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And from this you perceive, my good friend Ulpian, that you may raise another question, who the women are who still have their first husbands? But (for we are still speaking about the parasites) there is also an inscription on a pillar in the Anaceum to the following effect—“Of the best bulls which are selected, one-third is to be appropriated to the games; and of the remaining two-thirds, one is to go to the priest, and the other to the parasites.” But Crates, in the second book of his treatise on the Attic Dialect, says—“And the word parasite is now used in a disreputable sense; but formerly those people were called parasites who were selected to collect the sacred corn, and there was a regular Hall of the parasites; on which account the following expressions occur in the law of the king—” That the king shall take care of the Archons that they are properly appointed, and that they shall select the parasites from the different boroughs, according to the statutes enacted with reference to that subject. And that the parasites shall, without any evasion or fraud, select from their own share a sixth part of a bushel of barley, on which all who are citizens of Athens shall feast in the temple, according to the national laws and customs. And that the parasites of the Acharnensians shall give a sixth part of a bushel from their collection of barley to the guild of priests of Apollo. And that there was a regular Hall for the parasites is shown by the following expressions in the same law—“For the repairs of the temple, and of the magistrates' hall, and of the hall of parasites, and of the sacred house, they shall pay whatever sums of money the contractors appointed by the priests think necessary.” From this it is evident that the place in which the parasites laid up the first-fruits of the consecrated corn was called the Parasitium, or the Hall of the parasites.

[p. 372] And Philochorus gives the same account in his book entitled the Tetrapolis, where he mentions the parasites who were elected for the temple of Hercules; and Diodorus of Sinope, a comic poet, in his Heir, (from which I will cite some testimonies presently,) says the same. And Aristotle, in his treatise on the Constitution of the Methoneans, says— “Parasites were two in number for each of the archons, and one for the polemarchs. And they received a fixed allowance from others, and they also took dishes of fish from the fishermen.”

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