The Parasite Tychiades (47)

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,[*]

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.[*]