Hiero is a minor work by Xenophon, set as a dialogue between Hiero, tyrant of Syracuse, Magna Graecia, and the lyric poet Simonides about 474 BC. The dialogue is a response to the assumption that a tyrant's life is more pleasant than a commoner's. Having lived as both, Hiero breaks down this misconception, arguing that a tyrant does not have any more access to happiness than a private person. Some of this concept is considered in the Sword of Damocles parable, several centuries later.