Gods and Robots

by Adrienne Mayor

  A century later Pausanias (1.24.5–7) also admired the imposing statue of Athena and the scene of Pandora’s creation on the Acropolis. The original colossus and base are lost, but one can begin to visualize them based on a large marble copy of the base made in about 200 BC, found in 1880 in the ruins of Pergamon (Turkey). A small marble Roman replica of the statue and the base (first century AD) also came to light on the Athenian Acropolis in 1859. These artifacts make it “clear that Pandora was shown as a statue-like figure,” created and adorned by Hephaestus and Athena, who were venerated together in Athens as the patrons of arts and craft.30

  Further evidence of the scene’s popularity in Athens was discovered in the Athenian Agora. Since 1986, fragments have been excavated there of another public image of the creation of Pandora attended by divinities on a marble relief. Among the figures found so far are Hephaestus and Zeus. The archaeologists have also unearthed the marble head of a woman. Who is she? One clue is her oddly disconcerting smile—but her identity, revealed below, is surprising.31

  In the myth, Pandora was escorted to earth by Hermes and presented to Epimetheus as his bride. Zeus knew that Prometheus’s brother lacked foresight and good judgment, making him the perfect patsy. Pandora’s “dowry” was a sealed pithos, a large jar used for storage. Hesiod calls the pithos “unbreakable,” an adjective usually applied to metal, so the jar was probably originally imagined as bronze. It seems that pithos was mistranslated as pyxis (box) in the sixteenth century, and since then the image of Pandora’s box persists in the popular imagination. No ancient artworks show Pandora with the jar of troubles or actually opening the pithos and reeling back in horror, but those scenes are favored in more than a hundred medieval and modern retellings in poems, novels, operas, ballets, drawings, sculptures, paintings, and other artworks. The series of neoclassical sculpted reliefs and drawings by John Flaxman (1775–1826) illustrating vignettes from Hesiod’s Pandora were immensely popular at the end of the eighteenth century, when the antiquarian carved gems in figs 8.1 and 8.2 were also created.32

  The contents of the forbidden pithos, all the misfortunes that afflict the mortal world, were unknown to Pandora. But Zeus was counting on her to open the jar, releasing disease, pestilence, endless labor, poverty, grief, old age, and other dire torments on humanity forever.33 Pandora’s jar of evils seems to be related to the passage in Homer’s Iliad (24.527–28) describing two fateful jars kept by Zeus. One urn is filled with blessings, the other with misfortune, and the contents were randomly mingled and showered upon humans by Zeus. Presumably, it is Zeus’s pithos of misery and evil that accompanies Pandora. She “serves as his agent for opening the jar.”34

  In the myth recounted by Hesiod (Works and Days 90–99), once in Epimetheus’s house, Pandora lifts the lid of the great pithos, and the evils swarm out. When the lid is slammed down—by Pandora’s hand but by Zeus’s design—one spirit is trapped inside. This is Elpis, “Hope.” The meaning of this crucial detail has been intensely debated since antiquity.

  FIG. 8.11. Zeus contemplates Hope/Elpis peeping out of Pandora’s jar. Red-figure amphora from Basilicata, fifth century BC, inv. 1865,0103. © The Trustees of the British Museum.

  In antiquity, Elpis/Hope was personified as a young woman. In “The Girl in the Pithos” (2005), classical archaeologist Jenifer Neils identifies three ancient artifacts that represent Elpis in Pandora’s jar. The first was, until 2005, the only known image of Elpis. It appears on the Owl Pillar Etruscan amphora mentioned above, with one side depicting Hephaestus and the half-completed Pandora, the beginning of the myth. The other side of that vase illustrates how the story ends (fig. 8.11).

  FIG. 8.12. Grinning Hope/Elpis peeking out of Pandora’s jar. Aryballos (perfume flask), ceramic, sixth century BC, Thebes, Boeotia, Greece. Henry Lillie Pierce Fund, 01.8056. Photograph © 2018 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

  A bearded Zeus contemplates a large pithos with a small girl peeping out of the jar. She is Elpis/Hope, confined in the pithos by Zeus’s order. This intriguing vase surely copied a more sophisticated Attic vase now lost, notes Neils. The Etruscan artist “juxtaposes two analogous scenes.” In each vignette, a male divinity “contemplates female evil.”35

