Damocles

Who is Damocles?

Damocles is a figure featured in a single moral anecdote commonly referred to as "the Sword of Damocles", an allusion to imminent and ever-present peril faced by those in positions of power. It was a late addition to classical Greek culture and belongs properly to legend rather than Greek myth. The anecdote apparently figured in the lost history of Sicily by Timaeus of Tauromenium. The Roman orator Cicero may have read it in Diodorus Siculus. He made use of it in his Tusculanae Disputationes, V. 21, by which means it passed into the European cultural mainstream.