The Parasite Tychiades (10)

wise Homer, admiring the life of a parasite on the ground that it alone is blessed and enviable, says:

I for my own part hold that there is no end more delightful

Than when cheerfulness reigneth supreme over all of the people;

Banqueters down the long halls give ear to the bard as he singeth,

Sitting in regular order, and by each man is a table

Laden with bread and with meat; while the server from out of the great bowl

Dippeth the mead, and beareth and poureth it into the beakers.

Odyssey9, 5 ff. And as if this were not enough to express his admiration, he makes his own opinion more evident, rightly saying:—

This is a thing that to me in my heart doth seem very goodly.

Odyssey9, 11. From what he says, he counts nothing else happy but to be a parasite. And it was no ordinary man to whom he ascribed these words, but the wisest of them all. After all, if Odysseus had wished to commend the Stoic end, he could have said so when he brought Philoctetes back from Lemnos, when he sacked Troy, when he checked the Greeks in their flight, when he entered Troy after flogging himself and putting on wretched Stoic rags; but on those occasions he did not call that a more delightful end! Moreover, after he had entered into the Epicurean life once more in Calypso’s isle, when he had it in his power to live in idleness and luxury, to dally with the daughter of Atlas, and to enjoy every pleasurable emotion, even then he did not call that end more delightful, but the life of a parasite, who at that time was called a banqueter. What does he say, then? It is worth while to cite his verses once more, for there is nothing like hearing them said over and over: “banqueters sitting in regular order,” and:

by each man is a table

Laden with bread and with meat.