The Brazen Bull: History's Most Awful Punishment

When you think about it, humans are pretty fragile, squishy and easy to kill. Our abundance of pain receptors also means it’s ridiculously easy to plunge us into excruciating agony. You don’t need much more than a pointy stick or a big rock, and you’re pretty well equipped to dish out a punishment painful enough to match most crimes.

Yet, throughout history, human minds have repeatedly turned away from advancements in health, technology, and prosperity and have instead focused on inventing more and more horrible ways to kill each other.

Our species is responsible for dreaming up keelhauling, where a man is dragged repeatedly under a ship until they’re torn to shreds by barnacles; Blood eagle, where a victim’s back would be sliced open, their ribs detached from their spine, and their, still attached, lungs pulled through the opening and spread like a pair of bloody wings; and death by bamboo, where a person would be strung up over a patch of sharpened bamboo shoots, which would then grow at a rate of a meter per day, up through their body.

In fact, we’ve come up with so many sadistic torture rituals that it’s become difficult to pick the worst. The Brazen Bull, however, stands out as not only agonising but also particularly evil in that it was designed to turn the tormented wailings of its victims into entertainment for observers. This is the type of torture you could enjoy over a glass of wine or a friendly BBQ.

Invention

Between 570 and 554 BC, the Tyrant Phalaris ruled the city of Akragas, now Agrigento, in Sicily. Although his leadership brought prosperity, water, and fortifications, his legacy is one of enormous cruelty, most famously of the baby-eating variety. Unsurprisingly, this earned him more than a few enemies, many of whom wanted him dead.

A bronze worker and palace sculptor from Athens, Perilaus, notices that Phalaris would probably benefit from having a way to kill these rebels that would act as a punishment and set an example to other would-be traitors. So, either as a way to curry favour or to earn a reward, he set about designing something that would do both.

Now, I imagine most ordinary craftsmen would probably find it quite challenging to invent something evil enough to impress someone who cannibalises newborns. But not Perilaus. His invention, the Brazen Bull, was created to inflict a death so excruciatingly painful it was probably only rivalled by execution by rat bucket.

The Brazen Bull

The bull itself was life-sized, hollow, and crafted from bronze. It had a hatch for entry and just enough space inside for a man. Those convicted of capital crimes, like treason, would be locked inside, and a fire would be lit beneath the belly of the bull.

As the flames licked the metal, heat would be generated, reaching up to 1000°C. This would cause the victim’s body temperature to rise, and above 41°C they’d get too hot to sweat, and dehydration and confusion would set in.

Next, the blood would thicken and the heart would start to battle to pump it. Then cells, particularly in the brain, intestines, and liver, would be destroyed and the damaged tissue would flood into the bloodstream, causing multi-organ failure. In total, death by heat would take 10 to 15 harrowing minutes, leaving plenty of time for the victim’s flesh to be seared by the red hot metal.

While this already sounds horrific enough, Perilaus was particularly sadistic and decided to add a few flourishes to his design. Some things that he thought would be sure to impress Phalaris and could even have the Bull double as a form of entertainment for the ruler’s party guests.

Inside the head of the beast, he added a series of reeded pipes and horns. These were designed so that when the screams and groans of the victim passed through the different shaped tubes and chambers, their sounds would be distorted. Some say what emerged wouldn’t be the pained shrieks of a burning man but the lows and bellows of a bull. As if the bronze beast had come to life. Other sources claim the tortured noises would be transformed into melody.

While this might seem unnecessarily dramatic, it actually held a practical purpose. Disguising the shrieking voices made it impossible to make out any screams for mercy. It also dehumanised the victims as they were roasted alive, perhaps making the whole process a bit more palatable.

As a finishing touch, Perilaus filled the head with incense and made holes in the nostrils so that billows of spicy smoke would snake up from the nose. Not only was the effect pretty impressive for onlookers, but this addition would also mask the scent of burning flesh that might have put Phalaris’s party guests off their meals.

Phalaris’ Reaction

Now, you might think that for an evil tyrant like Phalaris, this metal monstrosity would be right up his street. It’s hard to come up with a torture device more horrific or artistic, and Perilaus presented it with passion.

