De parasito sive artem esse parasiticam

Lucian of Samosata

Lucian, Vol. 3. Harmon, A. M., editor. London: William Heinemann, Ltd.; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1921.

Pass on, and now see how the parasite looks! In the first place, is he not generous in his proportions and pleasing in his complexion, neither dark nor fair of skin; for the one befits a woman, and the other a slave; and besides, has he not a spirited look, with a fiery glance like mine, high and bloodshot? It is not becoming, you know, to go into battle with a timorous and womanish eye. Would not such a man make a fine soldier in life and a fine corpse if he should die ?[*](Cf. Tyrtaeus8, 29-30, and § 55. )

But what is the good of guessing about all this, when we have historical examples? To put it briefly, in war, of all the rhetoricians and_philosophers that ever were, some have not dared to go outside the walls at all, and if any one of them ever took the field under compulsion, he deserted his post, I maintain, and beat a retreat.

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TYCHIADES What assertions, all surprising and none moderate ! But say your say, nevertheless.

SIMON Among the followers of rhetoric, Isocrates not only never went to war but never even went to court, through cowardice, I assume, as that is why he could not even keep his voice.[*](Every schoolboy knew—such was the interest in rhetoric— that Isocrates did not practise in the courts because his voice was too weak. The author pretends to think that its weakness must have been due to fright, and that therefore he was a terrible coward. ) And did not Demades and Aeschines and Philocrates, through fright, directly upon the declaration of war against Philip, betray their city and themselves to Philip and continually direct public affairs at Athens in the interest of that man, who was waging war upon the Athenians at that time, if ever a man was; and he was their friend. Moreover, Hyperides and Demosthenes and Lycurgus, who put up a more courageous front and were always making an uproar and abusing Philip in the assemblies—what on earth did they do that was valiant in the war with him? Hyperides and Lycurgus did not even take the field—why, they did not even dare to show their heads just outside the gates, but safe within the walls, they sat at home as if the city were already besieged, framing trivial motions and petty resolutions! And as for the topmost of them, the man who was continually talking in the assembly about “Philip, the scoundrel from Macedon, where one could never even buy a decent slave!”[*](Demosthenes, Third Philippic 31. ) he did

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venture to join the advance into Boeotia, but before the armies joined battle and began to fight at close quarters he threw away his shield and fled![*](The story that Demosthenes played the coward at Chaeronea was spread by his political enemies Aeschines (3, 244; 253) and Pytheas (Plut. Demosth. 20); see also Gellius 17, 21. ) Has nobody ever told you that before? It is very well known, not only to the Athenians, but to the people of Thrace and Scythia, where that vagabond came from.[*](Cleobule, the mother of Demosthenes, was said to be Scythian on her mother’s side (Aesch. 3, 171). )

TYCHIADES I know all that. They were orators, however, who cultivated speech-making, not virtue. What have you to say about the philosophers? Surely you are not able to censure them as you did the others.

SIMON They in turn, Tychiades, though they talk every day about courage and wear the word virtue smooth, will be found far more cowardly and effeminate than the orators. Look at it from this standpoint. Inthe first place, there is nobody that can mention a philosopher who died in battle ; either they did not enter the service at all, or if they did, every one of them ran away. Antisthenes, Diogenes, Crates, Zeno, Plato, Aeschines, Aristotle, and all that motley array never even saw a line of battle. The only one who had the courage to go out for the battle at Delium, their wise Socrates, fled the field, fleeing for cover all the way from Parnes to the gymnasium of Taureas.[*](As a matter of fact Socrates displayed conspicuous valour in the retreat from Delium. (Plato, Laches 181 B). The allusion to the gymnasium of Taureas rests upon a hazy recollection of the opening of the Charmides, where Socrates says that he visited it on the morning after his return from Pole Furthermore, there were no Spartan troops at Delium. )

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He thought it far nicer to sit and philander with boys and propound petty sophistries to anyone who should come along than to fight with a Spartan soldier.

TYCHIADES My excellent friend, I have already heard this from others, who certainly did not wish to ridicule or libel them; so I do not in the least think that you are belying them out of partiality to your own art.

