The Greeks in Bactria and India c9.s2.112

c9.s2.112

We want some decisive point, and there appear to be two, both decisive against Artavasdes. One is that our historian, as already noticed, knew of the advice given by two named citizens of Carrhae to Publius Crassus in the battle just before his death; it seems impossible that Artavasdes could have known this. The second comes in the story of the performance of a scene from the Bacchae at Artavasdes’ Court,⁵ when Crassus’ head was brought in and the Agave, Jason of Tralles, took it in his arms instead of Pentheus’ mask. This story is the reason why Artavasdes was ever thought of, for he was there and our Greek could not have been; yet it seems decisive against him. Our historian shows that the choragus altered half a line of Euripides to agree better with the new situation.⁶ Granted that Artavasdes would have read the Bacchae, a king could hardly be such a professed and close student of the play that he would detect, and record, this trifling and unimportant alteration in the performance of a work in a foreign language. The people who did notice it would be the Greek actors, who knew the text by heart. Among the actors all the limelight falls on Jason, the only one mentioned by name, and he must be the source of the whole account; probably it was his best story for years. He was a strolling player; any Greek might have met him or sought him out. But though Artavasdes (not necessarily in person) gave Jason a present of money, would the king of Armenia at the same time have sought personally from a strolling actor another and more minute version of an incident which he himself had just witnessed and perhaps even arranged? I do not think so.