Damocles is made to sit at a banquet table under a sword which is hanging by a single hair to show the fragility of a king's fortune. Legend tells that when Damocles exagerrated his king's happiness and riches, Dionysius invited him to a banquet and sat him beneath the sword, thereby showing that the fortunes of powerful men are as fragile as the situation in which Damocles now found himself. From Cassell's Universal History, published 1888.

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