On Providence 36

¹Another proof is the way in which he is said to have treated a person who asserted the felicity of the tyrant’s life. Having invited him to a dinner which had been provided on a very magnificent and costly scale he ordered a sharp-edged axe to be suspended over him by a very slender thread. When after taking his place on the couch the guest suddenly saw this, he had neither the courage in the tyrant’s presence to rise and remove himself nor the power in his terror to enjoy the dishes provided, and so regardless of the abundance and wealth of the pleasures before him, he lay with neck and eye strained upwards, expecting his own destruction.