the sister of the Armenian monarch. While the festivities were in progress and the entire company was watching a performance of the Bacchae of Euripides, messengers arrived with the head and hand of Crassus, gruesome trophies of Carrhae. In announcing the victory the head was thrown upon the stage, an action scarcely in keeping with Greek tradition, though both of the kings and their attendants were familiar with the Greek language and literature, and Artavasdes had written orations and histories and composed tragedies in that language.[1]
The result of Crassus' fiasco was to place Parthia on an equal if not superior plane with Rome in the minds of men from the Mediterranean to the Indus.[2] The lands east of the Euphrates became definitely Parthian, and the Euphrates remained the boundary between Rome and Parthia until a.d. 63, when the defeat of Paetus took place. The Parthians failed to follow up their victory, although Cassius, now in command of the Roman troops in Syria, was short of men and unlikely to receive reinforcements while civil war was threatening in Rome.
Among the groups most strongly affected by this increase in Parthian prestige were the Jews. For
- ↑ Plut. Crassus 33. Just how much reliance can be placed on this much overworked story is doubtful. In any case, the evidence concerns only the immediate court circle, and the extent to which Hellenism penetrated the life of the common people yet remains to be determined.
- ↑ Strabo xi. 9. 2; Dio Cass. xl. 14; Pliny Hist. nat. v. 88 (25); Justin xli. 1. i; Herodian iv. 10; Plut. Antony 34.
