JUBA I., successor to his father Hiempsal on the throne of Numidia, owes his importance much more to the distracted state of the Roman world during the struggle betwixt Caesar and Pompey than to his intrinsic merit. He embraced Pompey’s cause, moved by ancient hereditary friendship to that general, as well as by personal enmity to Caesar, who had insulted him at Rome a few years before, and to Curio, Caesar’s general in Africa, who had openly proposed when tribune of the plebs in 50 b.c. that Numidia should be sold to colonists, and the king reduced to a private station. In 49 b.c. Juba marched against Curio, who was threatening Utica, and by a stratagem inflicted on the Caesarean army a crushing defeat, in which Curio was slain. Juba’s attention was momentarily distracted by a counter invasion of his territories by Bocchus and Sitius; but, finding that his lieutenant Saburra was able to defend his interests, he rejoined Scipio with a large body of troops. With Scipio he shared the defeat at Thapsus. Fleeing from the field with the Roman general Petrei us, the king wandered about for some time as a fugitive, spurned even from the gates of his own city Zama, where he had prepared for a desperate siege. The fugitives at length resolved to die by mutual slaughter. Juba killed Petreius, and sought the aid of a slave in despatching himself (46 b.c.). Juba’s character may be summed up in the word savage; he was brave, treacherous, insolent, and cruel.

JUBA II., king of Mauretania, was on the death of his father Juba I. in 46 b c. carried to Rome, a mere infant, to grace Caesar’s triumph. He seems to have received a good education under the care of Octavianus (afterwards Augustus), whom he accompanied later in his campaign against Antony. In 29 b.c., after Antony’s death, Octavianus gave the young African the hand of Cleopatra Selene, daughter of Antony and Cleopatra, and placed him on his paternal throne. In 25 B.C., however, he transferred him from Numidia to the kingdoms formerly held by Bocchus and Boguas, viz., Mauretania Tingitana and Mauretania C⅛sariensis, to which was added a part of Gaetulia. Juba fixed his royal residence at Joi, whose name he changed to Caesarea, and which is now identified with the modern Cherchel, about 72 miles west of Algiers. He seems to have reigned in considerable prosperity, though in 6 a.d. the Gaetulians rose in a revolt of sufficient importance to afford the surname Gaetulicus to Cornelius Cossus, the Roman general whose aid the king called in to suppress it. According to Josephus (Ant. xvii. 13, 1 and 4; J3. J., ii. 7, 4), Juba married in second nuptials Glaphyra, daughter of Archelaus of Cappadocia, and widow of Alexander, son of Herod the Great, afterwards wife of Alexander’s brother, the Archelaus of the New Testament. The date of Juba’s death is by no means certain; from the evidence of coins and certain allusions in Strabo, scholars have been led to place it in 19 or 20 a.d....