# The Sword of Damocles — Character guide

> Key figures in The Sword of Damocles by Anna Katharine Green.

- [Mr. Sylvester](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_sword_of_damocles_se/characters/mr_sylvester.md): Bertram Sylvester moves through New York drawing rooms and bank corridors as a man whose word carries weight, yet whose composure masks something he is not saying. When his nephew stands accused of uttering threats in a 
- [Paula](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_sword_of_damocles_se/characters/paula.md): Paula Fairchild has come back to Grotewell to wait out the weeks before her marriage, her beauty restored but her thoughts still wandering to Cicely, to Bertram, and to a wretched woman dying in a New York hospital. The 
- [Jacqueline Japha](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_sword_of_damocles_se/characters/jacqueline_japha.md): Jacqueline Japha is the pride of the Japha household, betrothed to one man while writing passionate, reckless letters to another—letters her mother finds half-burned in the stove and reads with mounting horror. The words
- [Edward Sylvester](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_sword_of_damocles_se/characters/edward_sylvester.md): Edward Sylvester is a Sylvester by name and something else by experience—a man whose past has been cut cleanly from his present, leaving him to sit in the city and ache over garret rooms, a dead brother named Tom, and a 
- [Mr. Stuyvesant](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_sword_of_damocles_se/characters/mr_stuyvesant.md): Mr. Stuyvesant presides over the drawing room where Bertram Sylvester is formally cleared of the Dey Street coffeehouse charge—and where, in the same breath, word arrives that Hopgood the clerk has absconded with the ban
- [Ona Delafield](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_sword_of_damocles_se/characters/ona_delafield.md): Ona Delafield belongs to the intimate web of relatives and neighbors around Paula—the people whose questions Paula must answer with composure, whose gossip she must endure, and whose ordinary lives throw her own extraord
- [Mr. Ensign](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_sword_of_damocles_se/characters/mr_ensign.md): Clarence Ensign moves through New York's drawing rooms as a suitor of decided talent and uncertain patience, his courtship of Paula advancing through letters and visits that the blindest eye could not fail to remark. His
- [Cicely Stuyvesant](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_sword_of_damocles_se/characters/cicely_stuyvesant.md): Cicely Stuyvesant exists in the novel as the friend Paula invokes when she speaks of friendship as she believes in heaven, a woman whose regard reflects but one image while Paula's own heart owns allegiance to more than 
- [Mrs. Sylvester](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_sword_of_damocles_se/characters/mrs_sylvester.md): Known in the tenements as Mrs. Smith, she moves through the novel's darkest corridors with a heart that alternates between faint kindness and gusts of passion, drawing the crippled child to her fire even as she defies he
- [Colonel Japha](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_sword_of_damocles_se/characters/colonel_japha.md): Colonel Japha lives in seclusion in the old Grotewell mansion, broken by the flight and degradation of his only daughter and opening his doors to few visitors, among them the narrator he liked and saw the makings of a co
- [Mr. Roger Holt](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_sword_of_damocles_se/characters/mr_roger_holt.md): A man with a name that appears in the narrative, possibly a suitor or acquaintance.
- [Mr. Mandeville](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_sword_of_damocles_se/characters/mr_mandeville.md): Bertram Mandeville moves through the Sylvester household as a young man of feeling, sickened by the mockery of luxury's bronze image when death has emptied the halls of the woman who was luxury itself. When he knocks at 
- [Mr. Preston](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_sword_of_damocles_se/characters/mr_preston.md): A character with a name that appears, possibly a family member or acquaintance.
- [Robert Holt](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_sword_of_damocles_se/characters/robert_holt.md): A younger Holt, possibly a relative of Roger Holt, with a minor role.
- [Hamlet Hopgood](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_sword_of_damocles_se/characters/hamlet_hopgood.md): A character with a literary name, possibly a servant or minor figure.
- [Mrs. Hamlin](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_sword_of_damocles_se/characters/mrs_hamlin.md): A woman with a name that appears, possibly a neighbor or acquaintance.
- [Mr. Gryce](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_sword_of_damocles_se/characters/mr_gryce.md): A detective or investigator, possibly involved in the mystery.
- [Young Mandeville](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_sword_of_damocles_se/characters/young_mandeville.md): A younger member of the Mandeville family, possibly a son or brother.
- [Aunt Belinda](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_sword_of_damocles_se/characters/aunt_belinda.md): An older relative, possibly of Paula or the Sylvesters, with a caring role.
- [Farrar](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_sword_of_damocles_se/characters/farrar.md): A character with a name that appears, possibly a servant or minor figure.
- [Sir Beaufort](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_sword_of_damocles_se/characters/sir_beaufort.md): A character with a title, possibly a historical or literary reference.
- [Miss Abby](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_sword_of_damocles_se/characters/miss_abby.md): An older woman, possibly a spinster or relative, with a minor role.
- [Damocles](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_sword_of_damocles_se/characters/damocles.md): The legendary figure from the title, referenced as a symbol.

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_sword_of_damocles_se/characters