But if you are now willing, tell what the parasite is like in war, and whether anybody at all among the ancient heroes is said to have been a parasite.[*](The first orators were found in Homer; notably Odysseus, Nestor, Menelaus. Alsothe beginnings of philosophy (Philod. 2, frg. xxi). So the first parasites should be found there. ) SIMON Why, my dear friend, no one is so unfamiliar with Homer, even if he is completely unlettered, as not to know that in him the noblest of the heroes are parasites! The famous Nestor, from whose tongue speech flowed like honey, was parasite to the king’ himself; and neither Achilles, who seemed and was the finest in physique, nor Diomed nor Ajax was so lauded and admired by Agamemnon as Nestor. He does not pray to have ten of Ajax or ten of Achilles, but says that he would long ago have taken Troy if he had had ten soldiers like that parasite, old as he was.[*](Iliad 2, 371-374. ) Idomeneus, too, the son of Zeus, is similarly spoken of as parasite to Agamemnon.[*](Iliad 4, 257-263. )

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TYCHIADES Of course I myself know all this, but I do not think that I yet see how the two men were parasites to Agamemnon.

SIMON Remember, my friend, those lines that Agamemnon himself addresses to Idomeneus.

TYCHIADES What lines?

SIMON

Your beaker has always
Stood full, even as mine, to be drunk when the spirit should move you.

Iliad4, 262-263. For in saying there that the beaker “always stood full,’ he did not mean that Idomeneus’ cup stood full under all circumstances, even when he fought or when he slept, but that he alone was privileged to eat with the king all the days of his life, unlike the rest of the soldiers, who were invited only on certain days. As for Ajax, when he had fought gloriously in single combat with Hector,

they brought him to great Agamemnon,

Iliad7, 312. Homer says, and by way of special honour, he was at last counted worthy of sharing the king’s table. But Idomeneus and Nestor dined with the king daily, as he himself says. Nestor, indeed, in my opinion was the most workmanlike and efficient parasite among the kings; he began the art, not in the time of Agamemnon, but away back in the time of Caeneus and Exadius,[*](Two generations earlier ; Iliad1, 250, 264. )

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and by all appearances would never have stopped practising it if Agamemnon had not been killed.

TYCHIADES He was a doughty parasite, I grant you. Try to name some more, if you know of any.

SIMON What, Tychiades, was not Patroclus parasite to Achilles, and that too although he was quite as fine a young man, both in spirit and in physique, as any of the other Greeks? For my part I think I am right in concluding from his deeds that he was not even inferior to Achilles himself. When Hector broached the gates and was fighting within them beside the ships, it was he that thrust him out and extinguished the ship of Protesilaus, which was already in flames. Yet the fighters who manned that ship were not the most cowardly of all: they were the sons of Telamon, Ajax and Teucer, one of whom was a good spearman, the other a good archer. And he slew many of the barbarians, among them Sarpedon, the son of Zeus, this parasite of Achilles! In his death too, he was not to be compared with the others. Achilles slew Hector, man to man, and Paris © slew Achilles himself, but it needed a god and two men to slay the parasite.[*](Apollo, Hector, and Euphorbus, Hector’s squire7 Iliad 16, 849-850. ) And in dying, the words that he uttered were not like those of noble Hector, who humbled himself before Achilles and besought that his body be given back to his family ; no, they

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were the sort of words that a parasite would naturally utter. What were they, do you ask?

Even if twenty such men had come in my way in the battle,
All would have met their death, laid low by my spear on the instant.

Iliad16, 8

TYCHIADES Enough said as to that; but try to show that Patroclus was not the friend but ‘the parasite of Achilles.

SIMON I shall cite you Patroclus himself, Tychiades, saying that he was a parasite.

TYCHIADES That is a surprising statement.

SIMON Listen then to the lines themselves:

Let my bones not lie at a distance from thine, O Achilles :
Let them be close to your side, as I lived in the house of our kindred.

Iliad23, 83. And again, farther on, he says: “And now Peleus took me in and

Kept me with kindliest care, and gave me the name of thy servant.

Iliad23, 89. That is, he maintained him as a parasite. If he had wanted to call Patroclus a friend, he would not have given him the name of servant, for Patroclus was a freeman. Whom, then, does he mean by

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servants, if not either friends or slaves? Parasites, evidently. In the same way he calls Meriones too a servant of Idomeneus,[*](Iliad13, 246. )

Observe also tliat in the same passage it is not Idomeneus, the son of Zeus, whom he thinks fit to call “unyielding in battle,” but Meriones, his parasite.[*](Iliad 13, 295. )

Again, was not Aristogeiton, who was a man of the people and a pauper, as Thucydides says, parasite to Harmodius?[*](Thucydides 6, 54,2. ) Was he not his lover also? Naturally parasites are lovers of those who support them. Well, this parasite restored the city of Athens to freedom when she was in bondage to a tyrant, and now his statue stands in bronze in the public square along with that of his favourite.

Certainly these men, who were of such distinction, were very doughty parasites.

