The Game of Chess

For it is impossible that a good man should ever be lost or die an unjust death; but one often clearly reads of the terrible deaths of the wicked. And concerning this, Orosius Paulus Orosius, a 5th-century historian and theologian. writes that a master caster’s craftsmanship was brought to King Phalaris original: "Aperillus." The text conflates the name of the tyrant Phalaris with the inventor of the device, Perillus of Athens., who was a tyrant and disregarded honor, and who imposed the most bitter deaths he could invent and devise. He made for the king an ox of bronze original: "glockschpeisen," literally "bell-metal," a bronze alloy used for casting bells., and on the side of the ox was a secret door original: "kaimleichs türl" so that no one should notice that a man entered the ox through that door. Then the door would be locked, and fire and glowing coals would be placed under the ox; and when the person inside cried out, his voice sounded so strange that one would not take it for a human voice, and thus no one would be moved to mercy.

And when he showed the work to the king, the king said to him: "Master, since you are the maker, you shall be the first to suffer the pain of your own evil intent and invention." And he thrust him into the ox and burned him within it, for he had deserved it; for no law is more just than that the architect of death should die by his own discovery. Thus the king spoke a second time: the king shall be just, for kingdoms without justice are but dens of murderers. original: "mordrunkchlich." This refers to Saint Augustine’s famous argument in The City of God (4.4): "Justice being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great robberies?" Now, Saint Augustine says regarding this in his book The City of God original: "von der gottes stat" that a pirate original: "rauber der meres" named Diomedes robbed with