GODS AND ROBOTS
Copyright © 2018 by Adrienne Mayor
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2018938106
ISBN 978-0-691-18351-0
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Editorial: Rob Tempio and Matt Rohal
Production Editorial: Lauren Lepow
Text Design: Chris Ferrante
Jacket/Cover Design: Jason Alejandro
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This book has been composed in Adobe Text Pro, Abolition, and Refuel
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Printed in the United States of America
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
for my brother
MARK MAYOR
I sometimes wonder
whether robots were invented
to answer philosophers’ questions
—TIK-TOK
CONTENTS
List of Illustrations
xi
Acknowledgments
xv
INTRODUCTION. Made, Not Born
1
1 The Robot and the Witch: Talos and Medea
7
2 Medea’s Cauldron of Rejuvenation
33
3 The Quest for Immortality and Eternal Youth
45
4 Beyond Nature: Enhanced Powers Borrowed from Gods and Animals
61
5 Daedalus and the Living Statues
85
6 Pygmalion’s Living Doll and Prometheus’s First Humans
105
7 Hephaestus: Divine Devices and Automata
129
8 Pandora: Beautiful, Artificial, Evil
156
9 Between Myth and History: Real Automata and Lifelike Artifices in the Ancient World
179
EPILOGUE. Awe, Dread, Hope: Deep Learning and Ancient Stories
213
Glossary
219
Notes
223
Bibliography
251
Index
265
ILLUSTRATIONS
COLOR PLATES
1. Death of Talos
2. Jason uses a tool to destroy Talos
3. Foundry workers making a statue of an athlete
4. Blacksmith at work with tools
5. Medea rejuvenates a ram in her cauldron
6. Realistic Bronze Ram of Syracuse
7. Realistic bronze athlete
8. Hephaestus making an animated horse statue
9. Athena making a realistic horse statue
10. Prometheus attaches arm to the first human skeleton
11. Prometheus constructs the first human skeleton
12. Epimetheus meets Pandora
13. Zeus admires Pandora
14. Pandora prepared for her mission on earth
FIGURES
1.1. The bronze robot Talos, by Ray Harryhausen
8
1.2. Talos on coins of Phaistos, Crete
13
1.3. The death of the bronze automaton Talos
14
1.4. Death of Talos, detail
15
1.5. Jason uses a tool to destroy Talos
16
1.6. Detail, Jason using tool to remove bolt in Talos’s ankle
16
1.7. Talos crushing victims
18
1.8. Stone giant, Nuragic Sardinia
20
1.9. Foundry workers forging realistic statue of athlete in parts
25
1.10. Foundry scene, finishing a warrior statue
26
1.11. Sir Artegall and the automaton Iron Knight Talus
30
1.12. Modern Talos missile
31
1.13. Modern TALOS special operations uniform
32
2.1. Medea rejuvenates a ram in her cauldron as Pelias watches
37
2.2. Medea demonstrates the rejuvenation of a ram
38
2.3. Medea and the daughters of Pelias prepare the cauldron
39
2.4. Medea and Jason restore Aeson’s youth in the cauldron
40
2.5. Pelias approaches Medea’s cauldron
41
3.1. Eos (Dawn) pursues young Tithonus
54
3.2. Eos and Tithonus in love
55
3.3. Old Tithonus turning into a cicada
56
4.1. Prometheus bleeding ichor
64
4.2. Daedalus makes a realistic cow for Pasiphae to enter
73
4.3. Pasiphae and the baby Minotaur
74
4.4. Daedalus makes wings for his son, Icarus
76
4.5. Icarus tries on his wings
77
4.6. Icarus flying over the sea
78
4.7. Daedalus hovers over the body of Icarus on beach
79
4.8. Daedalus cradles his dead son, Icarus
80
5.1. Realistic Bronze Ram of Syracuse
87
5.2. Golden honeycomb, lost-wax process
88
5.3. Sculptor Phidias making a human statue
92
5.4. Athena visits a sculptor making a true-to-life horse
97
5.5. Realistic bronze and marble statues of antiquity
99
6.1. Prometheus molds the first humans, with Minerva, late Roman
113
6.2. Prometheus creating the first humans, with Minerva, late Roman
113
6.3. Prometheus using plumb line to construct first human, carnelian gem
115
6.4. Prometheus makes head and torso of first man on frame, sardonyx
115
6.5. Prometheus making the first humans and animals, carved gem
117
6.6. Prometheus molding first man’s torso on skeleton framework
118
6.7. Prometheus attaches arm to skeleton of the first human, scarab
119
6.8. Prometheus constructs skeleton, using mallet to attach arm, carnelian gem
119
6.9. Prometheus sitting on rock, affixing arm to skeleton, Etruscan gem
120
6.10. Prometheus attaches arm to skeleton, carnelian scarab
120
6.11. Prometheus uses mallet to make skeleton, chalcedony gem
120
7.1. Hephaestus shows Thetis the marvelous armor for her son, Achilles
130
7.2. Bronze “muscle” cuirass and greaves, realistic chest and leg armor
