1When the Roman general saw that he was being worn out by tricks and that the enemy gave him no opportunity of fighting, he decided to besiege a large city called Zama, the citadel of the kingdom in the part where it lay, thinking, as the situation demanded, that Jugurtha would come to the help of his hard-pressed people and that there would be a battle there. 2But Jugurtha, informed by deserters of what was being prepared, got ahead of Metellus by forced marches. 2He urged the townspeople to defend their walls, adding the deserters to help them, the class of men who were the most reliable among the king's forces, because they could not play false; 2besides this he promised that he himself would be there with his army in good time.
3Having arranged matters thus, he withdrew to the most hidden places possible, and shortly afterwards learned that Marius had been sent from the march with a few cohorts to Sicca to get grain, the town which had first of all deserted the king after the defeat. 4He went there by night with picked cavalry, and as the Romans were already coming out he joined battle at the gate, at the same time loudly urging the people of Sicca to surround the cohorts from the rear: fortune was giving them the chance of a glorious deed; 4if they did it, he would thereafter spend his life on his throne, and they in freedom, without fear.
5And if Marius had not made haste to advance and get out of the town, surely all or a large part of the people of Sicca would have changed their allegiance: with such fickleness do the Numidians behave. 6But Jugurtha's soldiers, kept going for a little while by the king, when the enemy pressed them with greater force, lost a few men and went off in flight.