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TYCHIADES If we are to list this among the other arts, so that when anybody enquires what art it is, we shall say “Parasitic,” to correspond with Music and Rhetoric.The examples in the Greek are “Grammar and Medicine,” but it was necessary to choose English examples which retained the Greek ending. SIMON For my part, Tychiades, I should call this an art far more than any other. If you care to listen, I think I can tell you why, although, as I just said, I am not entirely prepared for it. TYCHIADES It will make no difference at all if you say little, as long as that little is true.
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SIMON Come now, first of all, if it please you, let us consider what an art is in general; for in that way we can go on to the individual] arts and see if they truly come under that head. TYCHIADES What on earth is an art, then? Surely you know.
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SIMON To be sure.
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TYCHIADES Then do not hesitate to tell, if you do know.
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SIMON An art, I remember to have heard a learned man say,The particular learned man who said it first is not known to us. It is the orthodox Stoic definition, quoted repeatedly by Sextus Empiricus. Cf. Quint. 2,17, 41: ille ab omnibus fere probatus finis ... artem constare ex perceptionibus consentientibus et coexercitatis ad finem utilem vitae. is a complex of knowledges exercised in combination to some end useful to the world.
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TYCHIADES He was quite right in what he said, and you in your recollection of it.
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SIMON If Parasitic satisfies this definition completely, what other conclusion could there be than that it is an art?
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TYCHIADES It would be an art, of course, if it should really be like that.
