August 31, 2024 • 33 mins
It's a grisly death familiar to many fans of fiction and fantasy -- a hapless, greedy villain meets their end by having molten metal, often lead or gold, poured upon them or down their throats. But was this morbid means of execution ever used in real life? Join the guys as they dive into the deadly science of real-life murder by molten gold in this week's Classic episode.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as
always so much for tuning in. I am Ben Bullen
on the road yet, joined as always with our super
producer mister Max Williams r. Palellin Ol Brown is on
some adventures. But all three of us are very happy
to report we have not died due to molten gold.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
So two quick things. First and foremost, this episode came
out originally on April twelfth, twenty eighteen. That was my birthday.
I'm not going to say how old I turn on
that date, but it was my birthday, April twelfth, April
twelf It's my birthday. It's also the same day as
Civil War started and FDR died.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Which are three ostensibly unrelated events exactly.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
But the other thing I was going to say is,
as the writer of the Ridiculous Royal Deaths series, I
have come across as death multiple times. Yeah, it's agreed
and I and every time I saw it, I'm like,
I'm not going to write about that.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
That is too grizzly for a family show.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Yeah, we did a whole episod about it before.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
And I see that now that y'all are way more
of a cop than I am well.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
I did kind of conscript you, and thanks for sticking
with us. But yes, it is a grizzly death. It
is an unclean death. It's one that is so notorious
it became. It became fertile soil for all sorts of
fiction and fantasy. If you're a fan of a Song
(01:25):
of Ice and Fire series by George R. R. Martin,
or the much less cool television adaptation thereof, than you
are certainly aware of one of the most harrowing scenes
wherein someone meets their end by having a molten metal
of some sort poured upon them or inside them. Lead
(01:50):
or true story sometimes gold. Ridiculous History is a production
of iHeartRadio, Fair Warning, Friends and Neighbors, Strangers, Fellow History
(02:28):
buffs alike. Today's episode is grizzly. Let's set the tone
with a quotation. With my own eyes, I saw Spaniards
cut off the nose and ears of Indians, male and female,
without provocation, merely because it pleased them to do it. Likewise,
I saw how they summoned the chief rulers to come,
(02:49):
assuring them safety, and when they peacefully came, they were
taken captive and burned. That is a quote from Bartolommey
de las Casas, who was officially appointed to Protector of
the Indians during the sixteenth century. High I'm Ben Ben shocking,
well it is. It is definitely graphic, and we are
(03:11):
talking about something graphic today. Right, But first, who are you?
Speaker 3 (03:14):
I don't want to say, you don't want to say,
all right, well, I can't participate in this, all right,
all right, I'm NOL and we are talking about grizzly
things today. We are talking about come up, and I
guess sure poetically yeah, poetically right, And we're talking about
death by molten gold.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Yes, yes. And the reason that NOL super producer Casey
Pegram and I are bringing up this quotation by de
las Casas is because this is one of the few
Spanish colonists of the time who stood up against the
(03:52):
rank abuse, the systemic plundering of the native lands in
Central in South America and in the Caribbean. And my
co host here is absolutely correct. We are talking about
molten gold, specifically molten gold in fifteen ninety nine. Now,
(04:17):
for fans of a lot of you know, very graphic
works of fiction, this this seems like something an author
would make up out of whole cloth just to be spooky.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
Yeah, it's true. You know, I know you're talking about
Game of Thrones and George R. R. Martin, and you
may or may not know if you're a fan, that
he did tend to pull some of the more graphic
depictions of death and execution in the Game of Thrones
books or the Song of Fire and Ice books from
history that includes things like the Red Wedding. Don't google
(04:51):
that if you don't know what I'm talking about. Sure,
it's a massive spoiler. Just let it go. Just let
it go. It'll come around then it will upset you.
And death I'm molten Gold, which was the poetic end
to a character. Can I do a quick spoiler? Can
I do a countdown? Uh?
Speaker 1 (05:07):
Yeah, I'll count you down then you go right Credick
three two one spoilers.
Speaker 3 (05:12):
So Denari's Targarian, who is you know, the Mother of
Dragons and all that. In the first season of Game
of Thrones, her brother the series is is a is
a real brat, He's a real pill and he feels
very entitled to a crown. He wants to rule the
Seven Kingdoms with a golden crown and in order to
(05:32):
do that, they employ, you know, the the help of
this barbarian horde, the Dothraki, and he basically pours his
sister out to this cal Drogo is the head of
the doth Raki, and as it turns out, they they
actually hit it off quite well, despite his evil intentions
and you know, treating his sister like chattel and he
(05:56):
kind of really gets cut down to size and has
no power, and she kind of really starts to uh
rise above him in terms of her influence over cal
Drogo and the dath racy. And ultimately, when he brings
a sword and threatens her unborn child by cal Drogo
in the presence of all of his uh what do
(06:17):
you call them, his blood riders, right, yea, his crew,
he demands this, this golden crown. He says he's been
waiting too long and he needs it now. And he's
got this sword. He's holding it to Denari's belly and
cal Drogo kind of chills for a second. He's like,
all right, I got you. We'll do this. We'll get
(06:38):
you your golden crown. And then they break his arm,
hold him down, and he pours a cauldron of molten
gold over his head and he dies diest right, and
it's it gets it gets a great scene. It's it's
very well done. When he kind of falls, he makes
this amazing kind of clunk sound and then there's steam
(06:59):
rising from the head which will be important later, very important. So, uh,
maybe maybe we should do a time code for spoiler.
I don't know, is it okay? Uh?
Speaker 1 (07:07):
Noel, I think that's I think that's completely fine as
a spoiler. We did count down and I like your
blow by blow description because it is going to come
and play later in a big way. Also, boy is
George R. R. Martin and also the producers of Game
of Thrones, that whole team is just great at making
people severely unlikable.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
Oh big time because by the.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
Time that guy finally gets his come up and everybody
is just praying that he will sally. He had the
worst catchphrase, which was wake the Dragon, to wake the dragon,
Wake the Dragon. And it was very very weird about it.
