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home:texts_and_library:dialogues:the-parasite [2019/07/07 09:57] – created frankhome:texts_and_library:dialogues:the-parasite [2019/07/07 10:00] (current) – frank
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 [[http://lucianofsamosata.info/wiki/doku.php?id=luciangreek:deparasito|Read text in Greek]] [[http://lucianofsamosata.info/wiki/doku.php?id=luciangreek:deparasito|Read text in Greek]]
  
-Under the mask of a grave and labored encomium on the Art of Parasitism, universally practiced in Lucian's time, and not uncommon in our own, we have a sever satire on the professors of it. It is possible that Erasmus' In Praise of Folly was suggested to him by this dialogue.\\+Under the mask of a grave and labored encomium on the Art of Parasitism, universally practiced in Lucian's time, and not uncommon in our own, we have a severe satire on the professors of it. It is possible that Erasmus' In Praise of Folly was suggested to him by this dialogue.\\
 - Based on Francklin - Based on Francklin
  
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 //Si// . On the contrary, I should be ashamed of not calling myself so. //Si// . On the contrary, I should be ashamed of not calling myself so.
  
-//Tyc// . And when we want to distinguish you for the benefit of any one who does not know you, but has occasion to find you out, we must say ‘the sponger,’ naturally?+//Tyc// . And when we want to distinguish you for the benefit of anyone who does not know you, but has occasion to find you out, we must say ‘the sponger,’ naturally?
  
 //Si// . The name will be more welcome to me than ‘statuary’ to Phidias; I am as proud of my profession as Phidias of his Zeus. //Si// . The name will be more welcome to me than ‘statuary’ to Phidias; I am as proud of my profession as Phidias of his Zeus.
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 //Si// . Which is ——? //Si// . Which is ——?
  
-//Tyc// . The getting it entered on the list of arts. When any one asks what the art is, how do we describe it? Letters we know, Medicine we know; Sponging?+//Tyc// . The getting it entered on the list of arts. When anyone asks what the art is, how do we describe it? Letters we know, Medicine we know; Sponging?
  
 //Si// . My own opinion is, that it has an exceptionally good right to the name of art. If you care to listen, I will explain, though I have not got this properly into shape, as I remarked before. //Si// . My own opinion is, that it has an exceptionally good right to the name of art. If you care to listen, I will explain, though I have not got this properly into shape, as I remarked before.
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 //Tyc// . Apparently. //Tyc// . Apparently.
  
-//Si// . 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.+//Si// . 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 whoever 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.
  
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 This in my heart I count the highest bliss. 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.’+Moreover, the character to whom he entrusts these words is not just anyone; 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.’
  
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-But here is an independent refutation of Epicurus’s pretensions to Pleasure. Our Epicurus, whoever his Wisdom may be, either is, or is not, supplied with victuals. If he is not, so far from having a pleasurable life, he will have no life at all. If he is, does he get them out of his own means, or from some one else? If the latter, he is a sponger, and not what he says he is; if the former, he will not have a pleasurable life.+But here is an independent refutation of Epicurus’s pretensions to Pleasure. Our Epicurus, whoever his Wisdom may be, either is, or is not, supplied with victuals. If he is not, so far from having a pleasurable life, he will have no life at all. If he is, does he get them out of his own means, or from someone else? If the latter, he is a sponger, and not what he says he is; if the former, he will not have a pleasurable life.
  
