Chrysti The Wordsmith: Sword of Damocles

Greetings and welcome to Christie the wordsmith. Early in the 4th century B.C.. Dionysus the elder ruled Syracuse a city state on the eastern coast of Sicily. Dionysus was by all accounts a tyrant and a paranoid one at that. Constantly fearing assassination. Dionysus avoided public appearances and slept in a bed chamber surrounded by a trench with a drawbridge. But Dionysus had his loyalists and flatterers the most vocal of these was Damocles. A local aristocrat who proclaimed enviously that no one could be happier than the rich and influential DIONYSUS. One day Dionysus invited his fawning friend to a banquet and sat him under a sword hanging from the ceiling by a single strand of horse hair forcing his guest to dine under the suspended sword. Dionysus explained that a ruler was precariously situated just as Damocles feared the potential of the falling sword. So Dionysus constantly dread the looming threat of assassination. This story has given us the expression sword of Damocles meaning an impending or potential disaster. In

September 1963 President John F. Kennedy summoned this ancient allusion in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly he said. Every man woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles hanging by the slenderest of threads capable of being cut at any moment. The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us. I'm Christi the wordsmith from Montana State University in Bozeman. CHRISTIE The wordsmith is sponsored by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Zoot enterprises a high tech firm in Bozeman Montana offering challenging careers and innovative solutions for the financial services industry. Zoot web dot com.