Granted that the life of a parasite is better than
that of a rhetorician or a philosopher, is his death
worse? Quite to the contrary, it is happier by far.
We know that most, if not all, of the philosophers
died as wretchedly as they had lived; some died by
poison, as a result of judicial sentence, after they had
been convicted of the greatest crimes; some had
their bodies completely consumed by fire; some
wasted away through retention of urine; some died
in exile. Socrates;. Empedocles (sod. Peregrinns Proteus); Epicurus; Aristotle. But in the case of a parasite no one can
cite any such death—nothing but the happy, happy
death of a man who has eaten and drunk; and any
one of them who is thought to have died by violence:
died of indigestion.