Speaker 3 (07:45):
Yes, and also super rape to his sister and just anyway.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Insolent, arrogant.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
But the but the point here is that this kind
of thing, as we said, actually happened. I not on
the MTV show irl in actual real life.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
Yeah, and you know the quote you read at the
top of the show is more about the atrocities perpetrated
by the Spanish conquerors. Yes, but what we're seeing here
is sort of that turnabout's fair play kind of situation,
because the Spanish were so brutal and ruthless with conquering
these native peoples, for example, the Javarro tribe of Lagrono,
(08:28):
and in fifteen ninety nine they had had enough.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
Yes, let's I'm glad you bring up the quote because
let's let's paint the context here. Let's paint the background
in which this fifteen ninety nine event occurs. The Spanish were,
I believe the technical term is utter bastards. During the
colonization period, they implemented something called the encomienda system, which
(08:54):
was the idea was that groups of indigenous people would
be placed under Spanish oversight to foster quote, cultural assimilation
and ultimately to convert them to Christianity. But what this
actually led to was legally sanctioned atrocities by the Spanish government,
exploiting natural resources, forcing people to work in minds for gold,
(09:18):
forcing people to labor until they die. I mean forget
a coffee break, sure, and very few people, relatively from
the Spanish side of this event, very few people spoke
out against the injustice. De las Casas was one of
the only people who did.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
What's the political climate here, Ben, Is this sort of
the conquistador era? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (09:42):
Yeah, the Spanish conquest of the Americans. And you know,
just from disease alone, up to eight million people died
Indigenous people just from contacting these diseases. And one of
the brutal things that would happen here that's very important
for our story, is that these Spanish governing systems would
(10:02):
also just tax the pants off people and this, and
then they'd sell them pants, and then they'd sell them pants. Yes,
there was a system in play. So the Varro tribe
they eventually, as as you said, Nol, they have had enough.
And the straw on the camel of colonialism's back here,
(10:26):
the golden straw on the camel of colonialism's back. Here
is the moment when the tribe finds out that not
only are they submitting to this ridiculous, egregious tax, but
that the governor of the town has been cheating them,
so adding insult to injury, it was already a rapacious tax.
(10:48):
It was already terrible. Yes, and they attack the Longrono settlements.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
They did. They massacred up to twenty five thousand.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
Just regular killing, though regular killing.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
But that wasn't enough for the governor who was responsible
for this egregious behavior. They held him down and giving
him a taste of his own medicine, a lot more
than a taste, yeah, a heroic dose, shall we say,
of his own medicine, that medicine being greed. God, I
(11:25):
love this poetic justice. Here. They poured molten gold down
his throat.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
And then they burned the town to the ground to ash. Yes,
and this sounds crazy, right. We do know that, according
to the article and Journal of Clinical Pathology, molten gold
was poured down his throat until his bowels burst. That
is the title of this paper.
Speaker 3 (11:47):
Yes, really leaving nothing to the imagination there, Yeah, by FRW.
Van de Goot and team.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
We do know that the pouring of hot liquids or
metals like letter gold had been before. This was not
the first time someone came up with it, but the
given the value of gold, typically if you saw Roman
torture and executions this way, it would be a metal
like leg.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
It's true, and you can even see today this is
a much less grizzly version of this, but it will
show you how how much damage a hot liquid like
this can do, a hot molten metal like this can do.
There's all these YouTube videos where people pour molten metal
on like watermelons, or there's even one way they pour
it on an ant hill and you just see insane
(12:33):
amounts of steam coming up and it hardens like instantly.
Then you can like open the watermelon and look inside
and it filled all the crevices and it's created the
shape of all of the open space and an hills
look really cool, and it hills look super cool. It's
like some sort of thing you'd see in the Guggenheim,
Like it's a really fascinating sculptural kind of vibe.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
Or mri of a brain or some kind of nervous system. Yeah, yeah,
that's this is a great point. You can see it
in the metal does cool very quickly. In fact, scientist
who used lead for a test found that the lead
solidified within ten seconds. So this means, you know, think
(13:14):
about think about the span of time we're talking and
this this stuff pouring down solidifying in ten seconds. It's
not going to go through the entirety of the body.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
No, let's set up the situation here though you mentioned
this paper, molten gold was poured down his throat until
his bellls bursts. That is again the title FRW. Vandergrut
and R. L. Ten Berg. This is what they did.
They procured a cow's larynx from a slaughterhouse, and they
(13:45):
make it very clear here in the paper that no
animal was harmed or killed specifically for this purpose. You
could probably get a cow's larynx from your local butcher. Sure. Yeah,
they got to have them laying around somewhere. It's not
something you see in the case. Necessarily, you can at
least get them to order. You can make it. Yeah,
you can make a special request if you'd like to
do this at home exactly. Yeah, maybe, you know, make
sure there's an adult present kids when you do this.
(14:13):
So they fixed the larynx in a horizontal position to
a piece of wood, and then they closed the bottom
end using tissue paper, which I guess is a pretty
good stand in for the type of membrane that would
be you know, present if this were connected to a
a you know, the rest of a body. And then
they poured seven hundred and fifty grams of pure lead,
(14:35):
which was at around four hundred and fifty degrees celsius.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
Four hundred and fifty degrees celsius is eight hundred and
forty two degrees Fahrenheits, so nothing to sneeze at.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
No, definitely not. And what happened was immediately huge amounts
of steam began to burst out of both ends of
this larynix. And of course that piece of tissue paper
was no match for this kind of pressure and steam,
and it shot out with force, they said. And then
within ten seconds Ben, as you mentioned, everything had congealed
(15:05):
and the lead completely filled the larynx and hardened, creating
a shape the perfect cross section of the larynx once
it had cooled.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
But there's something fascinating here because after everything had cooled,
they examine the larynx, They take cross sections and look
at them under a light microscope. They find that the
throat mucus layer being completely burned off and the muscle
was cooked or damaged to the depth of only about
one centimeter, which is fascinating because you know, initially some
(15:39):
of us are probably thinking, well, a hot molten metal
is going to shoot straight down your throat, burning everything
in its path, and you know, fall out of your
Australia for lack of a better phrase. Yeah, But, as
Rachel Newer writes an article for Smithsonian called Here's what
actually happens during execution by molten gold, it's not the
(16:02):
metal that kills you.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
No, it's the pressure and the steam, the absolute ferocity
of you know, think about like when you even if
you have a pan, right, a hot pan, and you
put it under cold water in the sink. If it's
hot enough, that thing produces all kinds of steam. That's very,
very hot. Can you imagine molten liquid being poured on
(16:27):
your flesh? H Absolutely, and the difference of temperature would
cause that insane amount of pressure and steam and rupture
your gutty parts.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
I mean on the outside of your body alone, that's
unimaginably painful. But then on your inerts, on your insides.
