Sword of Damocles

The story comes from the Roman statesman Cicero, who included it in his philosophical work Tusculan Disputations, written around 45 BC. Cicero describes Damocles, a courtier of Dionysius I of Syracuse, who envied his king's wealth and power. Dionysius let him experience it firsthand at a lavish banquet, but had a sword suspended above the seat by a single horsehair. Cicero uses the image to argue that power and pleasure are worthless when constant fear hangs over them. He credits an earlier, now-lost account by the Sicilian historian Timaeus, so the tale may already have been circulating before Cicero wrote it down, but his version is the one that survives and gave English its idiom.