between myth and history 185
The horror of the Brazen Bull has a familiar ring, sounding mythic echoes
from previous chapters. A hyperrealistic bull statue brings to mind the
artificial cow created by Daedalus for Queen Pasiphae (chapter 4). Like
Pasiphae’s fake heifer, Phalaris’s Brazen Bull was animated by the living
human encased inside. 12
Fig. 9.1. Phalaris, the tyrant of Agrigentum, Sicily, burns the clever craftsman Perilaus in his own
creation, the Brazen Bull. “Perillus condemned to the bronze bull by Phalaris,” sixteenth- century
woodcut by Pierre Woeiriot de Bouze. HIP / Art Resource, NY.