"Come to dinner--make no excuse;" but now it is always, "I'd invite you,
only I'm engaged myself." In another place a parasite's stomach is
called a "bottomless pit," and they are said to "live on their juices"
while their patrons are away in the country. Their servility was, of
course, exaggerated in comedy to make humorous capital, but as they were
poor and of inferior social standing to those with whom they consorted,
they were sure occasionally to suffer indignities varying in proportion
to the bad taste and insolence of their patrons. Thus we read that they
not only sat on benches at the lower end of the table, but sometimes had
their faces daubed and their ears boxed. In the ambiguous position they
occupied, they were no doubt exposed to temptations, but we are not to
suppose that they were generally guilty of such short-sighted treachery
as that attributed to them by the dramatists. Still, they certainly were
in bad repute in their generation, and hence we are enabled to
understand Aristotle's observation that he who is deficient in humour is
a boor, but he who is in culpable excess is a _bomolochos_, or thorough
scoundrel. He would connect the idea of great jocosity with unprincipled
designs.

Philoxenus, had a more independent spirit than most parasites, and the
history of his sojourn in Syracuse gives us an amusing insight into the
state of Court life in Sicily 400 years B.C. He was an Athenian
dithyrambic poet and musician; and as Dionysius affected literature, he
was welcomed at his palace, where he wrote a poem entitled "The
Banquet," containing an account of the luxurious style of living there
adopted. Philoxenus was probably the least esteemed guest at these
feasts, of which, but for him no record would survive. He was a man of
humour, and some instances of his quaintness remain. On one occasion,
when supping with the tyrant, a small mullet was placed before him, and
a large one before Dionysius. He thereupon took up his fish and placed