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?

 Even if twenty such men had come in my way in the battle, All would have met their death, laid low by my spear on the instant. Iliad16, 8 


 TYCHIADES 
Enough said as to that; but try to show that
Patroclus was not the friend but ‘the parasite of
Achilles.
 SIMON 
I shall cite you Patroclus himself, Tychiades,
saying that he was a parasite.
 TYCHIADES 
That is a surprising statement.
 SIMON 
Listen then to the lines themselves:

 Let my bones not lie at a distance from thine, O Achilles: Let them be close to your side, as I lived in the house of our kindred. Iliad23, 83. 


And again, farther on, he says: “And now Peleus
took me in and

 Kept me with kindliest care, and gave me the name of thy servant. Iliad23, 89. 

That is, he maintained him as a parasite. If he
had wanted to call Patroclus a friend, he would not
have given him the name of servant, for Patroclus
was a freeman. Whom, then, does he mean by




 

servants, if not either friends or slaves? Parasites,
evidently. In the same way he calls Meriones too a
servant of Idomeneus, Iliad13, 246. 
Observe also tliat in the same passage it is not
Idomeneus, the son of Zeus, whom he thinks fit to
call “unyielding in battle,” but Meriones, his
parasite. Iliad 13, 295. 

 

Again, was not Aristogeiton, who was a man of
the people and a pauper, as Thucydides says, parasite
to Harmodius? Thucydides 6, 54,2. Was he not his lover also? Naturally
parasites are lovers of those who support them.
Well, this parasite restored the city of Athens to
freedom when she was in bondage to a tyrant, and
now his statue stands in bronze in the public square
along with that of his favourite. 
Certainly these men, who were of such distinction,
were very doughty parasites.

 

What is your own inference as to the character of
the parasite in war? In the first place, does he not
get his breakfast before he leaves his quarters to fall
in, just as Odysseus thinks it right to do? Under no
other circumstances, he says, is it possible to continue
fighting in battle even if one should be obliged to
begin fighting at the very break of day. Iliad 19, 160-163. While the
other soldiers in affright are adjusting their helmets
with great pains, or putting on their breastplates, or
quaking in sheer anticipation of the horrors of war,
the parasite eats with a very cheerful visage; and
directly after marching out he begins to fight in the first line. The man who supports him is posted in
the second line, behind the parasite, who covers





 

him with his shield as Ajax covered Teucer, and
when missiles are flying exposes himself to protect
his patron; for he prefers to save his patron rather
than himself.

 

If a parasite should actually fall in battle, certainly
neither captain nor private soldier would be ashamed
of his huge body, elegantly reclining as at an elegant
banquet. Indeed it would be worth one’s while to
look at a philosopher’s body lying beside it, lean,
squalid, with a long beard, a sickly creature dead
before the battle! Who would not despise this city
if he saw that her targeteers were such wretches?
Who, when he saw pale, long-haired varlets lying
on the field, would not suppose that the city for
lack of reserves had freed for service the malefactors
in her prison?
That is how parasites compare with rhetoricians
and philosophers in war.