Metellus can hardly have been a popular man anywhere, and his strictness must have made him many enemies.

Henceforth Metellus was master of the entire island.

Cornelius Nepos says, that, in the time when Metellus, the colleague of Afranius, was proconsul of Gaul, the king of the Suevi sent to him certain Indians, who came to his country in a ship by the north and the flats of Germany.

But though assassination had become one of the recognised weapons of a Roman noble, Metellus was a novice in the art by the side of Jugurtha, who determined to die hard now he was at bay.