47
SIMON Listen then to the lines themselves: Let my bones not lie at a distance from thine, O Achilles: Let them be close to your side, as I lived in the house of our kindred. Iliad23, 83. And again, farther on, he says: “And now Peleus took me in and Kept me with kindliest care, and gave me the name of thy servant. Iliad23, 89. That is, he maintained him as a parasite. If he had wanted to call Patroclus a friend, he would not have given him the name of servant, for Patroclus was a freeman. Whom, then, does he mean by servants, if not either friends or slaves? Parasites, evidently. In the same way he calls Meriones too a servant of Idomeneus,Iliad13, 246.
47
Observe also tliat in the same passage it is not Idomeneus, the son of Zeus, whom he thinks fit to call “unyielding in battle,” but Meriones, his parasite.Iliad 13, 295.
48
Again, was not Aristogeiton, who was a man of the people and a pauper, as Thucydides says, parasite to Harmodius?Thucydides 6, 54,2. Was he not his lover also? Naturally parasites are lovers of those who support them. Well, this parasite restored the city of Athens to freedom when she was in bondage to a tyrant, and now his statue stands in bronze in the public square along with that of his favourite.
48
Certainly these men, who were of such distinction, were very doughty parasites.