“When you are minded to punish anyone, shut him up in this receptacle, apply these pipes to the nostrils of the bull, and order a fire to be kindled beneath. The occupant will shriek and roar in unremitting agony; and his cries will come to you through the pipes as the tenderest, most pathetic, most melodious of bellowings. Your victim will be punished, and you will enjoy the music.”

Unfortunately, though, Phalaris wasn’t impressed. Some say the device was just too cruel and it sickened him. Others suggest that Phalaris wasn’t evil after all and he was offended that Perilaus had mistaken his character to such an extent. And, finally, some claim it was the conflation of torture with music, the sacred art of Apollo and the muses that turned his stomach.

Whatever the reason, Phalaris was disgusted, but he didn’t let on right away. Instead, he asked Perilaus to climb inside his contraption and produce the so-called “melodious bellows” by screaming. Of course, Perilaus obliged, but once inside, Phalaris ordered the hatch to be shut and a fire to be lit beneath it, crying “the due reward of your wondrous art: let the music-master be the first to play.”

When Perilaus’s agonised screams began to ring out from the bull, as melodiously as promised, Phalaris had his half-dead body removed so that his death wouldn’t “pollute the bronze” and had him hurled over a cliff and into the sea. A fate many would argue was well deserved for the inventor of something so evil.

The Victims

Tragically for Phalaris’s subjects, he didn’t chuck the bull over the cliffs along with its inventor, suggesting he didn’t find it quite as disgusting as he let on. Instead, he kept it and allegedly used it to torture slaves and punish his opponents at parties, just as Perilaus had intended.

To his guest’s delight, it also turned out that the temperature of the bull happened to hit a sweet spot where it would burn away all flesh but leave the bones intact. So, at the end of each murder, they could open the bull, extract the shining, bleached bones, and turn them into bracelets. Now, there’s a party favour.

By 554BC, the people grew tired of Phalaris’s tyranny, can’t think why, and he was overthrown. As punishment for his atrocities, his successor Telemachus decided that the only suitable punishment was to subject the tyrant to the same fate as those he’d tormented, and threw him into the bull. Unlike Perilaus, Phalaris was thoroughly roasted, marking the end of the use of the brazen bull in the city of Akragas.

The Romans

However, the story of the Sicilian Bull didn’t end there. Around 406 BC, Carthaginian General Himilco led an expedition to Sicily and ransacked Akragas. He found the Brazen Bull and had it sent back to Carthage as a war trophy. There are no reports of the Carthaginians using the device to cook anybody, but the move would eventually lead to the discovery by the not exactly torture-averse Romans.

Under the leadership of Scipio Aemilianus, Carthage fell to the Romans in 147BC. After their victory, they allowed Sicilian envoys to pick through the spoils and reclaim anything Carthage had stolen from them. These items were shipped back to Sicily and included the bull.

The Martyrs

So, what did the Romans do next, now that they had knowledge of and access to Phalaris’s Bull? They started roasting Christians, of course.

The first to go was Saint Antipas, in 92AD, during the persecutions of Emperor Domitian.

The next alleged victim was Saint Eustace, who, according to legend, was martyred in 118 AD. His story goes that he was a pagan Roman general who converted to Christianity after he had a vision of a cross between the antlers of a stag that he was hunting. So, he got baptized, lost his wealth, and fled to Egypt. Unfortunately, though, he couldn’t afford the journey, so the Captain took his wife as payment. Later his sons were also taken, separately, by a wolf and a lion. Talk about bad luck.

Things took a turn for the better when, years later, the Roman emperor Trajan summoned him back to Rome to help repel an uprising. Astonishingly, for the unluckiest guy in history, he rediscovered his sons when trading life stories with the soldiers, and they both recalled being abducted by animals as children. It also just so happened that they were resting in the house of an old woman at the time, and you guessed it. She turned out to be his long-lost wife. Remarkable.

Tragically, though, his luck didn’t last. When Hadrian succeeded Trajan, Eustace and his family returned to Rome to celebrate with the new emperor. There, Hadrian commanded the Christian Eustace, to make a sacrifice to the Pagan gods. Eustace refused, awkward. So, Hadrian had them all thrown into a pit of lions, but the lions didn’t touch them. They were probably friends of one of the sons. So, and here we finally return to the point, Hadrian had them thrown into the brazen bull to be cooked to death.

