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The enterprise may have been followed by a tolerably long campaign in these regions. This campaign has not been recorded, but that it was contemplated is proved by the fact that Marius had ordered an enormous force of cavalry to meet him near the Muluccha.
For the Moroccan boundary of the kingdom the river Muluccha or Molocath see Goebel Die Westkueste Afrikas im Altertum pp. 79,80. From this vast tract of country Rome had cut out for herself a small section on the north-east.
He would not press his claim to the disputed territory east of the Muluccha. He would be content to regard that river, which had been the boundary between his own kingdom and that of Micipsa, as his future frontier. He would not cross it himself nor permit Jugurtha to pass within it.
It extended from Mauretania to Cyrenaica, from the river Muluccha to the greater Syrtis, thus touching on the west the Empire of the Moors, at that time confined to Tingitana, on the east almost penetrating to Egypt, and enjoying the best part of the fertile region which borders the coast of the Mediterranean.
The aspirations of Bocchus for an extension of the limits of Mauretania had to be satisfied, partly because it would have been ungenerous and impolitic to deprive of a reward that had been more than hinted at, a man who had violated his own personal inclinations and the national traditions of the subjects over whom he ruled, for the purpose of performing a signal service to Rome; partly because it would have been dangerous to the future peace of Numidia, and therefore of Rome, to leave the question of Bocchus's claims to territory east of the Muluccha unsettled, especially with such a ruler as Gauda on the throne.
His answer was not only friendly, but apologetic. He urged that he had not taken up arms in any spirit of hostility to Rome, but simply for the purpose of defending his own frontiers. He claimed that the territory near the Muluccha, which had been harried by Marius, did not belong to Jugurtha at all. He had expelled the Numidian king from this region and it was his by the right of war.
Nothing but the name of this great King of the Moors, who ruled over the territory stretching from the Muluccha to Tingis, had hitherto been known to the Roman people; even the proximity of a portion of his kingdom to the coast of Spain had brought him into no relations, either friendly or hostile, to the imperial government.
The first steps in his political career gave the immediate lie to any theory of wasted opportunities. He had but exceeded by a year or two the minimum age for office when he was elected to the quaestorship; he was but thirty-one when he was scouring Italy for recruits; a year later he had entered Marius's camp near the Muluccha with his host of cavalry.
It is more difficult to determine whether Marius increased the success of this plan by a political blunder of his own. The point at which he is now found operating was near the river Muluccha or Molocath, the dividing line between the kingdoms of Numidia and Mauretania.
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