 //Tyc// . How so? //Tyc// . How so?
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-That sponging is an art, has now been abundantly proved; it remains to show its superiority; and this I shall take in two divisions: first, it has a general superiority to all the arts; and, secondly, it is superior to each of them separately. The general superiority is this: the arts have to be instilled by dint of toil, threats and blows — regrettable necessities, all of them; my own art, of which the acquisition costs no toil, is perhaps the only exception. Who ever came away from dinner in tears? with the schoolroom it is different; or who ever went out to dinner with the dismal expression characteristic of going to school? No, the sponger needs no pressing to get him to table; he is devoted to his profession; it is the other apprentices who hate theirs, to the point of running away, sometimes. And it is worth your notice that a parent’s usual reward for a child who makes progress in the ordinary arts is just the thing that the sponger gets regularly. The lad has done his writing well, they say; let him have something nice: what vile writing! let him go without. Oh, the mouth is very useful for reward and punishment.+That sponging is an art, has now been abundantly proved; it remains to show its superiority; and this I shall take in two divisions: first, it has a general superiority to all the arts; and, secondly, it is superior to each of them separately. The general superiority is this: the arts have to be instilled by dint of toil, threats and blows — regrettable necessities, all of them; my own art, of which the acquisition costs no toil, is perhaps the only exception. Whoever came away from dinner in tears? with the schoolroom it is different; or whoever went out to dinner with the dismal expression characteristic of going to school? No, the sponger needs no pressing to get him to table; he is devoted to his profession; it is the other apprentices who hate theirs, to the point of running away, sometimes. And it is worth your notice that a parent’s usual reward for a child who makes progress in the ordinary arts is just the thing that the sponger gets regularly. The lad has done his writing well, they say; let him have something nice: what vile writing! let him go without. Oh, the mouth is very useful for reward and punishment.
  
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-Then it is no news to any one that other professions slave habitually, and get just one or two holidays a month; States keep some monthly and some yearly festivals; these are their times of enjoyment. But the sponger has thirty festivals a month; every day is a red-letter day with him.+Then it is no news to anyone that other professions slave habitually, and get just one or two holidays a month; States keep some monthly and some yearly festivals; these are their times of enjoyment. But the sponger has thirty festivals a month; every day is a red-letter day with him.
  
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-//Si// . Oh, I will give you a list; not bad names either; the //elite// , if I am correctly informed; they will rather surprise you. Aeschines the Socratic, now, author of dialogues as witty as they are long, brought them with him to Sicily in the hope that they would gain him the royal notice of Dionysius; having given a reading of the //Miltiades// , and found himself famous, he settled down in Sicily to sponge on Dionysius and forget Socratic composition.+//Si// . Oh, I will give you a list; not bad names either; the //elite//, if I am correctly informed; they will rather surprise you. Aeschines the Socratic, now, author of dialogues as witty as they are long, brought them with him to Sicily in the hope that they would gain him the royal notice of Dionysius; having given a reading of the //Miltiades//, and found himself famous, he settled down in Sicily to sponge on Dionysius and forget Socratic composition.
  
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 //Tyc// . Well, let that pass. And now what about those many points in which your art is superior to Rhetoric and Philosophy? //Tyc// . Well, let that pass. And now what about those many points in which your art is superior to Rhetoric and Philosophy?
  
-//Si// . Human life, my dear sir, has its times and seasons; there is peace time and there is war time. These provide unfailing tests for the character of arts and their professors. Shall we take war time first, and see who will do best for himself and for his city under those conditions?+//Si// . Human life, my dear sir, has its times and seasons; there is peacetime and there is war time. These provide unfailing tests for the character of arts and their professors. Shall we take wartime first, and see who will do best for himself and for his city under those conditions?
  
 //Tyc// . Ah, now comes the tug of war. It tickles me, this queer match between sponger and philosopher. //Tyc// . Ah, now comes the tug of war. It tickles me, this queer match between sponger and philosopher.
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-//Si// . Well, to make the thing more natural, and enable you to take it seriously, let us picture the circumstances. Sudden news has come of a hostile invasion; it has to be met; we are not going to sit still while our outlying territory is laid waste; the commander-inchief issues orders for a general muster of all liable to serve; the troops gather, including philosophers, rhetoricians, and spongers. We had better strip them first, as the proper preliminary to arming. Now, my dear sir, have a look at them individually and see how they shape. Some of them you will find thin and white with underfeeding — all goose-flesh, as if they were lying wounded already. Now, when you think of a hard day, a stand-up fight with press and dust and wounds, what is it but a sorry jest to talk of such starvelings’ being able to stand it?+//Si// . Well, to make the thing more natural, and enable you to take it seriously, let us picture the circumstances. Sudden news has come of a hostile invasion; it has to be met; we are not going to sit still while our outlying territory is laid waste; the commander-in-chief issues orders for a general muster of all liable to serve; the troops gather, including philosophers, rhetoricians, and spongers. We had better strip them first, as the proper preliminary to arming. Now, my dear sir, have a look at them individually and see how they shape. Some of them you will find thin and white with underfeeding — all goose-flesh, as if they were lying wounded already. Now, when you think of a hard day, a stand-up fight with press and dust and wounds, what is it but a sorry jest to talk of such starvelings’ being able to stand it?
  