This time, the emperor was successful and the whole family was killed. But, what astonished onlookers and has often been repeated as evidence of a miracle. Their bodies were untouched by the flames and they came out of the searing furnace as though they were sleeping. No melty bits at all.

Pelagia of Tarsus was another Christian saint said to have met the same horrifying fate. Her crime was to reject the marriage proposal of Roman emperor Diocletian’s son, as she was preserving her virginity and wedded to Christ. Heartbroken, her suitor committed suicide. This didn’t seem to offend his dad, the emperor, too much though, as when Pelagia arrived in Rome, he then asked her to marry him. This time, she not only rejected him but called him insane.

Offending a Roman emperor is never a good move, and she, too, was sent to the bronze bull. As legend tells it, as her flesh melted, the smell of myrrh rose from the nostrils and spread throughout the whole of Rome.

Of course, each of these stories lacks any evidence. The Catholic church has dismissed the claims as false, and Eustace is widely rumoured to be a fictitious Saint. Shocking, I know. However, it is possible to see a depiction of Eustace and Antipas being roasted in the bull in the stained glass at Notre Dame Cathedral and a depiction of Pelagia’s fate in the church manuscript The Menologion of Basil II.

Evidence of the Bull’s Existence

If, for some reason, all this has inspired you to want to see the bull in the flesh, I have bad news. It no longer exists, and any examples being displayed in museums are just replicas. According to legend, the Brazen Bull literally met its maker as it was tossed into the sea, just like Perilaus. However, many are beginning to question whether the bull ever really existed at all.

Some call the story simple propaganda, designed to paint Phalaris as a tyrant. Others suggest it was written as a story of morality, as both inventor and user received their just desserts in the belly of the beast. However, its existence had been pretty well documented, at least as much as possible for something that existed more than 2 and a half thousand years ago.

The first mention is in the Ancient Greek poet, Pindar’s, first Pythian Ode from 470BC: “The kindly virtue of Croesus does not perish, but a hateful reputation on all sides surrounds Phalaris, burner in his pitiless mind with a bronze bull.”

Greek historian, Polybius, who lived from 200-118 BC, also passed on the story and expressed his frustrations at anyone who disbelieved it: “The trap door between the shoulders, through which the victims used to be let down, still remains; and no other reason for the construction of such a bull in Carthage can be discovered at all.”

Further references to the bull can be found in Biblioteca Historica, the ancient Greek historian Diodorus Siculus’s account of universal history, and in Cicero’s orations, a series of speeches he made in 70BC. In one, Cicero branded Phalaris as, “The most cruel of all tyrants” and coined the term “phalarismos.” A descriptor for someone with a malicious mind, motivated by dictatorial plans. A term he aimed at Julius Caesar, but could probably be brought back into use today.

So, was it real? Well, I guess we’ll never know unless someone hauls it out of the sea at some point. Was it possible? Absolutely, the materials, skills, and motives all existed at the time. Plus, if history has taught us anything, it’s that human beings are always looking for new and interesting ways to kill each other.

Citations

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“The Worst Torture Device in History ‘Brazen Bull’”. Arkeonews, 2 Feb. 2021, https://arkeonews.net/the-worst-torture-device-in-history-brazen-bull/.

“8 Jaw-dropping Facts about the ‘Brazen Bull’”. GHD, https://www.greecehighdefinition.com/blog/facts-about-the-brazen-bull. Accessed 30 Aug. 2022.

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“20 Of The Slowest Historical Torture Methods We Can’t Believe Living Souls Had to Endure”. History Collection, 8 Feb. 2019, https://historycollection.com/20-of-the-slowest-historical-torture-methods-we-cant-believe-living-souls-had-to-endure/.

Computer Science for Fun - cs4fn: The Brazen Bull: The Dark Beginnings of Sound Technology. http://www.cs4fn.org/audioengineering/brazenbull.php. Accessed 30 Aug. 2022.

“The Ancient Greek Torture Device ‘Brazen Bull’ Is Considered to Be One of the Most Gruesome Creations of All Time”. Thevintagenews, 10 Oct. 2016, https://www.thevintagenews.com/2016/10/10/brazen-bull-ancient-greek-torture-device-considered-one-gruesome-creations-time-2/.

