ANCIENT PUNISHMENTS

Horrific prolonged capital punishments in ancient times.
According to legend the Celtic druids how old Roman Legionnaires captive in Wicker men's baskets, and then set them alight, as sacrifices to their gods. Although Cicero, Tacitus and Pliny the Elder commented on human sacrifice among the Celts, it is only Julius Caesar in his commentary of the Gaelic wars, who ascribes this particular practice to the druids. There is a possibility that the Wicker man baskets could have been Roman spin to fan fear and disdain among the Roman populace towards the vicious Celtic enemies and to justify the invasions of the Celtic lands. However, there may be truth to it as a much later comment is found in the 10th-century Commenta Bernensia, (or Bern scholia preserved in the Burgerbibliothek of Bern. This referred to a Lucan’s De Bello Civilis’s epic poem Pharsalia, describing the Celts burning people in a wooden effigy as sacrifice to Taranis, God of Thunder.
Diodorus Siculus, in his Bibliotheca Historica, tells of the Sicilian bull, a broken a brazen bull invented by Perillos of Athens for Phalaris, the tyrant of Akragas, Sicily. Prisoners were manhandled through an open latch on the side of a metal bowl and then a fire was made under it to slowly roast alive the victims trapped inside. Perillos told Phalaris that he designed an acoustic device implanted inside the bull that would convert the victims pitiful wails into the ‘melodious of bellowing’s’ of a bull, to escape, along with incense, through the open nose of the brazen bull. Phalaris tricked Perillos into a demonstration, locked him inside the bull and lit the fire. However, Phalaris freed Perillos before he died, but then he threw him over a cliff. Phalaris himself was tortured to death in his own brazen bull when he was conquered by Telemachus. Three Roman emperors used the brazen bowl to torture Christians. Hadrian roasted St. Eustace and his family in a brazen bull; Domitian roasted St. Antipas, Bishop of Pelagia in 92AD and in 287 AD Diocletian roasted Pelagia of Tarsus. Some say the brazen bull was also only propaganda in the Catholic Church discounts the roasting of Saint Eustace.