The human mind has long been capable of concocting new and horrifying ways to punish supposed transgressors, villains, witches, and anybody else who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Unlike these days where punishment is more like being grounded for a week or getting beaten by a cane, punishments in the olden days were literally brutal.
There are different types of punishment that come with different levels of pain and types of execution. One that can be classified as the cruelest is the Brazen Bull method.
They said if you mess with the bull, you get the horns. This Brazen Bull method was invented by the Greeks. Because it was originated in Sicily, this approach was also known as the Sicilian bull. This was a bronze contraption that was shaped and sized like a real bull. The Historical Library consists of many books written by a Greek historian named Diodorus Siculus and in one of these books, Diodorus wrote about the Brazen Bull.
According to Diodorus, Perillos of Athens, the man who invented it, was an inventor by profession. It was reported that he suggested the idea for this bronze bull before constructing it. He can be described as a creative technologist in search of money. He eventually received support from the tyrant of Acragas, Phalaris. This man was known to be extremely vicious, and he enjoyed torturing youngsters to the point of eating them.
How does one perishing?
This device is said to be the same size as an original bull but the only difference is that it is made from bronze. with an opening for someone to enter into it. That’s not all. Of course, a tortured person would scream his lungs out. The device was made so that when a person screams, that scream would emerge through deliberately warped pipes installed into the bull, giving the impression of an animal roaring in anguish to onlookers. Because dead people don’t emit pleasant odors, the smoke would escape through the bull’s nostrils, which is filled with incense. After the bones have been burned, they will be utilized to make bracelets.
Once the bull was completed, Phalaris wanted to test it out so he asked the inventor to get in. Most people said that Phalaris pushed the inventor into the bull and burnt him to death for his wicked invention. Others suggested that the inventor was pushed off the cliff. Another theory said that during Phalaris’s downfall, he too was burnt to death in the very device he funded for.
Either way, both the inventor and the funder were killed by their own hands in a way.
Sources: The Infographics Show, Story Pick, All That Is Interesting