Metellus was the son of Macedonicus, and has the surname of Numidicus. He is one of those characters which people are very apt to see in a wrong light:--a noble-hearted man, he cannot be called without qualification; he was, though a plebeian, fully imbued with the prejudices and jealousies of the nobility. From a child, he had come to the conviction that the government ought to be honestly carried on: he was the patron of men of low degree who were making their way upwards; for he loved merit, so long as it kept within bounds, and did not aspire to the very highest place. This accounts for his behaviour to Marius, to whom at first he showed kindness; for as soon as Marius stood for the consulship, he was so blinded by his rage that he became his enemy. To this very day, one meets among the high English nobility with men like Metellus, who look upon the privileges of their order as the first inviolable rights, and whenever offences committed by any of their own body come to light, will step in with their protection to prevent an exposure. Thus the remarkable character of Metellus becomes quite clear: he was estimable for the integrity of his motives, but utterly incapable of being just. He spurned all the offers of Jugurtha against whom he used his own Punic arts, so that that prince was obliged to disarm entirely as the price of hopes which were never fulfilled; and when Jugurtha wished actually to buy himself off from the ruin which he clearly saw before his eyes, Metellus put forth conditions which would have rendered him quite defenceless. At last, Metellus demanded, that he should appear in person; this Jugurtha refused to do, and the war broke out afresh. Metellus carried it on for two years; and though he was sometimes worsted, he deserves very great praise for the manner in which he overcame the difficulties which he had to encounter: several of his undertakings are some of the most brilliant in history. Jugurtha, on the whole, avoided pitched battles; he risked an engagement only once, and then he was beaten. We now again see that mixture of cowardice and boldness which there was in him, and his inability to meet his fate. He wanted to surrender to Metellus, and had already given up all his arms, all his elephants, and two hundred thousand pounds of silver; but when he was to yield up his own person, he withdrew into the wilds of mount Atlas, having now stripped himself of all his resources. Thus the war was protracted in spite of the efforts of Metellus, and the opinion gained ground in Rome, that he had purposely allowed it to drag on: yet there was no reason for doubting his disinterestedness and incorruptibility. He was a great general and statesman, and his personal character stood high; but his pretensions were unbearable. They may indeed have been the ruin of the country: that fearful irritability which we afterwards find in Marius, would never have been roused, had not the _optimates_ done everything