The ancient device was used to torture and execute people.
If you’re having a bad day, it’s sometimes helpful to remember that you never got to experience the ‘most painful torture device in history’ – which kept victims alive for a horrifying amount of time.
Created in the 6th century BC by a Greek inventor, the evil brazen bull made up of a hollow bronze metal.
Perilaus of Athens (or Perillus), is the dude who came up with the idea of the ‘human oven’ and made a prototype for Phalaris, the tyrant of the Sicilian state of Akragas, who had a bit of a torture fetish.
Oh yeah, he also liked eating newborn babies, seems like a wonderful fella.
Anyway, in order for the alleged cannibal to approve of the device, it needed to be absolutely agonising for its victims.
So the way it works is that someone would be locked inside the hollow bull via a trapdoor and have a fire lit from the base.
This would basically turn the bull into an oven, which would cook them alive.
If that wasn’t bad enough, the metal pipes inside of the sculpture transformed the sound of their screams into bellowing bull noises.
Sadistic, I know.
Some accounts suggest that Phalaris may not actually have asked for the bull to be made, more that Perilaus created the horrific device in an attempt to get on his good side.
As you can imagine, things didn’t exactly pan out after Phalaris told the inventor to demonstrate how the person inside making noises would sound to everyone on the outside.
When Perilaus climbed inside he was locked in while a fire was lit beneath him.
The inventor was the bull’s first victim.
Once he knew that it worked, Phalaris decided to keep the bull and it became his new favourite toy.
He enjoyed the spectacle of the bull rocking back and forth as someone was burned to death inside.
For other victims, it’s impossible to imagine the pain and suffering they must have gone through.
What makes it worse is when you realise how long a victim would be stuck in there for.
A typical victim would apparently spend up to 10 minutes stuck in the Brazen Bull, without a help in the world.
Thankfully, Phalaris’ horrible reign came to an end in 554 BC and he was forced to take a hit of his own medicine by being placed inside that very bull.
A terrible invention with a terrible end.
