The Parasite Tychiades (1-5)

TYCHIADES Why in the world is it, Simon, that while other men, both slave and free, each know some art by which they are of use to themselves and to someone else, you apparently have no work which would enable you to make any profit yourself or give away anything to anybody else?

SIMON What do you mean by that question, Tychiades? I do not understand. Try to put it more clearly.

TYCHIADES Is there any art that you happen to know? Music, for instance?

SIMON No, indeed.

TYCHIADES Well, medicine?

SIMON Not that, either.

TYCHIADES Geometry, then?

SIMON Not by any means.

Well, rhetoric? For as to philosophy, you are as remote from that as vice itself is!

SIMON Indeed, even more so, if possible. So don’t suppose you have touched me with that taunt, as if I did not know it. I admit that I am vicious, and worse than you think!

TYCHIADES Quite so. Well, it may be that although you have not learned those arts because of their magnitude and difficulty, you have learned one of the vulgar arts like carpentry or shoemaking; you are not so well off in every way as not to need even such an art.

SIMON You are right, Tychiades; but I am not acquainted with any of these either.

TYCHIADES What other art, then?

SIMON What other? A fine one, I think. If you knew about it, I believe you would speak highly of it too. In practice, I claim to be successful at it already, but whether you will find me so in theory also I can't say.

TYCHIADES What is it?

SIMON I do not feel that I have yet thoroughly mastered the literature on that subject. So for the present

you may know that I possess an art and need not be dissatisfied with me on that score; some other day you shall hear what art it is.

TYCHIADES But I can’t wait.

SIMON The nature of the art will perhaps seem extraordinary when you hear it.

TYCHIADES Tr aly, that is just why I am keen to know about it.

SIMON ‘Some other day, Tychiades.

TYCHIADES Oh, no! Tell me now—unless you are ashamed!

SIMON Parasitic.

TYCHIADES Really, would anyone who was not insane call that an art, Simon?

SIMON I do; and if you think I am insane, think also that my insanity is the reason for my not knowing any other art and acquit me of your charges at once. They say, you know, that this malign spirit, cruel in all else to those whom she inhabits, at least secures them remission of their sins, like a schoolmaster or a tutor, by taking the blame for them upon herself.

TYCHIADES Well then, Simon, Parasitic is an art?

SIMON Indeed it is, and I am a craftsman in it.[*] TYCHIADES Then you are a parasite?

SIMON That was a cruel thrust, Tychiades!

TYCHIADES But do not you blush to call yourself a parasite?

SIMON Not at all; I should be ashamed not to speak it out.

TYCHIADES Then, by Zeus, when we wish to tell about you to someone who does not know you, when he wants to find out about you, of course we shall be correct in referring to you as “the parasite”?

SIMON Far more correct in referring to me so than in referring to Phidias as a sculptor, for I take quite as much joy in my art as Phidias did in his Zeus.

TYCHIADES I say, here is a point; as I think of it, a gale of laughter has come over me!

SIMON What is it?

TYCHIADES What if we should address you in due form at the top of our letters as “Simon the Parasite”!

SIMON Why, you would do me greater pleasure than you would Dion by addressing him as “the Philosopher.”[*]

TYCHIADES Well, how it pleases you to be styled matters little or nothing to me; but you must consider the general absurdity of it.

SIMON What absurdity, I should like to know?

TYCHIADES If we are to list this among the other arts, so that when anybody enquires what art it is, we shall say “Parasitic,” to correspond with Music and Rhetoric.[*] SIMON For my part, Tychiades, I should call this an art far more than any other. If you care to listen, I think I can tell you why, although, as I just said, I am not entirely prepared for it. TYCHIADES It will make no difference at all if you say little, as long as that little is true.

SIMON Come now, first of all, if it please you, let us consider what an art is in general; for in that way we can go on to the individual] arts and see if they truly come under that head.

TYCHIADES What on earth is an art, then? Surely you know.

SIMON To be sure.

TYCHIADES Then do not hesitate to tell, if you do know.

SIMON An art, I remember to have heard a learned man say,[*] is a complex of knowledges exercised in combination to some end useful to the world.

TYCHIADES He was quite right in what he said, and you in your recollection of it.

SIMON If Parasitic satisfies this definition completely, what other conclusion could there be than that it is an art?

TYCHIADES It would be an art, of course, if it should really be like that.

SIMON Now then, let us apply to Parasitic the individual characteristics of an art and see whether it is in harmony with them or whether its theory, like a good-for-nothing pot when you try its ring, sounds cracked.[*] Every art, then, must be a complex of

knowledges; and of these, in the case of the para site, first of all there is testing and deciding who would be suitable to support him, and whom he could begin to cultivate without being sorry for it later. Or do we care to maintain that assayers possess an art because they know how to distinguish between coins that are counterfeit and those that are not, but parasites discriminate without art between men that are counterfeit and those that are good, even though men are not distinguishable at once, like coins? Wise Euripides criticizes this very point when he Says:

In men, no mark whereby to tell the knave

Did ever yet upon his body grow.

Euripides, Medea518. This makes the parasite’s art even greater, since it is better than divination at distinguishing and recognising things so obscure and hidden.

As for knowing how to talk appropriately and to act in such a way as to become intimate and show himself extremely devoted to his patron, do not you think that this shows intelligence and highlydeveloped knowledge?

TYCHIADES Yes, indeed.

SIMON And at banquets, to go away with more than anybody else, enjoying greater favour than those who do not possess the same art—-do you think that can be managed without some degree of theory and wisdom?

TYCHIADES Not by any means.

SIMON What about knowing the merits and defects of bake-stuffs and made dishes? Does that seem to you matter for an untrained man’s bumptious inquisitiveness? Yet excellent Plato says:

When a man is about to partake of a banquet, if he be not versed in the art of cookery, his opinion of the feast in preparation is something deficient in weight.

Plato, Theaetetus178D.