1There was at that time at Rome a certain Numidian named Massiva, son of Gulussa and grandson of Masinissa, who, because he had been opposed to Jugurtha in the quarrel of the kings, had left his country as a fugitive after Cirta was surrendered and Adherbal killed. 2Spurius Albinus, who held the consulship with Quintus Minucius Rufus in the year after Bestia, persuaded him that, since he was of the stock of Masinissa and Jugurtha was beset by hatred and fear because of his crimes, he should ask the senate for the kingdom of Numidia. 3The consul, eager to wage war, preferred that everything should be stirred up rather than grow stale.
3To him had fallen the province of Numidia, to Minucius Macedonia. 4When Massiva began to press this matter, and Jugurtha found too little protection among his friends, because a guilty conscience hampered one, bad repute and fear another, he ordered Bomilcar, his closest and most loyal follower, to procure assassins to lie in wait for Massiva with money, the means by which he had accomplished many things, and to do it as secretly as possible, but, if that did not succeed, to kill the Numidian by any means at all. 5Bomilcar promptly carried out the king's orders and through men skilled in such business spied out Massiva's journeys and goings out, in short all his places and times.
5Then, when the situation demanded, he laid the ambush. 6So one of those who had been made ready for the murder attacked Massiva somewhat rashly. 6He cut him down, but was himself caught, and at the urging of many, above all of the consul Albinus, he turned informer. 7Bomilcar was put on trial, more in accordance with what was fair and good than with the law of nations, since he was the companion of a man who had come to Rome under a public pledge. 8But Jugurtha, though plainly guilty of so great a crime, did not stop struggling against the truth until he perceived that the odium of the deed was beyond his influence and money.
9So, although at the first hearing he had given fifty of his friends as sureties, thinking more of his kingdom than of the sureties, he sent Bomilcar away secretly to Numidia, afraid that fear of obeying him would seize the rest of his subjects if Bomilcar were punished. 9And he himself set out for the same place a few days later, ordered by the senate to leave Italy. 10But after he had left Rome, he is said to have looked back at it often in silence and at last to have said, 'O city for sale, and soon to perish, if it finds a buyer!'