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The brazen bull, also known as the bronze bull, Sicilian bull, Bellowing bull or bull of Phalaris, was a torture and execution device designed in ancient Greece. [1] According to Diodorus Siculus , recounting the story in Bibliotheca historica , Perilaus (Περίλαος) (or Perillus (Πέριλλος)) of Athens invented and proposed it to ...
The bull could hold a man and was used as an execution machine. The condemned person was placed inside, then the bull was closed and a fire lit underneath. The sculpture was made in such a way that, while the condemned met a horrible death in the burning furnace, their cries were said to sound like the bellowing of a bull.
Nabis would control the machine through hidden devices until the victim agreed to pay a tribute or to the point of death. The automaton, Apega, was one of the advances in technology of the ancient Greco-Roman world used as implements of torture, along with other torture devices such as the cross, the wheel, and the brazen bull of Phalaris. [2]
In Spain, the earliest records for executions for the crime of sodomy are from the 13th to 14th centuries, and it is noted there that the preferred mode of execution was death by burning. The Partidas of King Alfonso "El Sabio" condemned sodomites to be castrated and hung upside down to die from the bleeding, following the Old Testament phrase ...
Elagabalus was born in 203 or 204, [b] to Sextus Varius Marcellus and Julia Soaemias Bassiana, [17] who had probably married around the year 200 (and no later than 204). [18] [19] Elagabalus's full birth name was probably (Sextus) Varius Avitus Bassianus, [c] the last name being apparently a cognomen of the Emesene dynasty. [20]
The tail of the bull occasionally appears to end in an ear of wheat. The blood from the wound is also sometimes depicted as ears of wheat, or as a cluster of grapes. [13] Several cult images have the bull adorned with the Roman dorsuale, sometimes decorated with embroidery. This dorsal band or blanket placed on the back of the animal is an ...
Ottokar II (Czech: Přemysl Otakar II.; c. 1233, in Městec Králové, Bohemia – 26 August 1278, in Dürnkrut, Lower Austria), the Iron and Golden King, was a member of the Přemyslid dynasty who reigned as King of Bohemia from 1253 until his death in 1278.
Minotaur was fabled to be born of the Queen and a bull, bringing the king to build the labyrinth to hide his family's shame. Living in solitude made the boy wild and ferocious, unable to be tamed or beaten. Yet Walter Burkert's constant warning is, "It is hazardous to project Greek tradition directly into the Bronze Age."