This gets to a point where the victim is probably thinking,
just let me die. And we know, you know, we
mentioned rom right, and we mentioned the use of molten lead.
The practice of pouring some sort of molten metal down
(16:58):
a person's throat was also used by the Spanish during
the Inquisition.
Speaker 3 (17:05):
Yep, so again taste of their own medicine and more
ways than one.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
And I have to ask, this is something where we
insert our own opinions.
Speaker 3 (17:14):
Are you cool with that? Sure? Man?
Speaker 1 (17:15):
I want to hear some I want to hear your
take on this. Do you think the tribe was justified
in this massacre or this sort of that's a big question.
Do you think the tribe is justified in murdering this
governor this way?
Speaker 3 (17:35):
I don't know, man, I mean, they had been just
dicked around so much that I think they probably had
had enough and they wanted to make an example out
of him. You know, it was brutal times, and they
had been treated with brutality, and you know, I mean,
these tribal people had a history of brutality in and
(17:57):
of themselves. So it's certainly not something they invented out
of whole cloth because they were pushed too far.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
Right, Yeah, these violent delights have violent ends, right, and
delight obviously is not the right word for this. But
we're by no means saying that anyone involved in this
had some sort of inborn predisposition towards these acts. Of violence.
What we are saying is that when people are forced
(18:26):
into a situation wherein brutality becomes a vocabulary, right, wherein
we communicate through these acts of violence, then this escalation occurs.
You know, you can check out various podcasts we and
our cohort have done on torture devices, right, and one
(18:49):
thing you'll find is that torture goes across all civilizations
and all cultures. But in this case they go out
on a limiaral and say, I think he had it
coming to him.
Speaker 3 (19:02):
Yeah, I think so too.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
I think he earned this. I think he earned this torture.
Of course, we can't condone the masker of twenty five
thousand people, not all of whom would be fundamentally involved
in these gross acts of injustice.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
Well, the way it's written in everything that I saw
was that they were fighting back against being overtaxed. But
they had been colonized in the first place, and you know,
essentially forced to work for nothing and had their natural
resources totally commodified by an invading people. Right, So you know,
it wasn't the best arrangement in the first place. This
(19:41):
isn't even like a rebellion, This is a revolt. This
is like a slave revolt.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
Yeah, absolutely, because these people were considered inhuman and the
Spanish government was saying, well, we can do whatever we
want because ultimately we're bringing them to out, we're converting
them to our religion for our means are justified. Sure,
and you know this is a fascinating, terrible thing that
(20:08):
we see so often in colonial history. Also, the Spanish
were singularly obsessed with gold myopically, so sure.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
Yeah. And you know, speaking of being myopically obsessed with wealth,
have you heard of Crassus, the Roman figure of great opulence?
Speaker 1 (20:30):
Yes, yes I have, And this is a great time
to bring up Marcus Licinius Crassus born one fifteen BCE.
He was a Roman politician, right, even taught some other
Romans a few things.
Speaker 3 (20:46):
Oh big time. He was only a politician. He was
considered one of the wealthiest men in republican Rome.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
And he got there by corrupt means.
Speaker 3 (20:56):
Corrupt means there was a lot of invasion of other
cultures as well, as we know all roads lead to Rome,
because they just kind of took everything at the end
of those roads. Right, So he was hugely responsible, had
a very successful military career where he would you know,
he essentially gained control over most of Italy in his
(21:20):
struggle against the forces of Gaius Marius and Cornelius Senna,
and his father was part of that, and he actually
committed suicide. And then Crassus took off and fled to Spain,
and he ended up siding with the opposing force in
that conflict, a leader named Sola against Marius, and he
(21:43):
was able to reap the benefits of that through a
practice called prescription, which is where you take the spoils
of war from your defeated foes. You essentially commodify their property,
their slaves, their land, and they become your personal wealth.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
It's important to mention the slavery aspect there, because again
slaves at the time were considered property, not people. This
is like for modern analogue. This is similar to civil forfeiture.
Civil forfeiture is the practice in the US whereby law
(22:24):
enforcement can confiscate property if a crime is suspected, and
it changes a little bit state to state, but this
is on a much higher level. This is, as Noel said,
spoils of war, and all you have to do is
declare someone an enemy of the state. But why are
we bringing up crosses here?
Speaker 3 (22:46):
He is rumored to have met a delightfully violent end
as well, at the hands of another group that he
was attempting to conquer, and that group was known as
the Parthians. And what were they about then?
Speaker 1 (23:02):
Yeah, the Parthian Empire was a major socio political power
located in modern day Iran and Iraq. So it's just
across the Euphrates, and Crasis says, you know, he has
Syria as his province, and he said, that's not enough.
(23:23):
I want more. I want the riches of Parthia. So
he crosses the river and he wants to prove that
he also is a military force to be reckoned with.
There's some internal competition in the empire big.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
Time, and that specifically was he. He was one of
the responsible parties for starting the triumvirate between himself, Julius
Caesar and ultimately his greatest nemesis, POMPEII, Pompey the Great,
Pompey the Great exactly. And in fact, he had such
a beef with Pompeii that when people would use this
(24:03):
nickname Pompey the Great, he would respond, how big is he?
Speaker 1 (24:09):
He's just such a bill man, and his plan to
his plan to attack Parthia just doesn't work out because
they have a different type of attack strategy.
Speaker 3 (24:24):
Oh for sure, it's a different terrain than he's used
to operating on. That's a very sandy terrain, and it's
a pretty poorly formed plan. But before we get into
that and finish that, I just wanted to mention some
of his bona fides and some of what led to
his beef with POMPEII. He was responsible for quashing the
Spartacus slave rebellion, right you you've all seen the movie
(24:47):
I Am Spartacus and all of that. Between seventy thousand
to one hundred and twenty thousand slaves who basically formed
an army who had created a huge kerfuffle in the
Roman Empire, and it was his job, Crasus's job to
deal with this, right, and he ultimately did after his
(25:07):
legion under the leadership of a lieutenant by the name
of Mummius, failed miserably when Mummy has disregarded Crasus's orders.
