Consider a political dissident who defies a ruthless dictator, is captured by the regime’s henchmen, and is publicly tortured to death. Your response would likely be outrage — you might appeal to Amnesty International, call for sanctions, or demand that the dictator be tried in The Hague.
The Stoics reflected on a similar case in antiquity: Phalaris, the sixth-century BCE tyrant of the city of Akragas in Sicily and the Brazen Bull that he commissioned. Victims were locked inside the hollow bronze bull while a fire was lit underneath, slowly roasting them alive. Some accounts claim that the bull was designed to amplify and distort their screams, transforming them into eerie bellowing — a spectacle meant to amuse the tyrant and to terrify his enemies.