rrived,
and along with it, according to Oriental usage, the cut-off head
of Crassus. The tables were already removed; one of the wandering
companies of actors from Asia Minor, numbers of which at that time
existed and carried Hellenic poetry and the Hellenic drama
far into the east, was just performing before the assembled court
the -Bacchae- of Euripides. The actor playing the part of Agave,
who in her Dionysiac frenzy has torn in pieces her son and returns
from Cithaeron carrying his head on the thyrsus, exchanged this
for the bloody head of Crassus, and to the infinite delight of his
audience of half-Hellenized barbarians began afresh the well-known song:

--pheromin ex oreos
elika neotomon epi melathra
makarian theiran--.

It was, since the times of the Achaemenids, the first serious victory
which the Orientals had achieved over the west; and there was
a deep significance in the fact that, by way of celebrating
this victory, the fairest product of the western world--
Greek tragedy--parodied itself through its degenerate representatives
in that hideous burlesque. The civic spirit of Rome and the genius
of Hellas began simultaneously to accommodate themselves
to the chains of sultanism.

Consequences of the Defeat

The disaster, terrible in itself, seemed also as though
it was to be dreadful in its consequences, and to shake the foundations
of the Roman power in the east. It was among the least of its results
that the Parthians now had absolute sway beyond the Euphrates;
that Armenia, after having fallen away from the Roman alliance
even before the disaster of Crassus, was reduced by it
into entire dependence on Parthia; that the faithful citizens
of Carrhae were bitterly punished for their adherence to the Occidentals
by the new master appointed over them by the Parthians,
one of the treacherous guides of the Romans, named Andromachus.
The Parthians now prepared in all earnest to cross the Euphrates
in their turn, and, in union with the Armenians and Arabs, to dislodge
the Romans from Syria. The Jews and various other Occidentals
awaited emancipation from the Roman rule there, no less impatiently
than the Hellenes beyond the Euphrates awaited relief
from the Parthian; in Rome civil war was at the door; an attack
at this particular place and time was a grave peril. But fortunately
for Rome the leaders on each side had changed. Sultan Orodes
was too much indebted to the heroic prince, who had fi