That Parasitic is based not only on knowledge, but on exercised knowledge, you may readily assure yourself from this fact: the knowledges that belong to the other arts often remain unexercised for days and nights and months and years, and yet the arts are not lost to those who possess them; but if the . parasite’s knowledge is not in exercise daily, not only the art, I take it, but the artist himself, is lost thereby!

And as to its being “directed to some end. useful to the world,” it would be crazy, don’t you think, to investigate that point. I, for my part, cannot discover that anything in the world is more useful than eating and drinking, and in fact without them it is impossible to live at all!

Quite so.

Again, Parasitic is not the same sort of thing as beauty and strength, so as to be considered a gift,. like them, rather than an art.

Again a thrust at Rhetoric, which some considered “vis tantum”; cf. Quintilian 2, 15, 2.

You are right.

But on the other hand, it is not want of art; for want of art never achieves anything for its possessor.

Rhetoric is a want of art: cf. § 27, and Quint. 2, 15, 2.

For example, if you should put yourself in command of a ship at sea in a storm without knowing how to steer, should you come safely through?

Not by any means.

How about a man who should take horses in hand without knowing how to drive?

He would not come through, either.

Why, pray, except because he does not possess the art by which he would be able to save himself?

To be sure.

Then the parasite would not be saved by Parasitic if it were want of art? TY CHIADES True.

Then it is art that saves him, and not want of art?

Quite so. Then Parasitic is an art?

It is, apparently.

I assure you I know of many instances when good helmsmen have been wrecked and expert drivers thrown from their seats, and some had _ broken bones, while others were completely done for; but nobody can cite any such mishap in the case of a parasite. Then if Parasitic is not want of art and not a gift, but a complex of knowledges exercised in combination, evidently we have reached an agreement to-day that it is an art.

As far as I can judge from what has been said. But wait a bit: give us a first-class definition of Parasitic.

Right. It seems to me that the definition might best be expressed’ thus: Parasitic is that art which is concerned with food and drink and what must be said and done to obtain them, and its end is pleasure.

That, to my mind, is a tip-top definition of your art; but look out that you do not get into conflict with some of the philosophers over the end.

With the Epicureans, who claimed the same summum bonum, and the Stoics, who rejected it. The Stoics are met tirst, with the argument that not virtue but Parasitic is the consummation of happiness. The sense of τέλος shifts slightly, to prepare for its use in the citation from Homer.

It will be quite sufficient if I can show that happiness and Parasitic have the same end, and that will be plain from this:

wise Homer, admiring the life of a parasite on the ground that it alone is blessed and enviable, says: I for my own part hold that there is no end more delightfulThan when cheerfulness reigneth supreme over all of the people;Banqueters down the long halls give ear to the bard as he singeth,Sitting in regular order, and by each man is a tableLaden with bread and with meat; while the server from out of the great bowlDippeth the mead, and beareth and poureth it into the beakers.Odyssey9, 5 ff. And as if this were not enough to express his admiration, he makes his own opinion more evident, rightly saying:— This is a thing that to me in my heart doth seem very goodly.Odyssey9, 11. From what he says, he counts nothing else happy but to be a parasite. And it was no ordinary man to whom he ascribed these words, but the wisest of them all. After all, if Odysseus had wished to commend the Stoic end, he could have said so when he brought Philoctetes back from Lemnos, when he sacked Troy, when he checked the Greeks in their flight, when he entered Troy after flogging himself and putting on wretched Stoic rags; but on those occasions he did not call that a more delightful end! Moreover, after he had entered into the Epicurean life once more in Calypso’s isle, when he had it in his power to live in idleness and luxury, to dally with the daughter of Atlas, and to enjoy every pleasurable emotion, even then he did not call that end more delightful, but the life of a parasite, who at that time was called a banqueter. What does he say, then? It is worth while to cite his verses once more, for there is nothing like hearing them said over and over: “banqueters sitting in regular order,” and: by each man is a tableLaden with bread and with meat.