Damocles earns his living by making up flattering things about people who can kill him out-of-hand. He’s kind of a jackleg-poet crossed with a public-relations flack. He’s done pretty well by it, considering his lowly birth. He gets to eat meat almost every week. For most other Greeks of the period, common folk, there are two kinds of dietary staple. The first is a kind of mush, and the second is a kind of mush.