The Brazen Bull was used as an instrument of torture and execution in ancient Greece (1200–323 BC). Also known as the Bull of Phalaris, the Sicilian Bull, and the Bronze Bull, it was invented sometime in the 6th century BC. Although its precise origins remain unknown. Diodorus Siculus (c. 90–30 BC), in his Bibliotheca historica, claims that Perilaus (Perillus) of Athens came up with the idea and suggested it to Phalaris, the tyrant of Acragas, Sicily. Diodorus was a live witness to the bronze bull when it was located in Agrigento.
History of the Brazen Bull
According to legend, Perilaus, a brass caster from Athens, offered this torture and execution device to Phalaris (c. 570–549 BC), the semi-legendary ruler of Agrigento. The king adopted the device and even put it to use as a novel method of sending offenders to a painful death. It is most likely the cruelest form of punishment that humans have ever created.
The Roman priest and historian Paulus Orosius (c. 375–420 AD) mentions a detailed account of the myth of Perilaus and his creation of a hollow Brazen Bull with a door on its side or on the back between the shoulder blades. Though he lived some 1000 years after the incident.
The bull was taken from the city of Agrigento when it fell under Carthaginian power in 406 BC, when the Carthaginian navigator Himilco took Agrigento. The Brazen Bull was at Carthage when the Greek historian Polybius visited Africa in the 2nd century BC.
“There was a brazen bull which Phalaris made in Agrigentum [Latin for Agrigento], and in it he shut up men, and afterwards lighting fire beneath it used to take such dreadful revenge on his subjects that as the brass grew red and the man inside perished roasted and scorched, when he screamed in the extremity of his agony, the sound when it reached the ears of those present resembled, owing to the way the thing was constructed, the lowing of a bull.
This bull during the Carthaginian domination was taken from Agrigentum to Carthage, and though the door at the joint of its shoulder blades through which the victims were lowered into it, was still preserved, and though no reason at all can be found why such a bull should have been made in Carthage (…).”
The Histories of Polybius, Volume XII, 25. Uchicago.edu
According to the historian Timaeus in his History (b. 350 BC), the bull had never existed during the defeat of Carthage to the Romans. But in about 200 BC, Scipio Africanus retook the city and brought the bull back to Agrigentum (Acragas).
It is more likely that Scipio Aemilianus, also known as Scipio Africanus the Younger, returned this bull and other stolen works of art to their native Sicilian communities following the conclusion of the Third Punic War and the destruction of Carthage (around 146 BC).
Aristotle mentions Phalaris’ suffering without going into depth about it when he discusses immoral behavior. Diodorus claims to be the live witness of the bronze bull when it was located in Agrigento in the 1st century BC.
Executions continued to utilize the Brazen Bull well into the 5th century. Examples include the death penalty for the Roman usurper Burdunellus, who tried to claim imperial dignity and authority. Alaric II of the Visigothic Kingdom of Toulouse imposed this penalty in 497 AD.
According to historical accounts, the Romans would have used this torture device to end the lives of many Christian martyrs, including the bishops of Pergamum Saint Antipas, and Saint Eustace. It is reported that Emperor Diocletian burned Pelagia of Tarsus in a Brazen Bull in the year 287 AD.
The fall of cattle worship in Europe and the complexity of its production techniques meant that the device never caught on with the general population in Europe. The Carolingian dynasty (613–1120) mentions the “roaring bull” as a traditional torture method, but it was no longer used at the time.
Mechanism
This bronze roaring bull had two openings—one behind the bull’s head and another in its mouth. A canal of pipes, resembling the movable valve of a trumpet, connected the bull’s mouth to its interior.
The victim was put within the bull, and the entrance was sealed up and set ablaze. The air within the bull grew more limited as the temperature increased, and the victim would search for breathing holes like the pipes placed at the bull’s throat. The cries of the condemned emanated from the bull’s mouth, giving the impression that the device was animated.
