374 CRASSUS.

down, while Jason * handed over the costume of Pen- theus to one of the dancers in the chorus, and taking up the head of Crassus, and acting the part of a bacchante in her frenzy, in a rapturous impassioned manner, sang the lyric passages, We 've hunted down a mighty chase to-day, And from the mountain bring the noble prey.; to the great delight of all the company ; but when the verses of the dialogue followed, What happy hand the glorious victim slew ? I claim that honor to my courage due ; Pomaxathres, who happened to be there at the supper, started up and would have got the head into his own hands, " for it is my due," said he, " and no man's else." The king was greatly pleased, and gave presents, accord- ing to the custom of the Parthians, to them, and to Jason, the actor, a talent. Such was the burlesque that was played, they tell us, as the afterpiece to the tragedy of Crassus's expedition. But divine justice failed not to punish both Hyrodes, for his cruelty, and Surena for his perjury ; for Surena not long after was put to death by Hyrodes, out of mere envy to his glory ; and Hy- rodes himself, having lost his son Pacorus, who was

• Jason, at the time of the inter- lyric dialogue sung between Agave

ruption, was acting, it seems, the and the chorus of her attendant part of Pentheus ; he put off his bacchantes opens on her part with, dress and took that, apparently, of " We bring from the mountain a Agave. The lines that follow are young one new killed to the house, from the scene in the Bacchse, a fortunate prey," (this is Mr. (1170,) where Agave, returning Long's translation,) and presently, from Cithseron, presents herself to the question of the chorus, which with the head of her son Pentheus, Plutarch quotes from memory a whom, in her frenzy, she has little inexactly, " Whose hand killed, which she carries in her struck him first ? " exclaims in an- hand, thinking it a lion's. The swer, " Mine is the honor."