De parasito sive artem esse parasiticam

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

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

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

Iliad16, 8