Please note that Mommsen uses the AUC chronology (Ab Urbe Condita), i.e. from the founding of the City of Rome. You can use this reference table to have the B.C. dates
The town was surprised
by Metellus on the second day after its revolt, and given over to
all the rigour of martial law; but if such was the temper of the
easy to be reached and comparatively submissive dwellers on the
banks of the Bagradas, what might be looked for farther inland and
among the roving tribes of the desert? Jugurtha was the idol of
the Africans, who readily overlooked the double fratricide in the
liberator and avenger of their nation.
Twenty years afterwards a
Numidian corps which was fighting in Italy for the Romans had to
be sent back in all haste to Africa, when the son of Jugurtha
appeared in the enemy's ranks; we may infer from this, how great
was the influence which he himself exercised over his people.
What prospect was there of a termination of the struggle in regions
where the combined peculiarities of the population and of the soil
allowed a leader, who had once secured the sympathies of the
nation, to protract the war in endless guerilla conflicts, or even
to let it sleep for a time in order to revive it at the right moment
with renewed vigour?