The brazen bull, bronze bull, or Sicilian bull, was a torture and execution device designed
in ancient Greece. 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. The bull was made entirely of bronze, hollow,
with a door in one side. The bull was in the form and size of a real life 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
Phalaris commanded that the bull be designed in such a way that its smoke rose in spicy
clouds of incense. 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."
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. Possible link to Carthaginian Sacrifice
Scholars link the design of the Brazen Bull to statues of Moloch in which infants were
sacrificed alive within a bronze, calf-headed statue of the deity by being placed on the
hands of the statue and sliding down into the bronze furnace. The noises of the child's
screams were often drowned out by drumming and dancing, since the sacrificial altars
did not have the pipes system that the Brazen Bull had. The practices of the city of Tophet
are also cited by scholars to be the inspiration for the Brazen Bull because of Akragas' Carthaginian
roots. The story of the bull cannot be dismissed
as pure invention. Pindar, who lived less than a century afterwards, expressly associates
this instrument of torture with the name of the tyrant.
Carthaginian capture and Roman restoration
Roman persecution of Christians The Romans were reputed to have used this
torture device to kill some Jews, as well as 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. 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. The Catholic Church discounts the story of
Saint Eustace's martyrdom as "completely false".
Visigothic kingdom of Toulouse According to the Chronica caesaraugustana,
Burdunellus, a Roman usurper, was roasted in a brazen bull by the king Alaric II in
497. See also
Iron maiden Torture chamber
References Notes
Bibliography
External links Media related to Bronze Bull at Wikimedia
Commons Phalaris