132
7.3. “Heroic” muscle armor
133
7.4. Blacksmith at work with tools
135
7.5. Ancient blacksmith tools
136
7.6. Argus with many eyes
137
7.7. Hephaestus (Sethlans) making an animated horse
140
7.8. Athena making a statue of a horse
141
7.9. The Golden Hound
143
7.10. Apollo’s flying tripod
147
7.11. Triptolemus in his flying chair
8.1. Hephaestus creating Pandora, neoclassical gem
157
8.2. Hermes presents Pandora to Epimetheus, neoclassical gem
159
8.3. Epimetheus meets Pandora
161
8.4. Zeus admiring Pandora
163
8.5. Athena and Hephaestus place finishing touches on Pandora
164
8.6. Pandora admired by the gods and goddesses
165
8.7. Detail, Pandora ready for her mission on earth
167
8.8. Kore, statue of young woman with enigmatic smile
168
8.9. Evil female robot Maria in film Metropolis (1927)
170
8.10. Pandora compared to modern evil robot Maria, collage
171
8.11. Zeus contemplates Hope peeping out of Pandora’s jar
173
8.12. Hope grinning as she emerges from Pandora’s jar
174
9.1. Phalaris burns Perilaus in the Brazen Bull
185
9.2. Colossi of Memnon
188
9.3. Coin issued by Spartan tyrant Nabis
194
9.4. Theater of Heron, replica
202
9.5. Guardians of Buddha’s relics
204
9.6. Buddha defended by Heracles-Vajrapani
209
9.7. Imaginary Buddhist guards as robots
210
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INSPIRED IN PART by the eidetic images of the wicked robot Maria in the silent film Metropolis (1927) and the bronze android Talos in Jason and the Argonauts (1963), I started collecting ancient literary evidence for animated statues many years ago. I began to think seriously about how ancient Greek myths expressed ideas about artificial life in 2007, when I was asked to write a historical essay for the Biotechnique Exhibit catalogue, curated by Philip Ross at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco. My essays about Talos and Medea’s experiments in rejuvenation appeared in the history of science website Wonders and Marvels in 2012. In 2016, the editors of Aeon invited me to write an essay about the modern relevance of classical Greek myths about biotechne, life by craft. I presented a preview of this book in a public lecture at the Art Institute of Chicago on March 18, 2017, “The Robot and the Witch: The Ancient Greek Quest for Artificial Life.”
Many friends and colleagues read and commented on drafts of chapters at various stages. I’m especially grateful to my dear readers Marcia Ober, Michelle Maskiell, Norton Wise, and Josiah Ober for their close attention and valuable suggestions for revisions. Many others shared expertise and knowledge of ancient texts, images, ideas, and sources. My thanks to Linda Albritton, Laura Ambrosini, Theo Antikas, Ziyaad Bhorat, Larissa Bonfante, Erin Brady, Signe Cohen, John Colarusso, Sam Crow, Eric Csapo, Nick D., Armand D’Angour, Nancy de Grummond, Bob Durrett, Thalassa Farkas, Deborah Gordon, Ulf Hansson, Sam Haselby, Steven Hess, Fran Keeling, Paul Keyser, Teun Koetsier, Ingrid Krauskopf, Kenneth Lapatin, Patrick Lin, Claire Lyons, Ruel Macaraeg, Ingvar Maehle, Justin Mansfield, Richard Martin, David Meadows, Vasiliki Misailidou-Despotidou, John Oakley, Walter Penrose, David Saunders, Sage Adrienne Smith, Jeffrey Spier, Jean Turfa, Claudia Wagner, Michelle Wang, and Susan Wood. I’m grateful to Carlo Canna for his essential help in obtaining images from Italian museums and to Gabriella Tassinari for her generous discussions of Etruscan gems. Thanks to Margaret Levi, the Berggruen Institute, and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, for supporting my research September 2018–May 2019. Sincere gratitude is due to my excellent agents Sandy Dijkstra and Andrea Cavallaro. At Princeton University Press, I’m indebted to the anonymous readers for thoughtful critiques, to Dimitri Karetnikov for help with illustrations, to Jason Alejandro and Chris Ferrante for design, and to the nimble copyediting of Lauren Lepow. Thanks to Dave Luljak for indexing. I have benefited, as always, from the insights and enthusiasm of my editor Rob Tempio.
I’m fortunate to be able to call on my sister, Michele Angel, for amazing artistic skills and technical advice about illustrations. Barbara Mayor, my mom, is a proofreading marvel. I’m lucky to have such a wonderful brother, Mark Mayor—I know he remembers how much we enjoyed watching the movie Jason and the Argonauts together. Most of all, I’m forever thankful for Josh, esteemed companion of my heart and mind, and a truly good man.
