The next point to be established is, that sponging depends not merely on perceptions, but on perceptions regularly employed. Nothing simpler. The perceptions on which other arts are based frequently remain unemployed by their owner for days, nights, months, or years, without his art’s perishing; whereas, if those of the sponger were to miss their daily exercise, not merely his art would perish, but he with it.

There remains the ‘useful purpose in human life’; it would take a madman to question that here. I find nothing that serves a more useful purpose in human life than eating and drinking; without them you cannot live.

Tychiades That is true.

Simon Moreover, sponging is not to be classed with beauty and strength, and so called a quality instead of an art?

Tychiades No.

Simon And, in the sphere of art, it does not denote the negative condition, of unskilfulness. ‘That never brings its owner prosperity. Take an instance: if a man who did not understand navigation took charge of a ship in a stormy sea, would he be safe?

Tychiades Not he.

Simon Why, now? Because he wants the art which would enable him to save his life?

Tychiades Exactly.

Simon It follows that, if sponging was the negative of art, the sponger would not save his life by its means?

Tychiades Yes.

Simon A man is saved by art, not by the absence of it?

Tychiades Quite so.

Simon So sponging is an art?

Tychiades Apparently.

Simon Let me add that I have often known even good navigators and skilful drivers come to grief, resulting with the latter in bruises and with the former in death; but no one will tell you of a sponger who ever made shipwreck. Very well, then, sponging is neither the negative of art, nor is it a quality; but it is a body of perceptions regularly employed. So it emerges from the present discussion an art.

Tychiades That seems to be the upshot. But now proceed tog give us a good definition of your art.

Simon Well thought of. And I fancy this will about do: Sponging is the art of eating and drinking, and of the talk by which these may be secured; its end is Pleasure.

Tychiades A very good definition, I think. But I warn you that your end will bring you into conflict with some of the philosophers.

Simon Ah well, if sponging agrees with Happiness about the end, we may be content.

And that it does I will soon show you. The wise Homer, admiring the sponger’s life as the only blissful enviable one, has this: I say no fairer end may be attained Than when the people is attuned to mirth, ... and groans the festal board With meat and bread, and the cup-bearer’s ladle From flowing bowl to cup the sweet wine dips. As if this had not made his admiration quite clear enough, he lays a little more emphasis, good man, on his personal opinion: This in my heart I count the highest bliss. Moreover, the character to whom he entrusts these words is not just any one; it is the wisest of the Greeks. Well now, if Odysseus had cared to say a word for the end approved by the Stoics, he had plenty of chances—when he brought back Philoctetes from Lemnos, when he sacked Troy, when he stopped the Greeks from giving up, or when he made his way into Troy by scourging himself and putting on rags bad enough for any Stoic. But no; he never said theirs was a fairer end. And again, when he was living an Epicurean life with Calypso, when he could spend idle luxurious days, enjoying the daughter of Atlas and giving the rein to every soft emotion, even then he had not his fairer end; that was still the life of the sponger. Banqueter was the word used for sponger in his day; what does he say? I must quote the lines again; nothing like repetition: ‘The banqueters in order set’; and ‘groans the festal board With meat and bread.’