Jugurtha Recalled

This image has been going around the internet since at least 2017.

 

It's often described as the two-mile-wide stump of an ancient tree.

 

It's actually a geological feature and (as I found out earlier today), it's called Jugurtha's Table.

A little research also turned up the fun fact that butte, mesa, and plateau are all words for land formations (small, medium and large) of this type, with steep walls and a flat top, created over millennia by erosion.

 

My next question was: WHO TF WAS JUGURTHA?

Near the end of the second century BCE, Jugurtha (aka "Yugurten") was a king of Numidia, an area of n. Africa which today includes western Algeria and eastern Tunisia. He had allied with the Romans in part to secure his throne, but for six years had also struggled to evict the Roman occupiers. (Tunis was built on the ruins of Carthage, at one time Rome's greatest enemy.)

After losing his first war with the Romans, Jugurtha had been made to surrender his elephants. A corrupt Roman Senate allowed him to buy them back on favorable terms, and the resultant outrage fueled support for more forceful action against the rebels.

Jugurtha (160 - 104 BCE)

 

By 106, the king of neighboring Mauretania, his father-in-law Bocchus - who may have tired of having so many Roman soldiers running around - offered Jugurtha protection, a prelude (perhaps not planned), to perfidy. In a deal with the Romans, Bocchus turned him over, and then was allowed by Rome to add Jugurtha's kingdom to his own.

Jugurtha was rendered to Rome in 106, paraded through its streets as part of the triumph accorded his former enemy, the general and statesman Gaius Marius, and thrown in prison, before being executed in 104. He was about 55 at the time.

Britannica says: The Senate’s handling of Jugurtha, characterized by a mixture of corruption and incompetence, led to the loss of public confidence, which was an important factor in the eventual fall of the Roman Republic.