Crisus was also ruthless because he instituted this punishment for
this disobedience called decimation, where in one in ten soldiers
in this five hundred man part of the army were
(25:27):
killed by their cohorts in full view of their colleagues.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
We have to interject now, or I have to interject
at least now in this story to say, Rome is
the origin of the word decimate. When you hear someone
described something as decimated, they should not be saying that
if they mean destroyed, annihilated.
Speaker 3 (25:52):
And doesn't it seem like shooting yourself in the foot too,
You're literally like getting rid of your precious troops.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
He also born wealthy too. It's not as if he
earned his way up by his bootstrap. No.
Speaker 3 (26:05):
And this was a time too where just being wealthy
you could like buy your own army. That you know,
it wasn't necessarily like a standing government army. A rich
man could come forth and pay enough money to have
his own army. So what happened next, Well, he, you know,
he ultimately, after this severe punishment, he did come through
(26:28):
and defeat that slave uprising at Lushania, where he cornered
Spartacus and his forces. It ultimately resulted in him crucifying
six thousand of the survivors on the Apian Way, which
was a road where it would be lined with crucified
corpse corpses, Yeah, exactly. But the beef with Pompeii came
(26:49):
from the fact that after Crassius had done the bulk
of the work, Pompey's force kind of swept in and
like just sort of picked off the last remaining straggler
of Spartacus's army and then got back home before Crassus
and was able to kind of reap the glory, the
credit of the credit of that, And that was a
(27:09):
thing that sort of haunted him and happened a couple
more times. But let's get back to the undoing of
Crassus and how he ultimately met his poetic end, ah,
his alleged end as well.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
So he's got a real chip on his shoulder, a
real badger in his bag about this. Let's call it
an inferiority complex. Even he is in intense internal competition
with the other members of the Triumvirate, and this victory
over Parthia, if he can swing it, is going to
(27:41):
make him just as respected in his mind.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
Maybe he can be.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
Called Crassus the Competent or something like that.
Speaker 3 (27:50):
Oh, come on, he wanted more than that, sure, Grassis
the badasses. There we go. There we go, or.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
Crassis the cosmically cool something like that. Oh wait, no,
I got it, Crassis the celebrated something like that. Sure
he wanted credit the revered, and he had, as I
think it established before, he had greater numbers in terms
of just individuals fighting for him. However, the Parthians had
superior strategy. They had a shoot and run cavalry and
(28:24):
arrow attack. This was their combo move. They were very
good at it.
Speaker 3 (28:28):
They would get.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
Within shooting range, they would rain arrows down on the troops,
then they would fall back, and then they would charge
fourth and do it again. But here's the problem. They
were able to shoot as well backwards as they could forwards.
So if you just have waves of this going back
and forth, what's a Crassis to do?
Speaker 3 (28:49):
This actually reminds me of going back to Game of Thrones.
That is sort of like a situation where the doth
Raki were mounted and they were archers, and they were
masters of their terrain, which was sort of they called
it the grass Sea. It's this big, very flat area
and the folks that they were fighting against would often
not be prepared to meet them in open combat. Again,
(29:11):
taking historical context, I think mister Martin is pretty pretty
good at weaving that stuff into his work.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
So the forces that Crass's controls.
Speaker 3 (29:20):
Don't like them.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
They're near mutiny, and so they demand that he hold
parley with the Parthians, in other words, that he negotiate
a peaceful end to this, because obviously he's kind of
a jerk.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
For a boss, and they're getting shredded, right.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
And his son dies in the same battle, so he agrees.
He finally says, all right, I'll meet them, and everything
goes pear shape. He is riding a horse to negotiate
for peace, and he's got, you know, his entourage, He's
got his sidekick, Octavius. Octavius suspects that there's a trap.
He grabs Crasus his horse. This instigates again. There's a
(29:58):
very tense climate, a sudden fight with the Parthians, and
later you will hear from a historian named Cassius Dio
that he was killed made a mockery of by pouring
metal molten gold again down his throat, and that this
was poetic come uppance due to his lifelong greed thirst
(30:23):
for riches and powers.
Speaker 3 (30:25):
Seems like editorializing to me, doesn't it.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
It is because it can be traced to that one historian,
but now currently that's the source. There's no nobody found
a body filled with molten gold.
Speaker 3 (30:39):
It was also thought that perhaps he was killed and
then had the molten gold pour down his throat, sort
of adding insult to injury as some sort of symbolic gesture.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
Right like that pope who dug the other pope up
and held a trial for him, which we should totally
do an episode on.
Speaker 3 (30:55):
But you know, at the end of the day, it's
a good story. Not one hundred percent sure it happened
that way, but it is an example of somebody meeting
their own demise because they just couldn't have enough and
they felt overshadowed by somebody and they needed to you know,
ambiggen themselves. Right.
Speaker 1 (31:13):
Yes, to literally a fatal degree. However, we can say,
thankfully that death by ingestion and molten metal is not
a leading cause of fatalities nowadays, in twenty eighteen, as
we record it, at least the years so far.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
However, I'd like to.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
Hear from you, friends and neighbors, what are some of
the strangest or maybe most apropos deaths that you've read about.
Speaker 3 (31:38):
Yew whether in fiction, whether in literature, whatever you've got,
send it to us at ridiculous at HowStuffWorks dot com,
or you can shoot it to us on Facebook or Twitter,
where we are Ridiculous History. We also have a pretty
cool Facebook group where we're kind of mining it for
topic ideas and pretty active and fun group over at
the Ridiculous Historians. You can join up there and if
(31:59):
you like a note, if you want to be a moderator.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
Yes, And while you're there, go ahead and find some
of the threads that are still active. One that we
both enjoyed was the one about hot people from.
Speaker 3 (32:12):
History, and I chose the original.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
Michelin, man I think you went with Abraham Lincoln.
Speaker 3 (32:17):
I did, but man I had no idea. That's yours
where I thought there were some sort of weird sausage
monsters from like a Twilight Zone episode, very crazy looking,
you guys to check it out.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
Michelin has a crazy history too. We should probably cover
the story of how a tire company fostered one of
the most prestigious rating systems in the world of restaurants,
but that is a tale for another day. Do check
us out online and stay tuned. For our next episode,
when we examined the disappearance of a waterfall, and.
Speaker 3 (32:47):
In the meantime, we'd like to thank our composer Alex Williams,
super producer Casey Pegram, and you for joining us for
another episode of Ridiculous History. We will see you next.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
Time, assuming we don't.
