Instantly the player who personated Agave seized the bloody trophy, and placing it on his thyrsus instead of the one he was carrying, paraded it before the delighted spectators, while he chanted the well-known lines: From the mountain to the hall New-cut tendril, see, we bring-- Blessed prey! The horrible spectacle was one well suited to please an Eastern audience: it was followed by a proceeding of equal barbarity and still more thoroughly Oriental.

The Parthians, in derision of the motive which was supposed to have led Crassus to make his attack, had a quantity of gold melted and poured it into his mouth.
Meanwhile Surenas was amusing his victorious troops, and seeking to annoy the disaffected Seleucians, by the performance of a farcical ceremony.

He spread the report that Crassus was not killed but captured; and, selecting from among the prisoners the Roman most like him in appearance, he dressed the man in woman's clothes, mounted him upon a horse, and requiring him to answer to the names of "Crassus" and "Imperator," conducted him in triumph to the Grecian city.

Before him went, mounted on camels, a band, arrayed as trumpeters and lictors, the lictors' rods having purses suspended to them, and the axes in their midst being crowned with the bleeding heads of Romans.

In the rear followed a train of Seloucian music-girls, who sang songs derisive of the effeminacy and cowardice of the proconsul.