The Sword of Damocles
The Sword of Damocles refers to1:
Damocles is a character who appears in a (likely apocryphal) anecdote commonly referred to as “the sword of Damocles”, 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, 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 Cicero2 (c. 106 – c. 43 BC), who may have read it in the texts of Greek historian Diodorus Siculus, used it in his Tusculanae Disputationes3, 5. 61, by which means it passed into the European cultural mainstream.
According to the story, Damocles was flattering his king, Dionysius, exclaiming that Dionysius was truly fortunate as a great man of power and authority without peer, surrounded by magnificence. In response, Dionysius offered to switch places with Damocles for one day so that Damocles could taste that fortune firsthand. Damocles eagerly accepted the king’s proposal. Damocles sat on the king’s throne amid embroidered rugs, fragrant perfumes, and the service of beautiful attendants. But Dionysius, who had made many enemies during his reign, arranged that a sword should hang above the throne, held at the pommel only by a single hair of a horse’s tail to evoke the sense of what it is like to be king: though having much fortune, always having to watch in anxiety against dangers that might try to overtake him, whether it is a jealous advisor or servant, a slanderous rumor, an enemy kingdom, a poor royal decision, or anything else. Damocles finally begged the king for permission to depart because he no longer wanted to be so fortunate, realizing that while he had everything he could ever want at his feet, it could not affect what was above his crown.
King Dionysius effectively conveyed the constant fear in which a person with great power may live. Dionysius committed many cruelties in his rise to power, such that he could never go on to rule justly because that would make him vulnerable to his enemies. Cicero used this story as the last in a series of contrasting examples for concluding his fifth Disputation, in which the theme is that having virtue is sufficient for living a happy life.
As it, sounds like a curse. Hopefully, it’s also easy to avoid it, just do like:
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