Saddam: Latter-day Jugurtha?(The Last Word)

Once upon a time, a ruthless, clever despot I came to power in a desert land by murdering his rival for the throne. He sought the allegiance of a great imperial power, which had once given him military training. He soon displeased his imperial ally by invading a neighboring territory that he claimed as his own. As a result, his imperial overlords branded him a public enemy and dispatched military forces to his desert country to hunt him down. After a war lasting many years, in which the rebel potentate demonstrated greater elusiveness than battlefield savvy, he was betrayed and arrested. He was brought in chains to the enemy capital overseas and publicly humiliated, and he died in prison a broken man.

So lived and died Jugurtha, king of the North African nation of Numidia, and one of Rome's many rivals in the twilight years between the end of the Punic Wars in 146 B.C. and Rome's decent into civil war and Caesarism about a century later. Jugurtha was the adopted son of the Numidian king Micipsa, whose father, Masinissa, had been an ally of Rome in the protracted struggle with the Carthaginians. When Jugurtha got embroiled in a dynastic struggle with Micipsa's two natural sons, Jugurtha had one son murdered. The remaining son, Adherbal, and Jugurtha both appealed to Rome for arbitration. The Roman Senate ordered the Numidian kingdom to be divided between the two. However, Jugurtha's forces soon invaded Adherbal's territory, and Rome intervened with military force.

Jugurtha proved to be a wily adversary. After a years-long stalemate with Roman forces under Metellus, he eventually faced a far more militarily competent adversary in Marius. Marius took the war to Jugurtha, winning engagement after engagement and driving him farther and father into the desert. Another up-and-coming Roman military leader, Sulla, finally arranged to have Jugurtha betrayed into Roman hands, leaving the Romans the undisputed masters of North Africa.

The Jugurthine war, which lasted about seven years, provided more drama than danger to the Roman state. Yet this seemingly inconsequential war set in motion a devastating chain of events that no Roman could have foreseen. Marius and Sulla, the heroes of the conflict, were both propelled to great popularity by their military exploits. They soon became bitter rivals, and their respective followings crystallized into two great, irreconcilable factions. Out of this rivalry crone a devastating civil war that ended with the apocalyptic defeat of the Marian army at the very gates of Rome, and the dictatorship and bloody purges of Sulla, the Roman republic's first despot.

Despite the ...