The Parasite Tychiades (51)

In peace, it seems to me, Parasitic excels philosophy as greatly as peace itself excels war. First, if you please, let us consider the strongholds of peace.

TYCHIADES I do not understand what that means, but let us consider it all the same.

SIMON Well, I should say that market-places, law-courts, athletic fields, gymnasia, hunting-parties and dinners were a city’s strongholds.

SIMON The parasite does not appear in the market-place or the courts because, I take it, all these points are more appropriate to swindlers, ‘and because nothing that is done in them is good form; but he frequents the athletic fields, the gymnasia, and the dinners, and ornaments them beyond all others. On the athletic field what philosopher or rhetorician, once he has taken his clothes off, is fit to be compared with a parasite’s physique? What one of them when seen in the gymnasium is not actually a disgrace to the place? In the wilds, too, none of them could withstand the charge of a beast; the parasite, however, awaits their attack and receives it easily, having learned to despise them at dinners; and neither stag nor bristling boar affrights him, but if the boar whets his tusks for him, the parasite whets his own for the boar! After a hare he is as keen as a hound. And at a dinner, who could compete with a parasite either in making sport or in eating? Who would make the guests merrier? He with his songs and jokes, or a fellow who lies there without a smile, in a short cloak, with his eyes upon the ground, as if he had come to a funeral and not to a banquet? In my opinion, a philosopher at a banquet is much the same thing as a dog in a bathhouse!