The Brazen Bull is not the way you’d want to go, that’s for sure
As it often goes in films, it’s the thing you love and the thing you tend to that ends up hurting you. You know, people getting left heartbroken by their loved ones or falling at the feet of the monster they conjured up.
But in this very brutal, (possibly) real-life case, a man who invented the ‘most painful torture device’ with a gruesome design ended up becoming the victim of it.
Yeah, let that be a lesson if you were thinking about switching up your career and going into making, well, horrible things.
So, let’s go way back to the 6th Century BC when Perilaus of Athens, the Ancient Greek inventor who came up with something called the Brazen Bull.
This bizarre invention was basically a big sculpture of a bull made out of bronze, with a hatch in the belly and a series of pipes in the bull’s mouth.
The idea behind it was for someone to be put inside and a fire lit underneath it, cooking the unfortunate occupant while their screams were transformed into the noise of a bull.
Of course, such an evil torture device needs a suitably evil owner and Perilaus decided that it should belong to Phalaris, the tyrant of the Sicilian state of Akragas.
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It’s been claimed that Phalaris was a cannibal who ate newborn babies, so either he was a truly monstrous person or he really p**sed off some people enough that they said he ate babies.
Anyhow, it’s not clear whether Phalaris commissioned Perilaus to make the Brazen Bull or whether the inventor decided he knew just the evil b*****d who’d fully appreciate a thing like that, but the inventor certainly knew what the tyrant would enjoy.
Who creates a bull statue made for cooking people in? Some Greek guy called Perilaus, apparently. (Discovery)
However, it turns out that just because you make a cruel tyrant a new torture device it doesn’t mean he’ll become your friend.
Phalaris asked the inventor to get inside the Brazen Bull to demonstrate what the noises would sound like, and to make it more realistic the tyrant locked Perilaus inside and set a fire under the bull.
It would have been agony for Periluas, being cooked alive in his own invention, but the tyrant did end up letting him out before he died.
“I very much regret making this.” (LADbible/AI)
Sadly for the inventor, if he had any hopes about getting out of Akragas with his life he was going to be sorely disappointed, as Phalaris gave him a ticket to the Underworld by having him thrown off a hill to his death.
The tyrant was certainly impressed by the Brazen Bull and used it until his own downfall in 554 BC.
Phalaris supposedly enjoyed the sight of the bull rocking back and forth as the victim inside writhed in pain.
In an act of poetic justice when he was overthrown his execution was carried out by placing him inside the Brazen Bull and seeing how he liked it.
He very much didn’t, and died in what we can only imagine was a lot of pain.
Featured Image Credit: Discovery/LADbible/AI
