1After Marius had accomplished so great a feat without any loss to his own men, he who had been great and famous before began to be thought greater and more famous. 2All his ill-considered actions were put down to merit: the soldiers, kept under mild discipline and at the same time enriched, praised him to the skies; 2the Numidians feared him as more than mortal; 2in short all, allies and enemies alike, believed that he had either a divine mind or that everything was revealed to him by the will of the gods. 3But the consul, when this affair turned out well, goes on to other towns, takes a few in the face of Numidian resistance, and destroys with fire more which had been abandoned because of the sufferings of the people of Capsa: everything is filled with grief and slaughter.
4At last, having taken many places, most of them without bloodshed to his army, he undertakes another enterprise, not of the same harshness as that of Capsa, but no less difficult. 5For not far from the river Muluccha, which divided the kingdoms of Jugurtha and Bocchus, there was amid an otherwise level plain a rocky hill, broad enough for a moderate fort, rising to an immense height, with only one very narrow approach left; 5for its whole nature was sheer, as if by design and handiwork. 6Marius set out to capture this place with all his might, because the king's treasures were there. 6But the affair was managed better by luck than by planning.
7For the fort had a large enough force of men and arms, a great store of grain and a spring of water; 7the site was unsuited to siege mounds, towers and other engines; 7the path of the garrison was very narrow and cut off on both sides. 8Along it the mantlets were pushed forward at great risk and in vain; 8for when they had advanced a little, they were destroyed by fire or stones. 9The soldiers could neither stand firm in front of the works because of the unevenness of the ground, nor work among the mantlets without danger: all the best of them fell or were wounded, and fear grew among the rest.