Pharsalus, under leaders of note, and under a regulated superintendence.
A peculiar evil star seemed altogether to preside over this African expedition of Caesar. He had, even before his embarkation for Egypt, arranged in Spain and Italy various measures preliminary and preparatory to the African war; but out of all there had sprung nothing but mischief. From Spain, according to Caesar's arrangement, the governor of the southern province Quintus Cassius Longinus was to cross with four legions to Africa, to be joined there by Bogud king of West Mauretania[47], and to advance with him towards Numidia and Africa. But that army destined for Africa included in it a number of native Spaniards and two whole legions formerly Pompeian; Pompeian sympathies prevailed in the army as in the province, and the unskilful and tyrannical behaviour of the Caesarian governor was not fitted to allay them. A formal revolt took place; troops and towns took part for or against the governor; already those who had risen against the lieutenant of Caesar were on the point of openly displaying the banner of Pompeius; already had Pompeius' elder son Gnaeus embarked from Africa for Spain to take advantage of this favourable turn, when the disavowal of the governor by the most respectable Caesarians themselves and the interference of the commander of the northern province suppressed just in right time the insurrection. Gnaeus Pompeius, who had lost time on the way with a vain attempt to establish himself in Mauretania, came too late; Gaius Trebonius, whom Caesar after his return from the east sent to Spain to relieve Cassius (autumn of 707), met everywhere with absolute obedience. But of course amidst these blunders nothing was done from Spain to disturb the organization of the republicans in Africa; indeed in consequence of the complications with Longinus, Bogud king of West Mauretania, who was on Caesar's side and might at least have put some obstacles in the way of king Juba, had been called away with his troops to Spain.
Still more critical were the occurrences among the troops whom Caesar had caused to be collected in southern Italy, in order to his embarkation with them for Africa. They were for the most part the old legions, which had founded Caesar's throne in Gaul, Spain, and Thessaly. The spirit of these troops had not been improved by victories, and had been utterly disorganized by long repose in Lower Italy. The almost superhuman demands which the general made on them, and the effects of which were only too clearly apparent in their fearfully thinned ranks, left behind even in these men of iron a leaven of secret rancour which required only time and quiet to set their minds in a ferment. The only man who had influence over them, had been absent and almost unheard-of for a year; while the officers placed over them were far more afraid of the soldiers than the soldiers of them, and overlooked in the conquerors of the world every outrage against those that gave them quarters, and every breach of discipline. When the orders to embark for Sicily arrived, and the soldier was to exchange the luxurious ease of Campania for a third campaign certainly not inferior to those of Spain and Thessaly in point of hardship, the reins, which had been too long relaxed and were too suddenly tightened, snapt asunder.
47. Much obscurity rests on the shape assumed by the states in northwestern Africa during this period. After the Jugurthine war Bocchus king of Mauretania ruled probably from the western sea to the port of Saldae, in what is now Morocco and Algiers (IV. IV. Reorganization of Numidia); the princes of Tingis (Tangiers) - probably from the outset different from the Mauretanian sovereigns - who occur even earlier (Plut. Serf. 9), and to whom it may be conjectured that Sallust's Leptasta (Hist. ii. 31 Kritz) and Cicero's Mastanesosus (In Vat. 5, 12) belong, may have been independent within certain limits or may have held from him as feudatories; just as Syphax already ruled over many chieftains of tribes (Appian, Pun. 10), and about this time in the neighbouring Numidia Cirta was possessed, probably however under Juba's supremacy, by the prince Massinissa (Appian, B. C. iv. 54). About 672 we find in Bocchus' stead a king called Bocut or Bogud (iv. 92; Orosius, v. 21, 14), the son of Bocchus. From 705 the kingdom appears divided between king Bogud who possesses the western, and king Bocchus who possesses the eastern half, and to this the later partition of Mauretania into Bogud's kingdom or the state of Tingis and Bocchus' kingdom or the state of Iol (Caesarea) refers (Plin. H. N. v. 2, 19; comp. Bell. Afric. 23).