THE BRAZEN BULL THE DANGEROUS EXECUTION DEVICE FOUNDED IN SICILY
The brazen bull, bronze bull, or Sicilian bull, was a torture and execution device designed in ancient Greece.[1]
According to Diodorus Siculus, recounting the story in Bibliotheca historica, Perillos of Athens invented and proposed it to Phalaris, the tyrant of Akragas, Sicily, as a new means of executing criminals.[2]
The bull was made entirely of bronze, hollow, with a door in one side.
[3] The bull was in the form and size of an actual bull and had an acoustic apparatus that converted screams into the sound of a bull. The condemned were locked in the device, and a fire was set under it, heating the metal until the person inside roasted to death.
Reign of Phalaris[edit]
Phalaris commanded that the bull be designed in such a way that its smoke rose in spicy clouds of incense.[citation needed] The head of the bull was designed with a complex system of tubes and stops so that the prisoner's screams were converted into sounds like the bellowing of an infuriated bull.
According to legend, when the bull was reopened, the victim's scorched bones "shone like jewels and were made into bracelets."[4]
Perillos said to Phalaris:
"His screams will come to you through the pipes as the tenderest, most pathetic, most melodious of bellowings." Disgusted by these words, Phalaris ordered its horn sound system to be tested on Perillos himself.
When Perillos entered, he was immediately locked in, and the fire was set, so that Phalaris could hear the sound of his screams.
Before Perillos could die, Phalaris opened the door and took him away.
Perillos believed he would receive a reward for his invention; instead, after freeing him from the bull, Phalaris threw him from the top of a hill, killing him.
Phalaris himself is said to have been killed in the brazen bull when he was overthrown by Telemachus, the ancestor of Theron.[
Roman persecution of Christians[edit]
The Romans were reputed to have used this torture device to kill some Christians, notably Saint Eustace, who, according to Christian tradition, was roasted in a brazen bull with his wife and children by Emperor Hadrian.
The same happened to Saint Antipas, Bishop of Pergamon during the persecutions of Emperor Domitian and the first martyr in Asia Minor, who was roasted to death in a brazen bull in AD 92.[8]
The device was still in use two centuries later, when another Christian, Pelagia of Tarsus, is said to have been burned in one in 287 by the Emperor Diocletian.[citation needed]
The Catholic Church discounts the story of Saint Eustace's martyrdom as "completely false"
Visigothic kingdom of Toulouse[edit]
According to the Chronica caesaraugustana, Burdunellus, a Roman usurper, was roasted in a brazen bull by the king Alaric II in 497.
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