INTRODUCTION
MADE, NOT BORN
WHO FIRST IMAGINED the concepts of robots, automata, human enhancements, and Artificial Intelligence? Historians tend to trace the idea of the automaton back to the medieval craftsmen who developed self-moving machines. But if we cast our nets back even further, more than two thousand years ago in fact, we will find a remarkable set of ideas and imaginings that arose in mythology, stories that envisioned ways of imitating, augmenting, and surpassing natural life by means of what might be termed biotechne, “life through craft.” In other words, we can discover the earliest inklings of what we now call biotechnology.
Long before the clockwork contraptions of the Middle Ages and the automata of early modern Europe, and even centuries before technological innovations of the Hellenistic period made sophisticated self-moving devices feasible, ideas about making artificial life—and qualms about replicating nature—were explored in Greek myths. Beings that were “made, not born” appeared in tales about Jason and the Argonauts, the bronze robot Talos, the techno-witch Medea, the genius craftsman Daedalus, the fire-bringer Prometheus, and Pandora, the evil fembot created by Hephaestus, the god of invention. The myths represent the earliest expressions of the timeless impulse to create artificial life. These ancient “science fictions” show how the power of imagination allowed people, from the time of Homer to Aristotle’s day, to ponder how replicas of nature might be crafted. Ideas about creating artificial life were thinkable long before technology made such enterprises possible. The myths reinforce the notion that imagination is the spirit that unites myth and science. Notably, many of the automata and mechanical devices actually designed and fabricated in Greco-Roman antiquity recapitulate myths by illustrating and/or alluding to gods and heroes.
Historians of science commonly believe that ancient myths about artificial life only describe inert matter brought alive by a god’s command or magician’s spell. Such tales certainly exist in many cultures’ mythologies. Famous examples include Adam and Eve in the Old Testament and Pygmalion’s statue of Galatea in classical Greek myth. But many of the self-moving devices and automata described in the mythical traditions of Greece and Rome—and in comparable lore of ancient India and China—differ in significant ways from things animated by magic or divine fiat. These special artificial beings were thought of as manufactured products of technology, designed and constructed from scratch using the same materials and methods that human artisans used to make tools, artworks, buildings, and statues. To be sure, the robots, replicants, and self-propelled objects described in myth are wondrous—marvelous beyond anything fashioned on earth by ordinary mortals—befitting the sublime abilities of gods and legendary inventors like Daedalus. One might consider the myths about artificial life as cultural dreams, ancient thought experiments, “what-if” scenarios set in an alternate world of possibilities, an imaginary space where technology was advanced to prodigious degrees.
The common denominator of mythic automata that took the forms of animals or androids like Talos and Pandora is that they were “made, not born.” In antiquity, the great heroes, monsters, and even the immortal Olympian gods of myth were the opposite: they were all, like ordinary mortals, “born, not made.” This distinction was a key concept in early Christian dogma too, with orthodox creeds affirming that Jesus was “begotten, not made.” The theme arises in modern science fiction as well, as in the 2017 film Blade Runner 2049, whose plot turns on whether certain characters are replicants, facsimiles of real humans, or biologically conceived and born humans. Since archaic
times, the difference between biological birth and manufactured origin marks the border between human and nonhuman, natural and unnatural. Indeed, in the stories of artificial life gathered here, the descriptive category made, not born is a crucial distinction. It separates automata described as fabricated with tools from lifeless objects that were simply enlivened by command or magic.
Two gods—the divine smith Hephaestus and the Titan Prometheus—and a pair of earthbound innovators—Medea and Daedalus—were involved in Greek, Etruscan, and Roman tales of artificial life. These four figures possess superhuman ingenuity, extraordinary creativity, technical virtuosity, and superb artistic skills. The techniques, arts, crafts, methods, and tools they employ parallel those known in real life, but the mythic inventors achieve spectacular results that exaggerate and surpass the abilities and technologies available to mere mortals in the quotidian world.
With a few exceptions, in the myths as they have survived from antiquity, the inner workings and power sources of automata are not described but left to our imagination. In effect, this nontransparency renders the divinely crafted contrivances analogous to what we call “black box” technology, machines whose interior workings are mysterious. Arthur C. Clarke’s famous dictum comes to mind: the more advanced the technology, the more it seems like magic. Ironically, in modern technoculture, most people are at a loss to explain how the appliances of their daily life, from smartphones and laptops to automobiles, actually work, not to mention nuclear submarines or rockets. We know these are manufactured artifacts, designed by ingenious inventors and assembled in factories, but they might as well be magic. It is often remarked that human intelligence itself is a kind of black box. And we are now entering a new level of pervasive black box technology: machine learning soon will allow Artificial Intelligence entities to amass, select, and interpret massive sets of data to make decisions and act on their own, with no human oversight or understanding of the processes. Not only will the users of AI be in the dark, but even the makers will be ignorant of the secret workings of their own creations. In a way, we will come full circle to the earliest myths about awesome, inscrutable artificial life and biotechne.
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