What is your own inference as to the character of the parasite in war? In the first place, does he not get his breakfast before he leaves his quarters to fall in, just as Odysseus thinks it right to do? Under no other circumstances, he says, is it possible to continue fighting in battle even if one should be obliged to begin fighting at the very break of day.[*](Iliad 19, 160-163. ) While the other soldiers in affright are adjusting their helmets with great pains, or putting on their breastplates, or quaking in sheer anticipation of the horrors of war, the parasite eats with a very cheerful visage; and directly after marching out he begins to fight in the first line. The man who supports him is posted in the second line, behind the parasite, who covers

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him with his shield as Ajax covered Teucer, and when missiles are flying exposes himself to protect his patron; for he prefers to save his patron rather than himself.

If a parasite should actually fall in battle, certainly neither captain nor private soldier would be ashamed of his huge body, elegantly reclining as at an elegant banquet. Indeed it would be worth one’s while to look at a philosopher’s body lying beside it, lean, squalid, with a long beard, a sickly creature dead before the battle! Who would not despise this city if he saw that her targeteers were such wretches? Who, when he saw pale, long-haired varlets lying on the field, would not suppose that the city for lack of reserves had freed for service the malefactors in her prison? That is how parasites compare with rhetoricians and philosophers in war.

In peace, it seems to me, Parasitic excels philosophy as greatly as peace itself excels war. First, if you please, let us consider the strongholds of peace.

TYCHIADES I do not understand what that means, but let us consider it all the same.

SIMON Well, I should say that market-places, law-courts, athletic fields, gymnasia, hunting-parties and dinners were a city’s strongholds.

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TYCHIADES To be sure.

SIMON The parasite does not appear in the market-place or the courts because, I take it, all these points are more appropriate to swindlers, ‘and because nothing that is done in them is good form; but he frequents the athletic fields, the gymnasia, and the dinners, and ornaments them beyond all others. On the athletic field what philosopher or rhetorician, once he has taken his clothes off, is fit to be compared with a parasite’s physique? What one of them when seen in the gymnasium is not actually a disgrace to the place? In the wilds, too, none of them could withstand the charge of a beast; the parasite, however, awaits their attack and receives it easily, having learned to despise them at dinners ; and neither stag nor bristling boar affrights him, but if the boar whets his tusks for him, the parasite whets his own for the boar! After a hare he is as keen as a hound. And at a dinner, who could compete with a parasite either in making sport or in eating? Who would make the guests merrier? He with his songs and jokes, or a fellow who lies there without a smile, in a short cloak, with his eyes upon the ground, as if he had come to a funeral and not to a banquet? In my opinion, a philosopher at a banquet is much the same thing as a dog in a bathhouse !

Come now, let us dismiss these topics and forthwith turn to the parasite’s way of living, considering at the same time and comparing with it that of the others.

In the first place, you can see that the parasite

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always despises reputation and does not care at all what people think about him, but you will find that rhetoricians and philosophers, not merely here and there but everywhere, are harassed by selfesteem and reputation—yes, not only by reputation, but what is worse than that, by money! The parasite feels greater contempt for silver than one would feel even for the pebbles on the beach, and does not think gold one whit better than fire. The rhetoricians, however, and what is more shocking, those who claim to be philosophers, are so wretchedly affected by it that among the philosophers who are . most famous at present—for why should we speak of the rhetoricians ?—one was convicted of taking a bribe when he served on a jury, and another demands pay from the emperor as a private tutor ; he is not ashamed that in his old age he resides in a foreign land on this account and works for wages like an Indian or Scythian prisoner of war —not even ashamed of the name that he gets by it.[*](The allusion is uncertain. The emperor is probably Marcus Aurelius ; if so, the philosopher may be Sextus of Chaeronea, or the Apollonius whom Lucian mentions in Demonax 31. )

You will find too that they are subject to other passions as well as these, such as distress, anger, jealousy, and all manner of desires. The parasite is far from all this; he does not become angry because he is long-suffering, and also because he has nothing to get angry at; and if he should become indignant at any time, his temper does not give rise to any unpleasantness or gloom, but rather to laughter, and makes the company merry. He is least of all subject

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to distress, as his art supplies him gratuitously with the advantage of having nothing to be distressed about. For he has neither money nor house nor servant nor wife nor children, over which, if they go to ruin, it is inevitable that their possessor should — be distressed. And he has no desires, either for reputation or money, or even for a_ beautiful favourite.

TYCHIADES But, Simon, at least he is likely to be distressed by lack of food.

