De parasito sive artem esse parasiticam

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.