When King Micipsa died in 118BC, a civil war broke out between the king's natural son Adherbal and his adoptive son Jugurtha. Adherbal appealed for Roman help and a senatorial commission brokered a seemingly successful division of the kingdom between the two heirs. Jugurtha followed this mediation, however, by besieging Cirta and killing both Adherbal and the Romans who defended him. Rome then persecuted the Jugurthine War against his reunited Numidian state to assert their hegemony over the region and to secure the protection of its citizens abroad.