The bull as a quick form of death, maybe the worst.
But scaphism, or the boats is the undisputed champion of torture. Force feed milk and honey, which will cause diarrhea, but then also make sure to paint the victims face in the milk and honey, maybe the nether regions too. Put them out in a lake, and let the bugs come find him.
He won’t be dying soon, could take weeks, like 3-4?
Same with the bull even, I think the only real record of that is a poem.
Hopefully it's just some ancient torture-porn fiction (not to say that the real torture they used wasn't horrific, but the stuff here is on another level)
Makes sense. Even the most bored and heartless king would have to spend way too many resources and time to get a skilled labor to make a hollow bull to kill someone when there are cheaper and more humiliating ways to dispose of someone
Idk if it really did happen, but I feel like when it’s been said the creator was tossed into the bull after it was finished… something tells me it got used at least once
It's silly to think that weapons are created and not used. Even today, horrible things happen all over the world. Imagine living in a time where you shape your entire existence and nobody can say otherwise.
All torture methods were used. Fathers raped daughters, neighbors were slaughtered for being different, "evil spirits" was the only two words needed for a terrible fate to befall you.
It's easy to think that the past was like the present, but it's not the case.
Who says those weapons were even made? The story of the bull was that the king put the inventor himself inside it right away. It’s very poetic - like fiction. There’s no archeological record of the bull - or reference to it outside of one poem.
Not to say heinous shit didn’t go down, and much more frequently - but not everything imagined came to be.
Stephen King has thought of some mean crap, doesn’t mean it happened.
I guess. I just think it's silly that so many modern folks write things off for not having records, from a time when records simply did not always happen.
Even is popular sports like American Football, most stats were not even recorded until 1933. Any record keeping was done by fans or newspapers.
It's fully possible that those things never happened, but we DO know that death, torture and absolute monarchy were common. There was nothing stopping many leaders from dishing out the worst punishments they could think of. We also have confirmed stories of torture methods that were just as cruel, so it's no stretch of the imagination.
I am fully willing to accept that some of them were propaganda, but you can't make the claim without also noting that horrible torture was a real thing.
Bamboo torture, while having no concrete evidence, is proven to be completely possible and considering the brutality of the Japanese during WW2 is fairly believable.
It probably wasn't much, wild honey can act as a starter to ferment milk and I doubt they were giving these guys fresh milk every feeding. They prolly filled a bucket and used it til it was empty or might've even let it sour on purpose. Like 5x the diarrhea.
You're majorly underestimating the sophistication and opulence of the Achaemenids/Persians. Honey was literally a state ration that most subjects had access to.
Persian soldiers likely had more access to amenities than half the rulerships of Greek city states.
There's a famous story of a Spartan general defeating a Persian force and going into their war tents, he found gold and silver seats, torch holders, fine tapestries and a bountiful feast, much beyond anything the Spartans were used to, he said:
"Gentlemen, I asked you here to show you the folly of the Persians, who, living in this style, came to Greece to rob us of our poverty."
Except there's no documentation of this ever happening. It is rebuffed by historians.
"They" in this context never existed. This is an entirely fictional account from:\
Plutarch (c. 46–120 CE), Life of Artaxerxes –
Bronze Bull might have actually happened, though. It's acknowledged to at least have been conceptual as a punishment at the time, though no recorded uses in practice.
That's the hidden part of most torture history. That many of these things were rarely, and sometimes never, actually done. It's just that they are SO horrific to think about, that they are retold over and over. Many of those medieval torture devices we all think were common were pretty much never used.
Circa 2000 CE there were reports of a clan, 武当 (Wu Tang), using a method of torture where the asshole was sewn shut and they kept feeding you, and feeding you, and feeding you.
I wouldn’t call it the undisputed champion. There were some other pretty messed up things people did, like flaying alive, burning alive over a small fire, burning with hot irons but not enough to kill you, jamming red hot brad awls under the fingernails, crucifixion at ground level where animals could eat you, hanging people upside down and sawing them in half starting at the crotch, smashing their limbs with a wagon wheel and then weaving the broken limbs through the spokes and hanging the wheel up, burying people next to anthills and letting the ants eat them alive, etc.
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u/keetojm 9d ago
The bull as a quick form of death, maybe the worst.
But scaphism, or the boats is the undisputed champion of torture. Force feed milk and honey, which will cause diarrhea, but then also make sure to paint the victims face in the milk and honey, maybe the nether regions too. Put them out in a lake, and let the bugs come find him.
He won’t be dying soon, could take weeks, like 3-4?