1When this became known at Rome and the matter began to be debated in the senate, those same agents of the king, by interrupting and by spinning out the time, often through influence and sometimes through wrangling, softened the atrocity of the deed. 2And had not Gaius Memmius, tribune of the plebs elect, a keen man and hostile to the power of the nobility, made clear to the Roman people that the aim was to have Jugurtha's crime pardoned through a few partisans, all the indignation would surely have melted away as the deliberations were put off: so great was the power of the king's influence and money. 3But when the senate, conscious of its wrongdoing, came to fear the people, under the Sempronian law Numidia and Italy were assigned as provinces to the next consuls; 3Publius Scipio Nasica and Lucius Bestia Calpurnius were declared consuls; 4Numidia fell to Calpurnius, Italy to Scipio.
5Then an army was enrolled to be carried to Africa; 5pay and the other things that would be useful for war were voted.