Hatching the Cobra

Primo Levi. The story, whether true or false, has a curiously modern flavor. For the purposes of a posthumous trial against the tyrant and the artisan, it would be essential to establish with which of the two the initiative and the idea for the horrendous machine originated. If the work was invented by Perillus, and proposed to Phalaris, there is no doubt that Perillus, already famous at the time, deserved to be punished (though not necessarily in that way, and not by Phalaris, who by accepting the object had become the inventor’s accomplice).