Jess Battison
The ‘most painful torture device ever’ had a brutal history behind it, if that’s at all surprising. But what might be a little more shocking is that it was even used on the very person who created it.
Going back through history, plenty of civilisations didn’t hold back when it came to crime and punishment with various methods invented to painfully kill as a way of teaching a lesson.
Way, way, way back in approximately 500-560 BCE, the ‘Brazen Bull’ was created in ancient Greece by inventor Perilaus of Athens. Appearing in numerous ancient texts (and even popping up in a horror film), it is also referred to as the bronze bull, Sicilian bull or bull of Phalaris.
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.
Basically, someone would have climbed in before a fire was lit, literally cooking up the unfortunate occupant while their screams were transformed into the noise of a bull.
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And here’s where the really brutal bit of the history comes in.
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.
It’s been claimed that this bloke was actually a cannibal who ate newborn babies. So he either truly was a 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.
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But just because you make a cruel tyrant a new torture device doesn’t mean you’re going to be best mates.
Phalaris asked the inventor to get inside the Brazen Bull to demonstrate what those harrowing noises would sound like, and to make it more realistic the tyrant locked Perilaus inside and set a fire under the bull. Yep, brutal.
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. So that’s considerate, I guess.
Phalaris did end up supposedly having the inventor thrown off a hill to his death though. And that’s despite his delight with the Brazen Bull as it’s said he used it until his own downfall.