BRAZEN BULL

 

The scream from the victim's will sound like the roar of  bull

The Brazen Bull was invented by Perilaus of Athens (a Brass worker) in the 6th Century BC and offered to Phalaris, Tyrant of Agrigentum, as a gift. It was a large brass bull that was completely hollow inside with a door on the side large enough for a man to enter. Once the man was inside the bull, a fire would be lit beneath it in order to roast him to death. In the head of the bull, Perilaus put a series of tubes and stops that were designed to amplify the screams of the victim and make them sound like the roar of a bull. Not having to see the victim, onlookers could more easily separate themselves from the torture taking place.

Interestingly, Perilaus was the first person to feel the pain of the Brazen Bull. Perilaus was removed from the Bull before he died and Phalaris had him thrown off a cliff. The Brazen Bull became one of the most common methods of execution in Ancient Greece.

The writer Lucian of Samosata claims that "Phalaris reacted so harshly to Perillos because even he ‘loathed the thought of such ingenious cruelty’, and vowed to punish its inventor. Ironically it was the bull that killed Phalaris when he was overthrown around twenty years later: a mob seizedhim and bundled him inside Perillos’s invention." He was roasted alive.