the sword of Damocles

In the court of Dionysius, the tyrant of Syracuse, there was a flatterer named Damocles who could not stop praising his master's good fortune. What a blessed life the king led, he sighed — such wealth, such power, such luxury; surely no man on earth was happier. The king listened, and made him an offer.

Would Damocles like to taste that happiness for himself, just for a day? Damocles eagerly agreed, and the king had him seated on the royal couch, robed in fine cloth, waited on by servants who set before him the richest food and the sweetest wine. Everything a man could want was his, and he began to feel that the king had been right about it all.

Then he happened to glance up. Directly above his head, suspended point-down from the ceiling, hung a heavy, gleaming sword — held there by nothing but a single hair from a horse's tail. One small movement, one snapped strand, and it would fall and run him through.

Suddenly the food had no taste and the music no charm. Damocles could not enjoy a single mouthful, could not laugh, could not relax for one instant, for his eyes kept creeping back to the thin thread and the bright blade swaying above him. He begged the king to let him go, understanding at last the point of the lesson: that behind every crown hangs a constant, unseen threat.

So the sword of Damocles is exactly that hovering blade — an ever-present danger that hangs over a person's good fortune, ready to fall at any moment, and impossible to forget once you have felt it there.