The Sicilian Bull was a realistic representation of a bull in both size and shape. A fire would be kindled underneath the metal body, and the victim would be kept within until the bronze bull was red hot. Anyone inside would be slowly burned to death.
The smoke from the Brazen Bull was designed to rise in fragrant clouds of incense so that nothing unsightly would detract from the enjoyment of the onlookers. The bull was known for amplifying the cries of the tormented individual, resembling the roar of a bull.
The acoustic mechanism of this torture device was quite complex. The bronze bull had a series of pipes and clamps that transformed the cries into noises reminiscent of an enraged bull. After the instrument of death was opened, the remaining bones were believed to sparkle like pearls and turn into bracelets.
Death by Your Own Invention
The king disapproved of Perilaus’ inhuman, and sadistic invention when he showed Phalaris the elaborate bull he had created as a tribute to the god Apollo.
Phalaris initially praised the invention, but he went ahead and ordered Perilaus to get inside the bull and demonstrate the sound mechanism for himself. Meanwhile, Perilaus assumed he was going to get rewarded for the device.
But when the brass caster got inside the Brazen Bull as requested, the door was sealed behind him, and a fire was lit so Phalaris could hear his screams. The reason for this was that King Phalaris, although a tyrant, did not like the way Perilaus explained the violent workings of the device to him:
“His [the victim’s] screams will come to you through the pipes as the tenderest, most pathetic, and most melodious of bellowings.”
Perilaus explained his torture device to King Phalaris, and he didn’t really like it.
After some time, Phalaris unlocked the door and snatched Perilaus away before he could die. However, it didn’t end there, as King Phalaris had Perilaus tossed down a cliff to his death.
According to the myth, Telemachus of Agrigento used the same Brazen Bull to kill Phalaris. Phalaris was elevated to tyrant status after being given control of the Temple of Zeus. But during a popular rebellion led by Telemachus, he was eventually deposed and burned alive in his own Brazen Bull.
Telemachus was the progenitor of the tyrant Theron of Acragas (488–472 BC). Only a century and a half later, the poet Pindar explicitly linked the tyrant Phalaris’ name to this bronze weapon of torture. Thus, the story of the “bronze bull” cannot be considered purely composed.
Another account claims that Perilaus afterward had his moment of glory when he exacted vengeance on King Phalaris for his behavior. In an uprising against the tyrant’s brutal policies, Perilaus organized a rebellion that resulted in the arrest of Phalaris and his execution in a public plaza inside the bronze bull.
Origin of the Brazen Bull: Connection to Carthaginian Human Sacrifices
Children were reportedly sacrificed alive within a bronze calf-headed statue of the Carthaginian god Baal Hammon. This deity is commonly linked with the biblical Moloch. The Phoenicians had introduced the sacrificial cult surrounding the Canaanite god Moloch into Sicily. Therefore, scholars have also suggested that the bronze bull rituals may have drawn inspiration from the Tophet in Jerusalem, the place of child sacrifice.
Such cults and sculptures served as inspiration for the Brazen Bull, similar to the biblical golden calf.
Carthaginians would put the children in the statue’s hands, and the whole thing would slide down into the molten bronze furnace below. Since the sacrifice altars lacked the sophisticated piping system of the Brazen Bull, the children’s screams were lost in the noise of drums and dancers.
Scholars claim that Agrigento’s Carthaginian origins make the link between the bronze Sicilian bull of Phalaris and the Carthaginian’s sacrifice method obvious.
Cleitarchus, a historian of Alexander the Great who lived in the early 3rd century BC, provides a description of a similar child sacrifice ceremony:
“Phoenicians, and above all Carthaginians, worship Kronos; if they wish to achieve something big, they devote a child of theirs, and in the case of success, sacrifice it to the god.
There is a bronze statue of Kronos among them, which stands upright with open arms and palms of its hands facing upwards above a bronze brazier on which the child is burnt.
When the flames reach the body, the victim’s limbs stiffen and the tense mouth almost seems like it is laughing until, with a final spasm, the child falls in the brazier.”
