1Meanwhile Jugurtha, after abandoning surrender and beginning the war again, prepared everything with great care and in haste: he gathered an army; 1he tried to win back the communities that had revolted from him, by fear or by holding out rewards; 1he fortified his strongholds, repaired or bought arms, weapons and the other things he had given up in the hope of peace; 1he tried to lure away the slaves of the Romans and to tempt with money the very men who were in the garrisons; 1in short, he let nothing stay untouched or quiet, and stirred everything up. 2So at Vaga, where Metellus had placed a garrison at the beginning when Jugurtha was suing for peace, the leading men of the community, worn down by the king's entreaties and not estranged from him in sentiment even before, conspired together.
2For the common people, as is usually the case and especially among the Numidians, were fickle in temper, seditious and quarrelsome, eager for revolution and hostile to quiet and peace. 2Then, having arranged matters among themselves, they fixed on the third day following, because that day, a holiday observed throughout Africa, promised merriment and licence rather than alarm. 3But when the time came, they invited the centurions and military tribunes, and the commander of the town himself, Titus Turpilius Silanus, to their homes, each a different man. 3All of these except Turpilius they cut down in the midst of the feast; then they attacked the soldiers, who were wandering about unarmed, as was natural on such a day and with no one in command.
4The common people did the same, some instructed by the nobles, others roused by a liking for such doings, who, knowing nothing of what had been done or planned, were content with the uproar itself and the upheaval.