13
It excels all put together for this reason. Every art has to be prefaced by study, hardships, fear and floggings, from which everyone would pray to be delivered. But this art alone, it seems, can be learned without hardships. Who ever went home from a dinner in tears, as we see.some going home from their schools? Who ever set out for a dinner looking gloomy, like those who go to school? I promise you, the parasite goes to dinner of his own accord, with a right good will to exercise his art, while those who are learning the other arts hate them so much that some run away from home on account of them!
13
Again, should you not note that when pupils make progress in those arts, their fathers and mothers give them as special rewards what they give the parasite every day? ‘“By Zeus, the boy has written nicely,” they say; “give him something to eat!”’ “He has not written correctly; don’t give him anything!” So highly is the thing esteemed, both as a reward and by way of punishment.
14
Again, the other arts attain to this end late, reaping their harvest of pleasure only after their apprenticeship; for “the road to them leadeth uphill’ and is long.The quotation is from Hesiod, Works and Days290, and refers to the road that leads to virtue. The scholasticus, the grey-headed student, was a familiar figure; see Lucian’s Hermotimus. Parasitic alone of them all derives profit from the art immediately, in the apprenticeship itself, and no sooner does it begin than it is at its end.
14
Moreover, the other arts, not merely in certain cases but in every case, have come into existence to provide support and nothing else, while the parasite has his support immediately, as soon as he enters upon his art. Do not you see that while the farmer does not farm for the sake of farming, nor the builder build for the sake of building, the parasite does not aim at something different; his work and its object are one and the same thing.
