Damocles
Figure featured in an ancient Greek moral anecdote / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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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.
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.