Kitap 1
11
‘So much for what I had to say to you in my own behalf: it is true and just and, I flatter myself, merits praise rather than hatred. As for my gift, it is time you heard where and how I got this bull. I did not order it of the sculptor myself—I hope I may never be so insane as to want such things!—but there was a man in our town called Perilaus, a good metal-worker but a bad man, Completely missing my point of view, this fellow thought to do me a favour by inventing a new punishment, imagining that I wanted to punish people in any and every way. So he made the bull and came to me with it, a very beautiful thing to look at and a very close copy of nature; motion and voice were all it needed to make it seem actually alive. At the sight of it I cried out at once: “The thing is good enough for Apollo; we must send the bull to the god!” But Perilaus at my elbow said: “What if you knew the trick of it and the purpose it serves?” . With that he opened the bull’s back and said: “If you wish to punish anyone, make him get into this contrivance and lock him up; then attach these flutes to the nose of the bull and have a fire lighted underneath. The man will groan and shriek in the grip of unremitting pain, and his voice will make you the sweetest possible music on the flutes, piping dolefully and lowing piteously; so that while he is punished you are entertained by having flutes played to you.”