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 //Tyc// . Yes, I know all that. But then these are orators, trained to speak, not to fight. But the philosophers; you cannot say the same of them. //Tyc// . Yes, I know all that. But then these are orators, trained to speak, not to fight. But the philosophers; you cannot say the same of them.
  
-//Si// . Oh, yes; they discuss manliness every day, and do a great deal more towards wearing out the word Virtue than the orators; but you will find them still greater cowards and shirkers.— How do I know?— In the first place, can any one name a philosopher killed in battle? No, they either do not serve, or else run away. Antisthenes, Diogenes, Crates, Zeno, Plato, Aeschines, Aristotle, and all their company, never set eyes on a battle array. Their wise Socrates was the solitary one who dared to go out; and in the battle of Delium he ran away from Mount Parnes and got safe to the gymnasium of Taureas. It was a far more civilized proceeding, according to his ideas, to sit there talking soft nonsense to handsome striplings and posing the company with quibbles, than to cross spears with a grown Spartan.+//Si// . Oh, yes; they discuss manliness every day, and do a great deal more towards wearing out the word Virtue than the orators; but you will find them still greater cowards and shirkers.— How do I know?— In the first place, can anyone name a philosopher killed in battle? No, they either do not serve, or else run away. Antisthenes, Diogenes, Crates, Zeno, Plato, Aeschines, Aristotle, and all their company, never set eyes on a battle array. Their wise Socrates was the solitary one who dared to go out; and in the battle of Delium he ran away from Mount Parnes and got safe to the gymnasium of Taureas. It was a far more civilized proceeding, according to his ideas, to sit there talking soft nonsense to handsome striplings and posing the company with quibbles, than to cross spears with a grown Spartan.
  
 //Tyc// . Well, I have heard these stories before, and from people who had no satirical intent. So I acquit you of slandering them by way of magnifying your own profession. //Tyc// . Well, I have heard these stories before, and from people who had no satirical intent. So I acquit you of slandering them by way of magnifying your own profession.
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 Should he fall in battle, neither officer nor comrade need feel ashamed of that great body, which now reclines as appropriate an ornament of the battle-field as it once was of the dining-room. A pretty sight is a philosopher’s body by its side, withered, squalid, and bearded; he was dead before the fight began, poor weakling. Who would not despise the city whose guards are such miserable creatures? Who would not suppose, seeing these pallid, hairy manikins scattered on the ground, that it had none to fight for it, and so had turned out its gaol-birds to fill the ranks? That is how the spongers differ from the rhetoricians and philosophers in war. Should he fall in battle, neither officer nor comrade need feel ashamed of that great body, which now reclines as appropriate an ornament of the battle-field as it once was of the dining-room. A pretty sight is a philosopher’s body by its side, withered, squalid, and bearded; he was dead before the fight began, poor weakling. Who would not despise the city whose guards are such miserable creatures? Who would not suppose, seeing these pallid, hairy manikins scattered on the ground, that it had none to fight for it, and so had turned out its gaol-birds to fill the ranks? That is how the spongers differ from the rhetoricians and philosophers in war.
  
-Then in peace time, sponging seems to me as much better than philosophy as peace itself than war. Be kind enough to glance first at the scenes of peace.+Then in peacetime, sponging seems to me as much better than philosophy as peace itself than war. Be kind enough to glance first at the scenes of peace.
  
 //Tyc// . I do not quite know what they are; but let us glance at them, by all means. //Tyc// . I do not quite know what they are; but let us glance at them, by all means.
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 //Si// . See whether I have a satisfactory answer to that. Oblige me by giving what you consider the right answers to my questions. Sponging is an old word; what does it really mean? //Si// . See whether I have a satisfactory answer to that. Oblige me by giving what you consider the right answers to my questions. Sponging is an old word; what does it really mean?
  
-//Tyc// . Getting your dinner at some one else’s expense.+//Tyc// . Getting your dinner at someone else’s expense.
  
 //Si// . Dining out, in fact? //Si// . Dining out, in fact?
home/texts_and_library/dialogues/the-parasite.1562511469.txt.gz · Last modified: 2019/07/07 09:57 by frank
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