Thesauros Literature satire Περὶ τοῦ Παρασίτου ὅτι Τέχνη ἡ Παρασιτική

Περὶ τοῦ Παρασίτου ὅτι Τέχνη ἡ Παρασιτική

Περὶ τοῦ Παρασίτου ὅτι Τέχνη ἡ Παρασιτική Lucian of Samosata

50–51

 
If a parasite should actually fall in battle, certainly neither captain nor private soldier would be ashamed of his huge body, elegantly reclining as at an elegant banquet. Indeed it would be worth one’s while to look at a philosopher’s body lying beside it, lean, squalid, with a long beard, a sickly creature dead before the battle! Who would not despise this city if he saw that her targeteers were such wretches? Who, when he saw pale, long-haired varlets lying on the field, would not suppose that the city for lack of reserves had freed for service the malefactors in her prison? That is how parasites compare with rhetoricians and philosophers in war.
 
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. TYCHIADES To be sure.

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