Phalaris had succeeded in making himself master…

Phalaris had succeeded in making himself master of the whole of Sicily according to the Suda, a massive tenth century Byzantine encyclopedia of the ancient Mediterranean world, formerly attributed to an author called Suidas, Phalaris is renowned for his excessive cruelty.

Among his alleged atrocities is cannibalism: he is said to have eaten suckling babies.

He is represented in conflicting accounts either as a just and benevolent ruler or as a cruel tyrant who had his enemies roasted alive in a bronze bull.

In his brazen bull, invented, it is said, by Perillos of Athens, the tyrant's victims were shut up and, a fire being kindled beneath, were roasted alive while their shrieks represented the bellowing of the bull.

Pindar, who lived less than a century afterwards, expressly associates this instrument of torture with the name of the tyrant.

There was certainly a brazen bull at Agrigentum that was carried off by the Carthaginians to Carthage, when it was again taken by Scipio, a.k.a. Scipio the Elder, and restored to Agrigentum in about 200 BCE.

However, it is more likely that Scipio Aemilianus Africanus, a.k.a. Scipio the Younger, returned this bull and other stolen works of art to the original Sicilian cities, after his total destruction of Carthage circa 146 BCE, which ended the Third Punic War.

Phalaris is at last overthrown in a general uprising headed by Telemachus, the ancestor of Theron, who reigned as tyrant from about 488 BCE to 472 BCE), and burned alive in his brazen bull.