  The second artifact is a small terra-cotta aryballos (perfume flask) from Boeotia, a region north of Athens, made in about 625–600 BC. It is shaped like a pithos with the sculpted head of a young woman at the top as though popping up out of the jar (fig. 8.12). The opening of the flask is made to look like the lid of the jar. We can assume, with Neils, that the potter was inspired by his fellow Boeotian Hesiod’s description of Elpis/Hope in Works and Days, written some years earlier, in about 700 BC. The aryballos held perfume, remarks Neils, a substance, like Pandora’s charms, that was considered a seductive snare for men, suggesting a humorous or ironic spin on the myth.36

  There is plenty of evidence that the sophisticated ancient Greeks appreciated both tragedy and comedy in Pandora’s story. Sophocles’s lost satyr play and the vases juxtaposing satyrs with Pandora are some examples of a lighthearted approach. Hesiod says Zeus laughed while devising his trick on man, and amusement is implied on the vase showing Zeus and Hermes enjoying the joke on Epimetheus (fig. 8.3, plate 12). The Niobid Painter’s vase continues the sardonic theme with a broadly smiling Pandora (fig. 8.7, plate 14). Take a closer look at the young woman popping out of the little perfume jar in fig. 8.12. She wears an ironic lopsided grin, a sly smirk.37

  The third likely image of Elpis/Hope was found among the fragments of the fifth-century BC high-relief panel discovered in the Athenian Agora, mentioned earlier. Archaeologist Evelyn Harrison identified the frieze as an illustration of the Pandora myth. Along with the marble figures of Hephaestus and Zeus, archaeologists found a female head with a “strange, slightly wicked expression,” an asymmetrical smile. But, to answer the question posed above, she is not Pandora—the disembodied head is larger than the heads of the figures of the gods and it is flat on top. Neils proposes that this head belonged to a figure of Elpis/Hope peeping out of a large pithos. “Facial expressions are extremely rare in Greek art,” comments Neils, “but a smirk seems a particularly apt way to characterize the personification of false hope.”38

  Was Elpis/Hope a blessing or an evil? The mythic traditions about Pandora are labyrinthine; several aspects of the story as it survives in ancient literature and art strain logic.39 In particular, the vexing question of why Hope remained in the jar has bedeviled commentators ever since the myth was first told. The enigmatic smiles of Pandora and Elpis seem to mock attempts to untangle the puzzle.

  Hesiod is ambiguous: Is Hope one of the troubles in the pack of evils dispersed in the world? Or is Hope humans’ only solace now that their world is so troubled? The modern fairy-tale version of the myth casts Hope as a merciful spirit that remained behind to comfort humans or a blessing bestowed by Zeus to compensate for the evils. But keep in mind that the ancient Greeks generally considered Hope to be negative or misleading, as is evident in the common epithet “blind hope.” Notably, Hesiod (Works and Days 498, 500) calls Elpis/Hope “empty” and “bad.” In the Iliad (2.227) Athena plants false hope in the mind of the doomed Trojan hero Hector before he is killed in the duel with Achilles. The fifth-century BC poet Pindar (frag. 214) says Elpis/Hope “rules man’s ever-changeable mind.” Aristotle is not much help: he defines elpis as the “future-directed counterpart of memory,” connoting the ability to anticipate good or evil consequences.40

  In the fifth-century BC Athenian tragedy Prometheus Bound (128–284), Prometheus confesses that he gave mortals another gift along with fire: he deprived them of the ability to “foresee their doom (moros)” by “causing blind hopes (elpides) to live in their hearts,” so that they will persevere. The play only intensifies the philosophical questions surrounding the existential meaning of hope. It seems that in the new, harsher world of the present, humans have come to resemble Prometheus’s brother Epimetheus, lacking the ability to see what lies ahea
d. Is such an illusion a boon or a curse?41

  The ambiguity of Hope’s meaning in antiquity compounds the enigma of Pandora’s pithos. In the murk of the myth as it has come down to us, we can set out the following seemingly contradictory options: The contents of the jar are evil, and they are activated by being released to bring harm to humans. Hope is not let out: either it is an evil that harms humans like the other things in the jar, or it is unlike the evil things in the jar and is good for us. So hope is either activated, like the other evils, despite being kept in the jar, or hope is not activated because confined inside the jar.