Cleitarchus FGrH no. 137, F 9.
Brazen Bull in Other Accounts
In the Greek manuscripts related to Theron’s work, there is a different account of the Brazen Bull’s demise. Phalaris, disturbed by the violence of Perilaus’ creation, plotted to murder him with the same bull as a kind of punishment.
Once he was introduced inside the Brazen Bull, the bronze bull was thrown into the water a few miles off the shore in front of the city of Agrigento (Acragas), with Perilaus still inside. The inventor was killed by his own invention.
In Literature
Lucian of Samosata (125–180 AD), a Roman satirist who lived in Syria, is credited with writing the first thorough account of the development and use of the Brazen Bull of Phalaris.
The Italian poet Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) mentions the Brazen Bull in the Divine Comedy, using these words:
[…] As the Sicilian bull (that bellowed first
Dante Alighieri, Hell: Canto 27, translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (English, 1867).
With the lament of him, and that was right,
Who with his file had modulated it)
Bellowed so with the voice of the afflicted,
That, notwithstanding it was made of brass,
Still it appeared with agony transfixed;
The Roman poet Juvenal’s (b. 55 AD) Satire VIII (71-141) mentions the Brazen Bull:
“If you’re summoned as witness in a confused and ambiguous
Case, even if Phalaris, the Sicilian tyrant, orders you to lie,
And spell out your perjuries, his Bronze Bull ready to torment […]”
The 18th-century philosopher Immanuel Kant mentions the Brazen Bull many times. The philosopher refers to it in his Critique of Practical Reason (p. 283), Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason (p. 49), and Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (p. 394).
The Greek philosopher Plotinus (d. 270 AD) makes mention of the Brazen Bull in his Enneads (I 13):
“[…] but he [the wise, ed.] always has with him and for himself the greatest object of science, more than he who says is believed even in the bull of Phalaris: which condition is vain to call it pleasant, even if it is said several times”.
Brazen Bull in Common Culture
- In the concluding pages of his 1980 novel The Name of the Rose, the Italian medieval historian Umberto Eco makes reference to the Brazen Bull in connection with the demise of a major character.
- The brazen bull is mentioned in the 10th episode of season 8 of The Blacklist, where a criminal named Perilaus tortures the enemies of his customers.
- The author Mark Z. Danielewski’s The House of Leaves makes reference to the brass bull device.
- The Brazen Bull is often mentioned as a tool of torture in Ancient Egypt in the video game Assassin’s Creed: Origins (2017).
- Amnesia: The Dark Descent has this torture mechanism, and player contact with it is necessary to advance the story.
- In his book Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut briefly mentions the bronze Brazen Bull and how it was used by the Roman emperor Elagabalus.
- In The Immortals (2011), the device is used against the maidens of the oracle.
- In The Atlantis (2013) TV series, someone who committed treason in the City of Atlantis is sacrificed to the Brazen Bull monument.
- When punishing a young guy for being a werewolf, the werewolf hunter in Red Riding Hood (2011) employs a brazen bull to reveal his true identity.
- A modern take on the brazen bull is employed in the movie Saw 3D (2010).
- The Brazen Bull was featured in an episode of the American dark comedy show 1000 Ways to Die (2008), but with some inconsistencies, such as the bull being soundproofed so the cries of the person inside are not heard.
- As a criminal who tortures her customers’ adversaries on commission, the Phalaris bull is referred to as “Perillo” in episode 10 of season 8 of The Blacklist.
References
- Polybius • Histories — Book 12 – Uchicago.edu
- Consularia Caesaraugustana — Brill
- Epigraphy of the tophet – José Ángel ZAMORA and Maria Giulia Amadasi – Academia.edu
- The Iconography of the Canaanite Gods Reshef and Baʻal – Late Bronze and Iron Age I Periods (C 1500-1000 BCE) – By Izak Cornelius – 1994 – Google Books
