The Big Book of Pain: Torture & Punishment through History by Mark P Donnelly, Daniel Diehl Page B
Authors: Mark P Donnelly, Daniel Diehl
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the wheel could, and often did, lead to death, probably through asphyxiation, choking on one’s own vomit, cerebral haemorrhage or heart attack. Surprisingly, even such ‘enlightened’ Greek philosophers as Aristotle and Demosthenes were fully in favour of torture as a means of obtaining information. Aristotle wrote that he approved of such methods because they provided: ‘a sort of evidence that appears to carry with it absolute credibility’. Evidently he failed to consider the fact that almost anyone will confess to anything if subjected to enough pain. One wonders what Aristotle might have thought of that ingenious Greek device known as the ‘Brazen Bull’?
The Brazen Bull was supposedly invented by a man named Perillus in an attempt to curry favour with the dictator Phalaris of Agigentum. The device was no more than a hollow, life-sized bronze figure of a bull with a door in one side and holes at its nostrils and mouth. In application, a person convicted of a capital crime was stuffed into the bull, through the door in its side, and a blazing fire was then lit beneath the statue. As the bronze heated to red-hot, the victim’s screams echoed from its nostrils and mouth, much like the cries of a maddened bull. While he seems to have been delighted with the device itself, Phalaris had no time for fawning sycophants and promptly condemned Perillus, its inventor, to be its first victim. Evidently Phalaris’ subjects had no more time for their dictator than he had for Perillus. After enduring all they could of his tyrannies, in the year 563 BC, the mob stuffed the dictator himself into the Brazen Bull.
Classical Greece had no coherent political system. Rather, it was a collection of culturally diverse and geographically scattered city states; some of which, like Athens, were a bit more civilised than others (such as Agigentum over which Phalaris ruled). The more remote and less civilised of these city states seemed to invent impossibly creative tortures. According to Greek historian Lucian, on one occasion a young woman was sewn inside the carcass of a freshly slaughtered donkey with only her head remaining exposed. As the Mediterranean sun beat down on the victim, the carcass shrank and began to rot. In addition to the tortures of hunger, thirst and exposure, as the carcass decomposed it attracted worms and insects which attacked the flesh of the victim as well as the carcass of the animal. How long the victim survived is not related. Another similarly grim torture comes from the pen of Aristophanes. In this account, the condemned was locked in a pillory and smeared with milk and honey as an enticement to insects. If he managed to survive hunger, thirst, exposure and insect attacks for twenty days, he was released. That is to say, he was released in order to be hauled to a cliff and thrown to his death.
This is an example of a branding iron of the type which would have been used on Spartan males found guilty of being dedicated ‘bachelors’.
Among the more hardy and individualistic of the Ancient Greeks were the Spartans. Tough, bold and decidedly war-like, the Spartans had no time for the soft-living ways of people like the Athenians. If a Spartan man became overly fat, he was publicly whipped; if he remained unmarried for too long (and thereby suspected of preferring men to women) he was publicly branded with a hot iron. The Tyrant Nabis, who ruled Sparta from 205–194 BC, invented a very personal, and personally amusing, means of torturing those who annoyed him. It seems that Nabis commissioned an iron statue in the shape of his wife, Apega. This statue was built so its arms would open on hinges, the inner face of the arms and chest being set with numerous, long, sharp spikes. When Nabis personally questioned an accused malefactor and did not like the answers he got, he is said to have quipped: ‘If I have not talent enough to prevail upon you, perhaps my good wife Apega may persuade you’. One
The Brazen Bull was supposedly invented by a man named Perillus in an attempt to curry favour with the dictator Phalaris of Agigentum. The device was no more than a hollow, life-sized bronze figure of a bull with a door in one side and holes at its nostrils and mouth. In application, a person convicted of a capital crime was stuffed into the bull, through the door in its side, and a blazing fire was then lit beneath the statue. As the bronze heated to red-hot, the victim’s screams echoed from its nostrils and mouth, much like the cries of a maddened bull. While he seems to have been delighted with the device itself, Phalaris had no time for fawning sycophants and promptly condemned Perillus, its inventor, to be its first victim. Evidently Phalaris’ subjects had no more time for their dictator than he had for Perillus. After enduring all they could of his tyrannies, in the year 563 BC, the mob stuffed the dictator himself into the Brazen Bull.
Classical Greece had no coherent political system. Rather, it was a collection of culturally diverse and geographically scattered city states; some of which, like Athens, were a bit more civilised than others (such as Agigentum over which Phalaris ruled). The more remote and less civilised of these city states seemed to invent impossibly creative tortures. According to Greek historian Lucian, on one occasion a young woman was sewn inside the carcass of a freshly slaughtered donkey with only her head remaining exposed. As the Mediterranean sun beat down on the victim, the carcass shrank and began to rot. In addition to the tortures of hunger, thirst and exposure, as the carcass decomposed it attracted worms and insects which attacked the flesh of the victim as well as the carcass of the animal. How long the victim survived is not related. Another similarly grim torture comes from the pen of Aristophanes. In this account, the condemned was locked in a pillory and smeared with milk and honey as an enticement to insects. If he managed to survive hunger, thirst, exposure and insect attacks for twenty days, he was released. That is to say, he was released in order to be hauled to a cliff and thrown to his death.
This is an example of a branding iron of the type which would have been used on Spartan males found guilty of being dedicated ‘bachelors’.
Among the more hardy and individualistic of the Ancient Greeks were the Spartans. Tough, bold and decidedly war-like, the Spartans had no time for the soft-living ways of people like the Athenians. If a Spartan man became overly fat, he was publicly whipped; if he remained unmarried for too long (and thereby suspected of preferring men to women) he was publicly branded with a hot iron. The Tyrant Nabis, who ruled Sparta from 205–194 BC, invented a very personal, and personally amusing, means of torturing those who annoyed him. It seems that Nabis commissioned an iron statue in the shape of his wife, Apega. This statue was built so its arms would open on hinges, the inner face of the arms and chest being set with numerous, long, sharp spikes. When Nabis personally questioned an accused malefactor and did not like the answers he got, he is said to have quipped: ‘If I have not talent enough to prevail upon you, perhaps my good wife Apega may persuade you’. One
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