Damocles
Figure featured in an ancient Greek moral anecdote / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For the Athenian orator, see Democles.
For other uses, see Damocles (disambiguation).
"Sword of Damocles" redirects here. For other uses, see Sword of Damocles (disambiguation).
Damocles[lower-alpha 1] is a character who appears in a (likely apocryphal) anecdote commonly referred to as "the sword of Damocles",[1][2] an allusion to the imminent and ever-present peril faced by those in positions of power. Damocles was a courtier in the court of Dionysius I of Syracuse,[3] a ruler of Syracuse, Sicily, Magna Graecia, during the classical Greek era.
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The anecdote apparently figured in the lost history of Sicily by Timaeus of Tauromenium (c. 356 – c. 260 BC). The Roman orator Cicero (c. 106 – c. 43 BC),[4] who may have read it in the texts of Greek historian Diodorus Siculus, used it in his Tusculanae Disputationes, 5. 61,[1] by which means it passed into the European cultural mainstream.