down, while Jason[1] handed over the costume of Pentheus 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, according 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 Hyrodes himself, having lost his son Pacorus, who was
- ↑ Jason, at the time of the interruption, was acting, it seems, the part of Pentheus; he put off his dress and took that, apparently, of Agave. The lines that follow are from the scene in the Bacchæ (1170,) where Agave, returning from Cithæron, presents herself with the head of her son Pentheus, whom, in her frenzy, she has killed, which she carries in her hand, thinking it a lion's. The lyric dialogue sung between Agave and the chorus of her attendant bacchantes opens on her part with, "We bring from the mountain a young one new killed to the house, a fortunate prey," (this is Mr. Long's translation,) and presently, to the question of the chorus, which Plutarch quotes from memory a little inexactly, "Whose hand struck him first?" exclaims in answer, "Mine is the honor."
