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A minor freudian slip seems to have escaped the eye not only of the great psychoanalyst but also of the editors of his epochal work, The Interpretation of Dreams. In the first edition and left uncorrected through all subsequent editions, including the definitive translation by James Strachey, we find the following:
This was the same method of treating a wish fulfilment as was adopted by the Parthian queen toward the Roman triumvir Crassus. Believing that he had embarked on his expedition out of love of gold, she ordered molten gold to be poured down his throat when he was dead. 'Now', she said, 'you have what you wanted' (3, p. 570).
Freud mistakenly substituted a Parthian queen for the Parthian king, Orodes, who, upon receiving the severed head of Crassus from his army commanders, is said to have ordered that molten gold be poured into its gaping mouth. All versions of the legend are quite clear on this matter and there is absolutely no literary or historical basis for Freud's slip.
The story first appears in the Historiae of Florus:
The head of Crassus was cut off and with his right hand was taken back to the king and treated with mockery which was not undeserved; for molten gold was poured into his gaping mouth, so that the dead and bloodless flesh of one whose heart had burned with lust for gold was itself burnt with gold (2, pp. 212-213); (cf. I, p. 447).
Since it is clear enough that Orodes performed the barbaric outrage, a question necessarily arises: why did Freud think that the retribution forced upon the dead Crassus for invading Parthia came from the hands of a queen rather than a king?. This is particularly pertinent since Freud scrupulously corrected in The Interpretation of Dreams a series of other