5–7
SIMON And at banquets, to go away with more than anybody else, enjoying greater favour than those who do not possess the same art—-do you think that can be managed without some degree of theory and wisdom? TYCHIADES Not by any means.
SIMON What about knowing the merits and defects of bake-stuffs and made dishes? Does that seem to you matter for an untrained man’s bumptious inquisitiveness? Yet excellent Plato says: When a man is about to partake of a banquet, if he be not versed in the art of cookery, his opinion of the feast in preparation is something deficient in weight. Plato, Theaetetus178D.
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!