Speaker 3 (32:58):
I have malten Go, I want to talk about him.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as
always so much for tuning in. I am Ben Bullen
on the road yet, joined as always with our super
producer mister Max Williams r. Palellin Ol Brown is on
some adventures. But all three of us are very happy
to report we have not died due to molten gold.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
So two quick things. First and foremost, this episode came
out originally on April twelfth, twenty eighteen. That was my birthday.
I'm not going to say how old I turn on
that date, but it was my birthday, April twelfth, April
twelf It's my birthday. It's also the same day as
Civil War started and FDR died.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Which are three ostensibly unrelated events exactly.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
But the other thing I was going to say is,
as the writer of the Ridiculous Royal Deaths series, I
have come across as death multiple times. Yeah, it's agreed
and I and every time I saw it, I'm like,
I'm not going to write about that.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
That is too grizzly for a family show.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Yeah, we did a whole episod about it before.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
And I see that now that y'all are way more
of a cop than I am well.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
I did kind of conscript you, and thanks for sticking
with us. But yes, it is a grizzly death. It
is an unclean death. It's one that is so notorious
it became. It became fertile soil for all sorts of
fiction and fantasy. If you're a fan of a Song
(01:25):
of Ice and Fire series by George R. R. Martin,
or the much less cool television adaptation thereof, than you
are certainly aware of one of the most harrowing scenes
wherein someone meets their end by having a molten metal
of some sort poured upon them or inside them. Lead
(01:50):
or true story sometimes gold. Ridiculous History is a production
of iHeartRadio, Fair Warning, Friends and Neighbors, Strangers, Fellow History
(02:28):
buffs alike. Today's episode is grizzly. Let's set the tone
with a quotation. With my own eyes, I saw Spaniards
cut off the nose and ears of Indians, male and female,
without provocation, merely because it pleased them to do it. Likewise,
I saw how they summoned the chief rulers to come,
(02:49):
assuring them safety, and when they peacefully came, they were
taken captive and burned. That is a quote from Bartolommey
de las Casas, who was officially appointed to Protector of
the Indians during the sixteenth century. High I'm Ben Ben shocking,
well it is. It is definitely graphic, and we are
(03:11):
talking about something graphic today. Right, But first, who are you?
Speaker 3 (03:14):
I don't want to say, you don't want to say,
all right, well, I can't participate in this, all right,
all right, I'm NOL and we are talking about grizzly
things today. We are talking about come up, and I
guess sure poetically yeah, poetically right, And we're talking about
death by molten gold.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Yes, yes. And the reason that NOL super producer Casey
Pegram and I are bringing up this quotation by de
las Casas is because this is one of the few
Spanish colonists of the time who stood up against the
(03:52):
rank abuse, the systemic plundering of the native lands in
Central in South America and in the Caribbean. And my
co host here is absolutely correct. We are talking about
molten gold, specifically molten gold in fifteen ninety nine. Now,
(04:17):
for fans of a lot of you know, very graphic
works of fiction, this this seems like something an author
would make up out of whole cloth just to be spooky.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
Yeah, it's true. You know, I know you're talking about
Game of Thrones and George R. R. Martin, and you
may or may not know if you're a fan, that
he did tend to pull some of the more graphic
depictions of death and execution in the Game of Thrones
books or the Song of Fire and Ice books from
history that includes things like the Red Wedding. Don't google
(04:51):
that if you don't know what I'm talking about. Sure,
it's a massive spoiler. Just let it go. Just let
it go. It'll come around then it will upset you.
And death I'm molten Gold, which was the poetic end
to a character. Can I do a quick spoiler? Can
I do a countdown? Uh?
Speaker 1 (05:07):
Yeah, I'll count you down then you go right Credick
three two one spoilers.
Speaker 3 (05:12):
So Denari's Targarian, who is you know, the Mother of
Dragons and all that. In the first season of Game
of Thrones, her brother the series is is a is
a real brat, He's a real pill and he feels
very entitled to a crown. He wants to rule the
Seven Kingdoms with a golden crown and in order to
(05:32):
do that, they employ, you know, the the help of
this barbarian horde, the Dothraki, and he basically pours his
sister out to this cal Drogo is the head of
the doth Raki, and as it turns out, they they
actually hit it off quite well, despite his evil intentions
and you know, treating his sister like chattel and he
(05:56):
kind of really gets cut down to size and has
no power, and she kind of really starts to uh
rise above him in terms of her influence over cal
Drogo and the dath racy. And ultimately, when he brings
a sword and threatens her unborn child by cal Drogo
in the presence of all of his uh what do
(06:17):
you call them, his blood riders, right, yea, his crew,
he demands this, this golden crown. He says he's been
waiting too long and he needs it now. And he's
got this sword. He's holding it to Denari's belly and
cal Drogo kind of chills for a second. He's like,
all right, I got you. We'll do this. We'll get
(06:38):
you your golden crown. And then they break his arm,
hold him down, and he pours a cauldron of molten
gold over his head and he dies diest right, and
it's it gets it gets a great scene. It's it's
very well done. When he kind of falls, he makes
this amazing kind of clunk sound and then there's steam
(06:59):
rising from the head which will be important later, very important. So, uh,
maybe maybe we should do a time code for spoiler.
I don't know, is it okay? Uh?
Speaker 1 (07:07):
Noel, I think that's I think that's completely fine as
a spoiler. We did count down and I like your
blow by blow description because it is going to come
and play later in a big way. Also, boy is
George R. R. Martin and also the producers of Game
of Thrones, that whole team is just great at making
people severely unlikable.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
Oh big time because by the.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
Time that guy finally gets his come up and everybody
is just praying that he will sally. He had the
worst catchphrase, which was wake the Dragon, to wake the dragon,
Wake the Dragon. And it was very very weird about it.
