THE SCENE: The problem with helping murderous sadists is that all of their hobbies rotate around murder and sadism… and they might just want you to play along.
THE TEXT: Dionysius records that when Perillus desired to become an artificer of Phalaris, a cruel and tyrannical king who was guilty of many dreadful excesses, [Perillus] presented to [Phalaris], already too well skilled in cruelty, a brazen bull, which he had just constructed. In one of its sides there was a secret door, by which those who were sentenced should enter and be burnt to death. The idea was that the sounds produced by the agony of the sufferer confined within should resemble the roaring of a bull; and thus, while nothing human struck the ear, the mind should be unimpressed by a feeling of mercy. The king highly applauded the invention, and said, “Friend, the value of thy industry is yet untried: more cruel even than the people account me, thou thyself shalt be the first victim.” Indeed, there is no law more equitable than that “the artificer of death should perish by his own devices,” as Ovid has observed.
– Gesta Romanorum, 13th Century AD
[Image Credit: Phalaris by Pierre Woeiriot]
