Phălăris

, a tyrant of Agrigentum, who made use of the most excruciating torments to punish his subjects on the smallest suspicion. Perillus made him a brazen bull, and when he had presented it to Phalaris, the tyrant ordered the inventor to be seized, and the first experiment to be made on his body. These cruelties did not long remain unrevenged; the people of Agrigentum revolted in the tenth year of his reign, and put him to death in the same manner as he had tortured Perillus and many of his subjects after him, B.C. 552. The brazen bull of Phalaris was carried by Amilcar to Carthage; but when that city was taken by Scipio, it was delivered again to the inhabitants of Agrigentum by the Romans. There are now some letters extant written by a certain Abaris to Phalaris, with their respective answers, but they are supposed by some to be spurious. The best edition is that of the learned Boyle, Oxford, 1718. Cicero , Against Verres , bk. 4 ; Letters to Atticus , bk. 7 , ltr. 12 ; De Officiis , bk. 2 .— Ovid , de Ars Am at or i a , bk. 1 , li. 663 .— Juvenal , satire 8, li. 81 .— Pliny , bk. 34 , ch. 8 .— Diodorus. ――A Trojan killed by Turnus. Virgil , Æneid , bk. 9 , li. 762 .