Speaker 3 (07:45):
Yes, and also super rape to his sister and just anyway.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Insolent, arrogant.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
But the but the point here is that this kind
of thing, as we said, actually happened. I not on
the MTV show irl in actual real life.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
Yeah, and you know the quote you read at the
top of the show is more about the atrocities perpetrated
by the Spanish conquerors. Yes, but what we're seeing here
is sort of that turnabout's fair play kind of situation,
because the Spanish were so brutal and ruthless with conquering
these native peoples, for example, the Javarro tribe of Lagrono,
(08:28):
and in fifteen ninety nine they had had enough.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
Yes, let's I'm glad you bring up the quote because
let's let's paint the context here. Let's paint the background
in which this fifteen ninety nine event occurs. The Spanish were,
I believe the technical term is utter bastards. During the
colonization period, they implemented something called the encomienda system, which
(08:54):
was the idea was that groups of indigenous people would
be placed under Spanish oversight to foster quote, cultural assimilation
and ultimately to convert them to Christianity. But what this
actually led to was legally sanctioned atrocities by the Spanish government,
exploiting natural resources, forcing people to work in minds for gold,
(09:18):
forcing people to labor until they die. I mean forget
a coffee break, sure, and very few people, relatively from
the Spanish side of this event, very few people spoke
out against the injustice. De las Casas was one of
the only people who did.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
What's the political climate here, Ben, Is this sort of
the conquistador era? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (09:42):
Yeah, the Spanish conquest of the Americans. And you know,
just from disease alone, up to eight million people died
Indigenous people just from contacting these diseases. And one of
the brutal things that would happen here that's very important
for our story, is that these Spanish governing systems would
(10:02):
also just tax the pants off people and this, and
then they'd sell them pants, and then they'd sell them pants. Yes,
there was a system in play. So the Varro tribe
they eventually, as as you said, Nol, they have had enough.
And the straw on the camel of colonialism's back here,
(10:26):
the golden straw on the camel of colonialism's back. Here
is the moment when the tribe finds out that not
only are they submitting to this ridiculous, egregious tax, but
that the governor of the town has been cheating them,
so adding insult to injury, it was already a rapacious tax.
(10:48):
It was already terrible. Yes, and they attack the Longrono settlements.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
They did. They massacred up to twenty five thousand.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
Just regular killing, though regular killing.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
But that wasn't enough for the governor who was responsible
for this egregious behavior. They held him down and giving
him a taste of his own medicine, a lot more
than a taste, yeah, a heroic dose, shall we say,
of his own medicine, that medicine being greed. God, I
(11:25):
love this poetic justice. Here. They poured molten gold down
his throat.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
And then they burned the town to the ground to ash. Yes,
and this sounds crazy, right. We do know that, according
to the article and Journal of Clinical Pathology, molten gold
was poured down his throat until his bowels burst. That
is the title of this paper.
Speaker 3 (11:47):
Yes, really leaving nothing to the imagination there, Yeah, by FRW.
Van de Goot and team.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
We do know that the pouring of hot liquids or
metals like letter gold had been before. This was not
the first time someone came up with it, but the
given the value of gold, typically if you saw Roman
torture and executions this way, it would be a metal
like leg.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
It's true, and you can even see today this is
a much less grizzly version of this, but it will
show you how how much damage a hot liquid like
this can do, a hot molten metal like this can do.
There's all these YouTube videos where people pour molten metal
on like watermelons, or there's even one way they pour
it on an ant hill and you just see insane
(12:33):
amounts of steam coming up and it hardens like instantly.
Then you can like open the watermelon and look inside
and it filled all the crevices and it's created the
shape of all of the open space and an hills
look really cool, and it hills look super cool. It's
like some sort of thing you'd see in the Guggenheim,
Like it's a really fascinating sculptural kind of vibe.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
Or mri of a brain or some kind of nervous system. Yeah, yeah,
that's this is a great point. You can see it
in the metal does cool very quickly. In fact, scientist
who used lead for a test found that the lead
solidified within ten seconds. So this means, you know, think
(13:14):
about think about the span of time we're talking and
this this stuff pouring down solidifying in ten seconds. It's
not going to go through the entirety of the body.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
No, let's set up the situation here though you mentioned
this paper, molten gold was poured down his throat until
his bellls bursts. That is again the title FRW. Vandergrut
and R. L. Ten Berg. This is what they did.
They procured a cow's larynx from a slaughterhouse, and they
(13:45):
make it very clear here in the paper that no
animal was harmed or killed specifically for this purpose. You
could probably get a cow's larynx from your local butcher. Sure. Yeah,
they got to have them laying around somewhere. It's not
something you see in the case. Necessarily, you can at
least get them to order. You can make it. Yeah,
you can make a special request if you'd like to
do this at home exactly. Yeah, maybe, you know, make
sure there's an adult present kids when you do this.
(14:13):
So they fixed the larynx in a horizontal position to
a piece of wood, and then they closed the bottom
end using tissue paper, which I guess is a pretty
good stand in for the type of membrane that would
be you know, present if this were connected to a
a you know, the rest of a body. And then
they poured seven hundred and fifty grams of pure lead,
(14:35):
which was at around four hundred and fifty degrees celsius.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
Four hundred and fifty degrees celsius is eight hundred and
forty two degrees Fahrenheits, so nothing to sneeze at.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
No, definitely not. And what happened was immediately huge amounts
of steam began to burst out of both ends of
this larynix. And of course that piece of tissue paper
was no match for this kind of pressure and steam,
and it shot out with force, they said. And then
within ten seconds Ben, as you mentioned, everything had congealed
(15:05):
and the lead completely filled the larynx and hardened, creating
a shape the perfect cross section of the larynx once
it had cooled.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
But there's something fascinating here because after everything had cooled,
they examine the larynx, They take cross sections and look
at them under a light microscope. They find that the
throat mucus layer being completely burned off and the muscle
was cooked or damaged to the depth of only about
one centimeter, which is fascinating because you know, initially some
(15:39):
of us are probably thinking, well, a hot molten metal
is going to shoot straight down your throat, burning everything
in its path, and you know, fall out of your
Australia for lack of a better phrase. Yeah, But, as
Rachel Newer writes an article for Smithsonian called Here's what
actually happens during execution by molten gold, it's not the
(16:02):
metal that kills you.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
No, it's the pressure and the steam, the absolute ferocity
of you know, think about like when you even if
you have a pan, right, a hot pan, and you
put it under cold water in the sink. If it's
hot enough, that thing produces all kinds of steam. That's very,
very hot. Can you imagine molten liquid being poured on
(16:27):
your flesh? H Absolutely, and the difference of temperature would
cause that insane amount of pressure and steam and rupture
your gutty parts.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
I mean on the outside of your body alone, that's
unimaginably painful. But then on your inerts, on your insides.