Milne, A. “The Brazen Bull May Have Been History’s Worst Torture Device”. All That’s Interesting, 7 Mar. 2018, https://allthatsinteresting.com/brazen-bull.

Ngamla, M. “The Brazen Bull: Worst Punishment In History”. Lessons from History, 2 Jan. 2021, https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/the-brazen-bull-worst-punishment-in-history-e96063b741e3.

“Torture as an Instrument of Music in the Ancient Brazen Bull of Phalaris”. Brewminate: A Bold Blend of News and Ideas, 9 Aug. 2022, https://brewminate.com/torture-as-an-instrument-of-music-in-the-ancient-brazen-bull-of-phalaris/.

Brazen Bull: Gruesome Ancient Greek Torture Device Turned Screams into ‘Music’. https://www.ancient-origins.net/artifacts-ancient-technology/brazen-bull-gruesome-ancient-greek-torture-device-turned-screams-music-021359. Accessed 30 Aug. 2022.

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“Did The Brazen Bull Actually Exist?”. Ancient World Review, https://www.ancientworldreview.com/2020/10/death-machines-the-brazen-bull.html. Accessed 30 Aug. 2022.

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Key Takeaways

• The Brazen Bull was a torture device designed to kill victims slowly and painfully by heating a bronze bull from beneath.
• Invented by Perilaus, the device distorted victims’ screams into melodious bellows or music, entertaining observers.
• Phalaris, the tyrant of Akragas, initially rejected the Brazen Bull but later used it to torture and kill his enemies.
• The Romans acquired the Brazen Bull and used it to execute Christians, including Saint Antipas and Saint Eustace.
• The existence of the Brazen Bull is well-documented in ancient texts, but its authenticity remains debated.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Brazen Bull?

The Brazen Bull was a torture device designed to inflict a painful death on its victims while turning their screams into entertainment for observers. It was a life-sized, hollow bronze bull with a hatch for entry and a fire lit beneath it to heat the metal.

Who invented the Brazen Bull?

The Brazen Bull was invented by Perilaus, a bronze worker and palace sculptor from Athens.

What was the purpose of the Brazen Bull?

The Brazen Bull was designed to punish and kill those convicted of capital crimes, such as treason, while also serving as entertainment for observers.

How did the Brazen Bull work?

Victims were locked inside the bull, and a fire was lit beneath it. The heat generated would cause the victim’s body temperature to rise, leading to dehydration, confusion, and ultimately death by multi-organ failure. The screams of the victim were distorted through pipes to sound like a bull or melody.

What happened to Perilaus after he invented the Brazen Bull?

Phalaris, the tyrant of Akragas, ordered Perilaus to climb inside the Brazen Bull and produce the so-called ‘melodious bellows’ by screaming. Once inside, Phalaris had the hatch shut and a fire lit beneath it, killing Perilaus.

What happened to Phalaris and the Brazen Bull?

Phalaris was overthrown in 554 BC and was thrown into the Brazen Bull as punishment, marking the end of its use in Akragas. The bull was later taken to Carthage and then to Rome, where it was used to torture Christians.

Who were some of the victims of the Brazen Bull?

Some of the alleged victims of the Brazen Bull include Saint Antipas, Saint Eustace, and Palagia of Tarsus, who were all Christians martyred by being roasted in the bull.

Is there any evidence of the Brazen Bull’s existence?

The Brazen Bull’s existence is documented in various ancient sources, including the works of Pindar, Polybius, Diodorus Siculus, and Cicero. However, the actual device no longer exists, and any examples in museums are replicas.

What was the reaction of Phalaris to the Brazen Bull?

Phalaris was initially disgusted by the Brazen Bull but did not reveal his true feelings immediately. He ordered Perilaus to demonstrate the device, leading to Perilaus’ death. Phalaris later used the bull to torture slaves and punish opponents.

What happened to the Brazen Bull after Phalaris’ rule?

After Phalaris was overthrown, the Brazen Bull was taken to Carthage as a war trophy and later to Rome. In Rome, it was used to torture Christians, including Saint Antipas and Saint Eustace.

Sources

• Original Into the Shadows video: The Brazen Bull: History’s Most Awful Punishment
• Hero image source by Maxwhollymoralground / openverse, by-sa.

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