Again, the other arts attain to this end late, reaping their harvest of pleasure only after their apprenticeship; for “the road to them leadeth uphill’ and is long.

The quotation is from Hesiod, Works and Days290, and refers to the road that leads to virtue. The scholasticus, the grey-headed student, was a familiar figure; see Lucian’s Hermotimus.

Parasitic alone of them all derives profit from the art immediately, in the apprenticeship itself, and no sooner does it begin than it is at its end.

Moreover, the other arts, not merely in certain cases but in every case, have come into existence to provide support and nothing else, while the parasite has his support immediately, as soon as he enters upon his art. Do not you see that while the farmer does not farm for the sake of farming, nor the builder build for the sake of building, the parasite does not aim at something different; his work and its object are one and the same thing.