calgacus
Mar 20, 2003, 09:04 AM
I felt like starting a thread on the gruesome tortures and deaths so abundant in history that happened either by accident or by design. Christian martyrs provide a fruitful source, but I'll start the thread off with a classical anecdote.
This story was mentioned in Pindar, Lucian and Dante's Inferno.
"The inventor Perilaus constructed a life-size bronze sculpture of a bull with a rear entrance providing access to its belly. Here, hapless victims were enclosed while a fire lit beneath the creature's belly. By an elaborate system of pipes, cunningly contrived, the victim's screams issued from the bull's mouth in a form of a gentle lowing. Proudly presenting his invention to the Greek tyrant Phalaris, Perilaus was taken aback to find himself siezed and put inside. No fitter end could there be for the deviser of such a diabolical instrument, said Phalaris."
(http://www.angelfire.com/darkside/forgottendreams/Cookin.htm)
"There is hardly room to doubt that we have here a tradition of human sacrifice in connexion with the worship of the Phoenician Baal (Zeus Atabyrius) such as prevailed at Rhodes; when misfortune threatened Rhodes the brazen hulls in his temple bellowed. The Rhodians brought this worship to Gela, which they founded conjointly with the Cretans, and Gom Gela it passed to Agrigentum. Human sacrifices to Baal were common, and, though in Phoenicia proper there is no proof that the victims were burned alive, the Carthaginians had a brazen image of Baal, from whose downturned hands the children slid into a pit of fire; and the story that Minos had a brazen man who pressed people to his glowing breast points to similar rites in Crete, where the child-devouring Minotaur must certainly be connected with Baal and the favourite sacrifice to him of children.
The story of the bull cannot be dismissed as pure invention. Pindar (Pythia, i. 185), who lived less than a century afterwards, expressly associates this instrument of torture with the name of the tyrant. There was certainly a brazen bull at Agrigentum, which was carried off by the Carthaginians to Carthage, whence it was again taken by Scipio and restored to Agrigentum. In later times the tradition prevailed that Phalaris was a naturally humane man and a patron of philosophy and literature. He is so described in the declamations ascribed to Lucian, and in the letters which bear his own name. Plutarch, too, though he takes the unfavourable view, mentions that the Sicilians gave to the severity of Phalaris the name of justice and a hatred of crime. Phalaris may thus have been one of those men who combine justice and even humanity with religious fanaticism (SuIdas, s.v.; Diod. Sic. ix. 20, 30, xiii. 90, xxxii. 25; Polybius vii. 7, xii. 25; Cicero, Dc Officiis, 1. 7, iii. 6)".
(http://27.1911encyclopedia.org/P/PH/PHALLICISM.htm)
I'll definitely come back with more.
Here is a sketch:
This story was mentioned in Pindar, Lucian and Dante's Inferno.
"The inventor Perilaus constructed a life-size bronze sculpture of a bull with a rear entrance providing access to its belly. Here, hapless victims were enclosed while a fire lit beneath the creature's belly. By an elaborate system of pipes, cunningly contrived, the victim's screams issued from the bull's mouth in a form of a gentle lowing. Proudly presenting his invention to the Greek tyrant Phalaris, Perilaus was taken aback to find himself siezed and put inside. No fitter end could there be for the deviser of such a diabolical instrument, said Phalaris."
(http://www.angelfire.com/darkside/forgottendreams/Cookin.htm)
"There is hardly room to doubt that we have here a tradition of human sacrifice in connexion with the worship of the Phoenician Baal (Zeus Atabyrius) such as prevailed at Rhodes; when misfortune threatened Rhodes the brazen hulls in his temple bellowed. The Rhodians brought this worship to Gela, which they founded conjointly with the Cretans, and Gom Gela it passed to Agrigentum. Human sacrifices to Baal were common, and, though in Phoenicia proper there is no proof that the victims were burned alive, the Carthaginians had a brazen image of Baal, from whose downturned hands the children slid into a pit of fire; and the story that Minos had a brazen man who pressed people to his glowing breast points to similar rites in Crete, where the child-devouring Minotaur must certainly be connected with Baal and the favourite sacrifice to him of children.
The story of the bull cannot be dismissed as pure invention. Pindar (Pythia, i. 185), who lived less than a century afterwards, expressly associates this instrument of torture with the name of the tyrant. There was certainly a brazen bull at Agrigentum, which was carried off by the Carthaginians to Carthage, whence it was again taken by Scipio and restored to Agrigentum. In later times the tradition prevailed that Phalaris was a naturally humane man and a patron of philosophy and literature. He is so described in the declamations ascribed to Lucian, and in the letters which bear his own name. Plutarch, too, though he takes the unfavourable view, mentions that the Sicilians gave to the severity of Phalaris the name of justice and a hatred of crime. Phalaris may thus have been one of those men who combine justice and even humanity with religious fanaticism (SuIdas, s.v.; Diod. Sic. ix. 20, 30, xiii. 90, xxxii. 25; Polybius vii. 7, xii. 25; Cicero, Dc Officiis, 1. 7, iii. 6)".
(http://27.1911encyclopedia.org/P/PH/PHALLICISM.htm)
I'll definitely come back with more.
Here is a sketch: