every dog will have his day

Even the lowliest will eventually have their revenge. Erasmus traced this metaphor to a Macedonian proverb about the death of Euripides in 406 B.C. While on a visit to the king of Macedonia, the Greek playwright was attacked and killed by dogs that a rival had set upon him. John Heywood included it in his 1546 proverb collection (“As euery man saith, a dog hatha daie”), and George Bernard Shaw used it as well (“Every dog has his day, and I have had mine,” Caesar and Cleopatra, 1897).