'Three and a half centuries after Euripides' death the Roman multimillionaire Crassus led a Roman army into Syria, was defeated by the Parthians, and killed. When the messenger arrived at the Parthian capital with his head, the court was watching a Greek company perform the Bacchae. They had reached the scene in which Pentheus' mother Agave, still in Dionysiac frenzy, comes on stage carrying her son's severed head. The head of Crassus was thrown on the floor; Jason, the actor playing Agave, substituted it for the prop he had been carrying and resumed the performance, singing the famous aria "I bring from the mountain, this bough fresh-cut…." The audience went wild.'
Bernard Knox
For those of you who don't know Marcus Licinius Crassus was at the time the richest man in (late) Republican Rome. He had defeated Spartacus and was one of the members of the First Triumvirate along with Julius Caesar and Pompey. The death of Crassus changed the balance of power among the three competitors for political power in Rome and made it impossible for Caesar and Pompey to maintain a political alliance.
Is there a moral in all this? Probably not.
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