"Hospitality has lessened since Homeric days, for travel is a little more secure than then, and inns provide food and shelter for transients; even so it remains an outstanding virtue of the Athenians. Strangers are welcomed though without introduction; if they come with letters from a common friend, they receive bed and board, and sometimes parting gifts. An invited guest is always privileged to bring an uninvited guest with him. This freedom of entry gives rise in time to a class of parasites—parasitoi—a word originally applied to the clergy who ate the “corn left over” from the temple supplies."
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Ch. XIII The Morals and Manners of the Greeks, Sec IV Morals, P.374
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Story_of_Civilization
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The Story of Civilization
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