Brazen Bull

The brazen bull, also known as the bronze bull, Sicilian bull, bellowing bull or bull of Phalaris, was a torture and execution device designed in ancient Greece. According to Diodorus Siculus, recounting the story in Bibliotheca historica, Perilaus (Περίλαος) of Athens invented and proposed it to Phalaris, the tyrant of Akragas, Sicily, as a new means of execution. The bull was said to have been hollow, and made entirely of bronze, with a door in one side. According to legend, the condemned were locked inside the device, and a fire was set beneath it, heating the metal to the extent that the person within slowly roasted to death. The bull was equipped with an internal acoustic apparatus that converted the screams of the dying into what sounded like the bellows of a bull. The bull's design was such that steam from the cooking flesh of the condemned exited the bull's nostrils; this effect—along with the bull's "bellows"—created the illusion that the bull came to life during every execution. Pindar, who lived less than a century later, expressly associates this instrument of torture with the name of the tyrant Phalaris. The truth about the brazen bull is difficult to verify, and it may have been created for intimidation rather than actual use.