This gets to a point where the victim is probably thinking,
just let me die. And we know, you know, we
mentioned rom right, and we mentioned the use of molten lead.
The practice of pouring some sort of molten metal down
(16:58):
a person's throat was also used by the Spanish during
the Inquisition.
Speaker 3 (17:05):
Yep, so again taste of their own medicine and more
ways than one.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
And I have to ask, this is something where we
insert our own opinions.
Speaker 3 (17:14):
Are you cool with that? Sure? Man?
Speaker 1 (17:15):
I want to hear some I want to hear your
take on this. Do you think the tribe was justified
in this massacre or this sort of that's a big question.
Do you think the tribe is justified in murdering this
governor this way?
Speaker 3 (17:35):
I don't know, man, I mean, they had been just
dicked around so much that I think they probably had
had enough and they wanted to make an example out
of him. You know, it was brutal times, and they
had been treated with brutality, and you know, I mean,
these tribal people had a history of brutality in and
(17:57):
of themselves. So it's certainly not something they invented out
of whole cloth because they were pushed too far.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
Right, Yeah, these violent delights have violent ends, right, and
delight obviously is not the right word for this. But
we're by no means saying that anyone involved in this
had some sort of inborn predisposition towards these acts. Of violence.
What we are saying is that when people are forced
(18:26):
into a situation wherein brutality becomes a vocabulary, right, wherein
we communicate through these acts of violence, then this escalation occurs.
You know, you can check out various podcasts we and
our cohort have done on torture devices, right, and one
(18:49):
thing you'll find is that torture goes across all civilizations
and all cultures. But in this case they go out
on a limiaral and say, I think he had it
coming to him.
Speaker 3 (19:02):
Yeah, I think so too.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
I think he earned this. I think he earned this torture.
Of course, we can't condone the masker of twenty five
thousand people, not all of whom would be fundamentally involved
in these gross acts of injustice.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
Well, the way it's written in everything that I saw
was that they were fighting back against being overtaxed. But
they had been colonized in the first place, and you know,
essentially forced to work for nothing and had their natural
resources totally commodified by an invading people. Right, So you know,
it wasn't the best arrangement in the first place. This
(19:41):
isn't even like a rebellion, This is a revolt. This
is like a slave revolt.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
Yeah, absolutely, because these people were considered inhuman and the
Spanish government was saying, well, we can do whatever we
want because ultimately we're bringing them to out, we're converting
them to our religion for our means are justified. Sure,
and you know this is a fascinating, terrible thing that
(20:08):
we see so often in colonial history. Also, the Spanish
were singularly obsessed with gold myopically, so sure.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
Yeah. And you know, speaking of being myopically obsessed with wealth,
have you heard of Crassus, the Roman figure of great opulence?
Speaker 1 (20:30):
Yes, yes I have, And this is a great time
to bring up Marcus Licinius Crassus born one fifteen BCE.
He was a Roman politician, right, even taught some other
Romans a few things.
Speaker 3 (20:46):
Oh big time. He was only a politician. He was
considered one of the wealthiest men in republican Rome.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
And he got there by corrupt means.
Speaker 3 (20:56):
Corrupt means there was a lot of invasion of other
cultures as well, as we know all roads lead to Rome,
because they just kind of took everything at the end
of those roads. Right, So he was hugely responsible, had
a very successful military career where he would you know,
he essentially gained control over most of Italy in his
(21:20):
struggle against the forces of Gaius Marius and Cornelius Senna,
and his father was part of that, and he actually
committed suicide. And then Crassus took off and fled to Spain,
and he ended up siding with the opposing force in
that conflict, a leader named Sola against Marius, and he
(21:43):
was able to reap the benefits of that through a
practice called prescription, which is where you take the spoils
of war from your defeated foes. You essentially commodify their property,
their slaves, their land, and they become your personal wealth.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
It's important to mention the slavery aspect there, because again
slaves at the time were considered property, not people. This
is like for modern analogue. This is similar to civil forfeiture.
Civil forfeiture is the practice in the US whereby law
(22:24):
enforcement can confiscate property if a crime is suspected, and
it changes a little bit state to state, but this
is on a much higher level. This is, as Noel said,
spoils of war, and all you have to do is
declare someone an enemy of the state. But why are
we bringing up crosses here?
Speaker 3 (22:46):
He is rumored to have met a delightfully violent end
as well, at the hands of another group that he
was attempting to conquer, and that group was known as
the Parthians. And what were they about then?
Speaker 1 (23:02):
Yeah, the Parthian Empire was a major socio political power
located in modern day Iran and Iraq. So it's just
across the Euphrates, and Crasis says, you know, he has
Syria as his province, and he said, that's not enough.
(23:23):
I want more. I want the riches of Parthia. So
he crosses the river and he wants to prove that
he also is a military force to be reckoned with.
There's some internal competition in the empire big.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
Time, and that specifically was he. He was one of
the responsible parties for starting the triumvirate between himself, Julius
Caesar and ultimately his greatest nemesis, POMPEII, Pompey the Great,
Pompey the Great exactly. And in fact, he had such
a beef with Pompeii that when people would use this
(24:03):
nickname Pompey the Great, he would respond, how big is he?
Speaker 1 (24:09):
He's just such a bill man, and his plan to
his plan to attack Parthia just doesn't work out because
they have a different type of attack strategy.
Speaker 3 (24:24):
Oh for sure, it's a different terrain than he's used
to operating on. That's a very sandy terrain, and it's
a pretty poorly formed plan. But before we get into
that and finish that, I just wanted to mention some
of his bona fides and some of what led to
his beef with POMPEII. He was responsible for quashing the
Spartacus slave rebellion, right you you've all seen the movie
(24:47):
I Am Spartacus and all of that. Between seventy thousand
to one hundred and twenty thousand slaves who basically formed
an army who had created a huge kerfuffle in the
Roman Empire, and it was his job, Crasus's job to
deal with this, right, and he ultimately did after his
(25:07):
legion under the leadership of a lieutenant by the name
of Mummius, failed miserably when Mummy has disregarded Crasus's orders.
Crisus was also ruthless because he instituted this punishment for
this disobedience called decimation, where in one in ten soldiers
in this five hundred man part of the army were
(25:27):
killed by their cohorts in full view of their colleagues.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
We have to interject now, or I have to interject
at least now in this story to say, Rome is
the origin of the word decimate. When you hear someone
described something as decimated, they should not be saying that
if they mean destroyed, annihilated.
