9
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.
9
Tychiades A very good definition, I think. But I warn you that your end will bring you into conflict with some of the philosophers.
9
Simon Ah well, if sponging agrees with Happiness about the end, we may be content.
10
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.’
