Quite true.

Moreover, Tychiades, it seems to me that the other arts stand in need of this one, but this one does not stand in need of any other.

This point is not dwelt upon here because the author proposes to use it with great effect later at the expense of philosophy (§$ 31 ff.).

But, I say, don’t you think that people who take what belongs to someone else do wrong?

Certainly.

How is it, then, that the parasite is the only one that does not do wrong in taking what belongs to someone else?

I can’t say!

Fritzsche gives the two questions to Simon and the answers to Tychiades, at the expense of a little rewriting. Perhaps he is right, but it is rather too bad to lose the humorous effect of the “I can’t say” in the mouth of Simon, followed by the change of subject.

— Again, in the other arts the first steps are shabby and insignificant, but in Parasitic the first step is a very fine one, for friendship, that oft-lauded word, is nothing else, you will find, than the first step in Parasitic.

What do you mean?

That nobody invites an enemy or an unknown person to dinner; not even a slight acquaintance. A man must first, I take it, become a friend in order to share another's bow] and board, and the mystic rites of this art. Anyhow, I have often heard people say: “How much of a friend is he, when he has neither eaten nor drunk with us?”’ That is of course because they think that only one who has shared their meat and drink is a trusty friend.

That in truth it is the most royal of the arts, you can infer from this fact above all: men work at the rest of them not only with discomfort and sweat but actually sitting or standing, just as if they were slaves to the arts, while the parasite plies his art lying down, like a king!

What need is there, in speaking of his felicity, to mention that he alone, according to wise Homer, “neither planteth a plant with his hands nor plougheth, but all, without sowing or ploughing,”

Odyssey9, 108-109.

supply him with pasture?

Again, there is nothing to hinder a rhetorician or a geometer or a blacksmith from working at his trade whether he is a knave or a fool, but nobody can be a parasite who is either a knave or a fool.

Goodness! What a fine thing you make out Parasitic to be! I myself already want to be a parasite, I think, rather than what I am.