A big thank you for the suggestion of the coming series of the week to Samantha Gifford! Grab you black hoods and raise the fucking guillotine, this week will hold a daily dose of terrible tortures!
Today we’ll be looking at the metallic man melter called the ‘Brazen Bull’. Now this cheeky little number was essentially a human scream powered music box. It of course took the shape of a bull made entirely of bronze, so as far as the aesthetics of torture devices go it doesn’t get any better. The inside was hollow with a convenient side door to check the survival rate of it’s occupant (generally very fucking low). The pièce de résistance was the metal tubing rigged up to allow whichever poor bastard that happened to be inside to breath. When breathing out or I should say screaming out it would turn the screams into the sound of a raging bull.
So how did it work? Fucking simple. You get some unlucky cunt who just told the boss man his flies are down, stick ‘em in the bull and light a fire below it. Bish bash bosh, you’ve got toasted traitor. The way bronze conducts heat means that wherever they move inside the bull they’re gonna be getting slow roasted. If they’re lucky they may pass out from the heat. Chances are though they slowly dehydrate, while being cooked from the inside out.
So what piece of shit came up with this bright idea? Well it was a fellow called Perilaus over in Sicily (I couldn’t find an exact date, but it’s somewhere between 570 and 554BC. Plus I’m fucking sick of searching old manuscripts). So he makes this thing for a tyrant by the name of Phalaris. From what I understand they were both sick assholes. Anyway, Perilaus comes around with this big fucking bull to kiss the tyrants ass and says how much pleasure he will get from hearing the screams of the victims. Phalaris is all like “This guy is fucking gross”, but keeps his disgust on the down low.
Phalaris says, “Oh, Perilaus. You should jump in that thing and prove the horn works.” Perilaus obviously doesn’t realise he’s in peril and the dumb cunt does it! They slam the door on him and set it ablaze. Low and behold it all works perfectly, but they don’t roast him completely. They decide to pull him out half dead and just throw him off a cliff, because why the fuck not? Phalaris went on to use the bull all the time, including dinner parties and banquets. He of course had incense added to the room didn’t smell like burning human flesh.
But there is a happy ending. A few years on when Phalaris gets overthrown, can you guess what they did with him? Oh yes, Roasted ruler.
Leonardo Gavinci 