The brazen bull, bronze bull, or Sicilian bull, was a torture and execution device designed in ancient Greece. Its inventor, metal-worker Perillos of Athens, proposed it to Phalaris, the tyrant of Akragas, Sicily, as a new means of executing criminals. The bull was made entirely of bronze, hollow, with a door in one side. The condemned were locked in the bull, and a fire was set under it, heating the metal until the person inside roasted to death.
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Famous quotes containing the words brazen and/or bull:
“The sun came dazzling through the leaves,
And flamed upon the brazen greaves
Of bold Sir Lancelot.”
—Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892)
“I was a fire-breathing Catholic C.O.,
and made my manic statement,
telling off the state and president, and then
sat waiting sentence in the bull pen
beside a Negro boy with curlicues
of marijuana in his hair.”
—Robert Lowell (1917–1977)