SIMON You fail to understand, Tychiades, that a priori: one who lacks food is not a parasite. A brave man is not brave if he lacks bravery, nor is a sensible man sensible if he lacks sense. On any other supposition . the parasite would not exist ; and the subject of our investigation is an existent, not a non-existent parasite. If the brave man is brave for no other reason than because he has bravery at his command, and the sensible man because he has sense at his command, so, too, the parasite is a parasite because he has food at his command ; consequently, if this be denied him, we shall be studying some other sort of man instead of a parasite.

TYCHIADES Then a parasite will never lack food ?

SIMON So it appears ; therefore he cannot be distressed, either by that or by anything else whatsoever.

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Moreover, all the philosophers and rhetoricians, to a man, are particularly timid. At all events you will find that most of them appear in public with a staff —of course they would not have armed themselves if they were not afraid—-and that they lock their doors very securely for fear that someone might plot against them at night. The parasite, however, casually closes the door of his lodgings, just to prevent it from being opened by the wind, and when a sound comes at night, he is no more disturbed than as if it had not come, and when he goes through unfrequented country he travels without a sword; for . he does not fear anything anywhere. But I have often seen philosophers armed with bows and arrows when there was nothing to fear; and as for staves, they carry them even when they go to the bath and to luncheon.

Again, nobody could accuse a parasite of adultery or assault or larceny or any other offence at all, since a man of that character would be no parasite; he wrongs himself. Therefore if he should commit adultery, for instance, along with the offence he acquires the name that goes withit. Just as a good man who behaves badly thereby acquires the name of bad instead of good, so, I take it, if the parasite commits any offence, he loses his identity and becomes identified with his offence. But not only are we ourselves aware of such offences on the part of rhetoricians and philosophers committed without

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number in our times, but we also possess records of their misdeeds left behind in books. And there are speeches in defence of Socrates, Aeschines, Hyperides, Demosthenes, and very nearly the majority of orators and sages, whereas there is no speech in defence of a parasite, and nobody can cite a suit that has been brought against a parasite.

Granted that the life of a parasite is better than that of a rhetorician or a philosopher, is his death worse? Quite to the contrary, it is happier by far. We know that most, if not all, of the philosophers died as wretchedly as they had lived; some died by poison, as a result of judicial sentence, after they had been convicted of the greatest crimes; some had their bodies completely consumed by fire; some wasted away through retention of urine; some died in exile.[*](Socrates ;. Empedocles (sod. Peregrinns Proteus) ; Epicurus; Aristotle. ) But in the case of a parasite no one can cite any such death—nothing but the happy, happy death of a man who has eaten and drunk; and any one of them who is thought to have died by violence: died of indigestion.

TYCHIADES You have satisfactorily championed the cause of the parasite against the philosophers. Next try to explain whether he is a good and useful acquisition to his supporter ; for to me it seems that the rich play the part of benefactors and philanthropists in supporting them, and that this is dishonourable to the man who receives support.

SIMON How silly df you, Tychiades, not to be able to

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realise that a rich man, even if he has the wealth of Gyges, is poor if he eats alone ; that if he takes the gir without a parasite in his company he is considered a pauper, and that just as a soldier without-arms, or a mantle without a purple border, or a horse without trappings is held in less esteem, so a rich man without a parasite appears low and cheap. Truly, he is an ornament to the rich man, but the rich man is never an ornament to the parasite.

Furthermore, it is no disgrace to him to be the rich man’s parasite, as you imply, evidently assuming that he is the inferior and the other a superior; since surely it is profitable for the rich man to support the parasite, seeing that, besides having him as an ornament, he derives great security from his service as bodyguard. In battle nobody would readily attack the rich man while he saw the other standing by, and in fact no one could die by poison who had a_ parasite ; for who would dare to make an attempt on a man when a parasite tastes his meat and drink first ? So the rich man not only is ornamented but is actually saved from the greatest: perils by the parasite, who faces every danger on account of his affection, and will not suffer the rich man to eat alone, but chooses even to die from eating with him.

TYCHIADES It seems to me, Simon, that you have treated of everything without being in any degree inadequate

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to your art. You are not deficient in preparation, as you said you were; on the contrary, you are as thoroughly trained as one could be by the greatest masters. And now I want to know whether the very name of Parasitic is not discreditable.

SIMON Note my answer and see if you think itissatisfactory, and try on your part to answer my question as you think best. Come, now, what about the noun from which it is derived? To what did the ancients apply it? To food.

TYCHIADESSIMON And what about the simple verb, does it not mean “to eat”?

TYCHIADES Yes.

SIMON Then we have admitted, have we not, that to be a parasite is nothing but to eat with someone else ?

TYCHIADES ) Why, Simon, that is the very thing which seems discreditable !