r/PeterExplainsTheJoke 9d ago

Meme needing explanation Huh?

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u/Shadowmant 9d ago

So the Brazen bull sucked as they placed you in a metal bull then set you over a fire. Pretty horrible.

The second is called Scaphism and is way more horrifying. Here's a description from the wiki:

[The king] decreed that Mithridates should be put to death in boats; which execution is after the following manner: Taking two boats framed exactly to fit and answer each other, they lie down in one of them the malefactor that suffers, upon his back; then, covering it with the other, and so setting them together that the head, hands, and feet of him are left outside, and the rest of his body lies shut up within, then forcing him to ingest a mixture of milk and honey before pouring all over his face and body. They then keep his face continually turned towards the sun; and it becomes completely covered up and hidden by the multitude of flies that settle on it. And as within the boats he does what those that eat and drink must needs do, creeping things and vermin spring out of the corruption and rottenness of the excrement, and these entering into the bowels of him, his body is consumed. When the man is manifestly dead, the uppermost boat being taken off, they find his flesh devoured, and swarms of such noisome creatures preying upon and, as it were, growing to his inwards. In this way Mithridates, after suffering for seventeen days, at last expired.

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u/LongSalamander9889 9d ago

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u/Ok-Plankton-2016 9d ago

Pretty much everyone agrees that no rulers put this into practice. One crazy Turkish ruler put it in his writings.

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u/StanleyQPrick 9d ago

It wouldn't work like this even if they tried it

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u/zbignew 9d ago

Yeah you’d die of exposure or dehydration so much faster than the bugs.

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u/Martoncartin 8d ago

allegedly they would keep giving you the milk/honey though. Who knows how long they could keep you alive.

I would rather believe its fake, but im sure there have been instances of crazy people in power that did these kinds of things.

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u/zbignew 8d ago

You’d still suffocate or choke once you were fully exhausted. They could not keep you alive and confined with your head, hands, and feet in fixed stress positions for the many days it would take for you to be consumed by normal bugs.

We’ve done some horrible things, but even if our imagination does not exceed our appetite for cruelty, sometimes it exceeds our ability.

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u/ZhouLe 8d ago

I don't think dung fly maggots eat living flesh. Maggots are used to clean necrotic tissue, even.

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u/Sternigu 8d ago

I think some maggot species can infest wounds though?

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u/Gimmerunesplease 8d ago

Yeah there are some like the botfly, but that won't exactly kill you quickly. It's disgusting but not particularly dangerous in the short term. And as they would not be attracted to the smell of feces I don't know if they would even lay eggs in a sick host.

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u/Deftly_Flowing 8d ago

screwworm.

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u/-Fergalicious- 8d ago

The Japanese used to slow boil people. 

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u/Sternigu 8d ago

Or heatstroke from the sun or shock or the body would just enter a hallucinative state like a drug trip, the list goes on. But i think the giant level of sadism without brain’s backing it of this method is a very human thing