Speaker 3 (25:52):
And doesn't it seem like shooting yourself in the foot too,
You're literally like getting rid of your precious troops.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
He also born wealthy too. It's not as if he
earned his way up by his bootstrap. No.
Speaker 3 (26:05):
And this was a time too where just being wealthy
you could like buy your own army. That you know,
it wasn't necessarily like a standing government army. A rich
man could come forth and pay enough money to have
his own army. So what happened next, Well, he, you know,
he ultimately, after this severe punishment, he did come through
(26:28):
and defeat that slave uprising at Lushania, where he cornered
Spartacus and his forces. It ultimately resulted in him crucifying
six thousand of the survivors on the Apian Way, which
was a road where it would be lined with crucified
corpse corpses, Yeah, exactly. But the beef with Pompeii came
(26:49):
from the fact that after Crassius had done the bulk
of the work, Pompey's force kind of swept in and
like just sort of picked off the last remaining straggler
of Spartacus's army and then got back home before Crassus
and was able to kind of reap the glory, the
credit of the credit of that, And that was a
(27:09):
thing that sort of haunted him and happened a couple
more times. But let's get back to the undoing of
Crassus and how he ultimately met his poetic end, ah,
his alleged end as well.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
So he's got a real chip on his shoulder, a
real badger in his bag about this. Let's call it
an inferiority complex. Even he is in intense internal competition
with the other members of the Triumvirate, and this victory
over Parthia, if he can swing it, is going to
(27:41):
make him just as respected in his mind.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
Maybe he can be.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
Called Crassus the Competent or something like that.
Speaker 3 (27:50):
Oh, come on, he wanted more than that, sure, Grassis
the badasses. There we go. There we go, or.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
Crassis the cosmically cool something like that. Oh wait, no,
I got it, Crassis the celebrated something like that. Sure
he wanted credit the revered, and he had, as I
think it established before, he had greater numbers in terms
of just individuals fighting for him. However, the Parthians had
superior strategy. They had a shoot and run cavalry and
(28:24):
arrow attack. This was their combo move. They were very
good at it.
Speaker 3 (28:28):
They would get.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
Within shooting range, they would rain arrows down on the troops,
then they would fall back, and then they would charge
fourth and do it again. But here's the problem. They
were able to shoot as well backwards as they could forwards.
So if you just have waves of this going back
and forth, what's a Crassis to do?
Speaker 3 (28:49):
This actually reminds me of going back to Game of Thrones.
That is sort of like a situation where the doth
Raki were mounted and they were archers, and they were
masters of their terrain, which was sort of they called
it the grass Sea. It's this big, very flat area
and the folks that they were fighting against would often
not be prepared to meet them in open combat. Again,
(29:11):
taking historical context, I think mister Martin is pretty pretty
good at weaving that stuff into his work.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
So the forces that Crass's controls.
Speaker 3 (29:20):
Don't like them.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
They're near mutiny, and so they demand that he hold
parley with the Parthians, in other words, that he negotiate
a peaceful end to this, because obviously he's kind of
a jerk.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
For a boss, and they're getting shredded, right.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
And his son dies in the same battle, so he agrees.
He finally says, all right, I'll meet them, and everything
goes pear shape. He is riding a horse to negotiate
for peace, and he's got, you know, his entourage, He's
got his sidekick, Octavius. Octavius suspects that there's a trap.
He grabs Crasus his horse. This instigates again. There's a
(29:58):
very tense climate, a sudden fight with the Parthians, and
later you will hear from a historian named Cassius Dio
that he was killed made a mockery of by pouring
metal molten gold again down his throat, and that this
was poetic come uppance due to his lifelong greed thirst
(30:23):
for riches and powers.
Speaker 3 (30:25):
Seems like editorializing to me, doesn't it.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
It is because it can be traced to that one historian,
but now currently that's the source. There's no nobody found
a body filled with molten gold.
Speaker 3 (30:39):
It was also thought that perhaps he was killed and
then had the molten gold pour down his throat, sort
of adding insult to injury as some sort of symbolic gesture.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
Right like that pope who dug the other pope up
and held a trial for him, which we should totally
do an episode on.
Speaker 3 (30:55):
But you know, at the end of the day, it's
a good story. Not one hundred percent sure it happened
that way, but it is an example of somebody meeting
their own demise because they just couldn't have enough and
they felt overshadowed by somebody and they needed to you know,
ambiggen themselves. Right.
Speaker 1 (31:13):
Yes, to literally a fatal degree. However, we can say,
thankfully that death by ingestion and molten metal is not
a leading cause of fatalities nowadays, in twenty eighteen, as
we record it, at least the years so far.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
However, I'd like to.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
Hear from you, friends and neighbors, what are some of
the strangest or maybe most apropos deaths that you've read about.
Speaker 3 (31:38):
Yew whether in fiction, whether in literature, whatever you've got,
send it to us at ridiculous at HowStuffWorks dot com,
or you can shoot it to us on Facebook or Twitter,
where we are Ridiculous History. We also have a pretty
cool Facebook group where we're kind of mining it for
topic ideas and pretty active and fun group over at
the Ridiculous Historians. You can join up there and if
(31:59):
you like a note, if you want to be a moderator.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
Yes, And while you're there, go ahead and find some
of the threads that are still active. One that we
both enjoyed was the one about hot people from.
Speaker 3 (32:12):
History, and I chose the original.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
Michelin, man I think you went with Abraham Lincoln.
Speaker 3 (32:17):
I did, but man I had no idea. That's yours
where I thought there were some sort of weird sausage
monsters from like a Twilight Zone episode, very crazy looking,
you guys to check it out.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
Michelin has a crazy history too. We should probably cover
the story of how a tire company fostered one of
the most prestigious rating systems in the world of restaurants,
but that is a tale for another day. Do check
us out online and stay tuned. For our next episode,
when we examined the disappearance of a waterfall, and.
Speaker 3 (32:47):
In the meantime, we'd like to thank our composer Alex Williams,
super producer Casey Pegram, and you for joining us for
another episode of Ridiculous History. We will see you next.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
Time, assuming we don't.
Speaker 3 (32:58):
I have malten Go, I want to talk about him.
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Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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