The brazen bull was a torture and execution device designed in ancient Greece. Perillos of Athens, a brass-founder, proposed it to Phalaris, the tyrant of Akragas, Sicily, who desired the invention of a new means for executing criminals. Accordingly, Perillos cast a bull, made entirely of brass, hollow, with a door in the side.The condemned were shut in the bull and a fire was set under it, heating the metal until it became yellow hot and causing the person inside to roast to death.
Phalaris commanded that the bull be designed in such a way that its smoke rose in spicy clouds of incense. The head of the ox was designed with a complex system of tubes and stops so that the prisoner’s screams were converted into sounds like the bellowing of an infuriated bull. It is also said that when the bull was reopened, the scorched bones of the victim’s remains shone like jewels and were made into bracelets.
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