[Footnote 91: Probably there is an error in the name: Roscius has been proposed as the probable reading.]
[Footnote 92: Plutarch is alluding to the fable of the two wallets, which every man carries, one in front with his neighbours' faults in it, and the other behind containing his own. Phædrus (iv. 10, ed. Orelli) has pithily told the apologue:--
Peras imposuit Iuppiter nobis duas: Propriis repletam vitiis post tergum dedit, Alienis ante pectus suspendit gravem. Hac re videre nostra mala non possumus: Alii simul delinquunt, censores sumus.
Two wallets Juppiter has placed upon us: Our own faults fill the bag we bear behind, Our neighbour's heavy wallet hangs in front. And so we cannot see our own ill deeds; But if another trips, forthwith we censure.
[Footnote 93: This word means a thick stick; and a snake of like form.]
[Footnote 94: Greek adventurers were always making their way to the courts of these barbarous Asiatic kings to serve in the capacity of physicians, mountebanks, or impostors of some kind. Several instances are mentioned by Herodotus. Tralles was a considerable town near the west coast of Asia Minor, from which this actor came.]
[Footnote 95: Pentheus, king of Thebes, son of Agave; would not recognise the divinity of Bacchus, whereupon Bacchus infuriated the women, and among them Agave, who killed her own son. She is introduced in the Bacchæ with his head in her hand, exulting over the slaughter of the supposed wild beast.
The passage which is cited is from the Bacchæ of Euripides, v. 1168, ed. Elmsley. The exact meaning of the word [Greek: helika] ἕλικα in the passage is uncertain. See Elmsley's note.]
[Footnote 96: The word is Exodium ([Greek: exodion] ἐξόδιον), a kind of entertainment common among the Romans, though it is a Greek word. Plutarch means that this exhibition before the kings was like the farce which is acted after a tragedy. It seems as if Jason was first playing the part of Agave, and was then going to play that of Pentheus; but on seeing the head he put aside the mask and dress of Pentheus, and recited the words of the frantic mother. Plutarch sometimes leaves things in a kind of mist: he gives his reader opportunity for conjecture.]
[Footnote 97: Pacorus was completely defeated B.C. 38 near the Euphrates by P. Ventidius Bassus, who was the legatus of M. Antonius. Pacorus lost his life in the battle (Dion Cassius, 49. c. 20; Plutarch, _Life of Antonius_, c. 34). It is said that Pacorus fell on the same day on which Crassus lost his life fifteen years before, the 9th of June (Dion Cassius, 49. c. 21, and the note of Reimarus).]