  Four possible scenarios can be posed: (1) Hope is good, despite being in the jar of evils, and activated by Zeus to offset evils; (2) Hope is good but is trapped inside the jar by Zeus, therefore further harming humans; (3) Hope is one of the evils in the jar and activated, despite being trapped in the jar, and is meant to torment humans with wishful thinking and illusion; (4) Hope is evil but not activated; it is trapped by Zeus in order to spare humans from false hopes.42

  The mystery of Elpis/Hope trapped in the jar of evils resists resolution. The best interpretation may be that Hope is neither all good or all bad, nor is she neutral. Hope is a uniquely human emotion. Like the artificial woman Pandora, Elpis/Hope represents a kalon kakon, beautiful evil, a seductive snare, beckoning irresistibly while hiding inherent and potential disasters.

  This dilemma was devised more than two millennia ago in the context of artificial life created by an ingenious inventor with surpassingly superior biotechnology; its ambiguity could not be more pointed for our own era.43 Who can resist opening Pandora’s box of tantalizing “gifts,” marvelous science and technology that promise to improve human life? Like Epimetheus, oblivious to the moral and social dangers lurking within, ignoring the warnings of the lone Promethean voices among us, we rush headlong into a future of humanoid robots, brain-computer interfaces, magnified powers, unnaturally enhanced life, animated thinking things, virtual reality, and Artificial Intelligence. We blunder on, hoping for the best.

  Two millennia before Isaac Asimov conceived of the Laws of Robotics (1942), the ancient Greek mythologists imagined animated statues set in motion and imprinted with specific missions to help or harm. Asimov’s original three laws specified that (1) a robot may not injure a human being; (2) a robot must obey orders given by humans unless this would cause harm to a human; and (3) a robot must protect itself unless this conflicts with laws 1 and 2. As we’ve seen, Hephaestus surrounded himself with benign automata and self-moving tripods to make his life easier, and he gave the world happy marvels such as the singing maiden statues at Delphi. But Hephaestus was capable of manufacturing harmful artifices too, beginning mildly with the throne that trapped his mother, Hera, and culminating in Pandora, his crowning and awful achievement commissioned by the all-powerful Zeus. In myth, Talos the bronze robot, the dragon-teeth army, the mechanical eagle, the fire-breathing bulls—all were deliberately intended to injure humans, breaking Asimov’s first law.44

  Pandora certainly flouts rule number 1. But the scale of her devastation is so vast—the ruination of all humankind, as plotted by the tyrant Zeus—that Asimov’s fourth law applies. Pandora breaks the so-called Zeroth Law, which Asimov added later: a robot shall not harm humanity. Pandora also violates law 23 of the 2017 Asilomar principles: Artificial Intelligence should benefit all humanity (chapter 7).

  One cannot help noticing that all of the automata used to inflict pain and death in ancient mythology belonged to tyrannical rulers, from King Minos of Crete and King Aeetes of Colchis to Zeus, the Father of Gods and Men, who chuckles in anticipation of his cruel “trap” for humans. It is a striking fact that the autocratic fascination with animated statues designed to inflict torture and death was not confined to ancient myth. Malevolent machines existed in reality—in historical times—and were used by living tyrants of the ancient world. The next chapter surveys actual automata and self-moving devices—some designed to harm and others created for benign purposes—described in literature, history, legend, and art beginning as early as the fifth century BC.

  CHAPTER 9

  BETWEEN MYTH AND HISTORY

  REAL AUTOMATA AND LIFELIKE

  ARTIFICES IN THE ANCIENT WORLD

  SO FAR WE have considered how the ancient Greeks imagined—through mythology and artworks—artificially created life, animated statues, beings that were not biologically born but manufactured, fantastic technologies, and augmented human powers. We saw how people in antiquity portrayed Daedalus, Medea, Prometheus, and Hephaestus as supergeniuses, picturing them employing familiar tools and methods but with miraculous capabilities to construct marvelous things far beyond what could be achieved by mortals.

  Except for the bronze robot Talos and the first humans made by Prometheus, practical details and inner workings of divinely crafted artifices are missing in the mythic narratives and fragments that have come down to us. But the wide of range of stories about biotechne reveal that the idea of making artificial life was conceivable in antiquity, portrayed as stupendous feats of ingenuity and craft. Some divine devices in myth might have arisen as metaphors for innovations in technology, while others may have been exaggerations of more modest counterparts in historical times. Earthly, simple approximations of some of the mythical marvels might have been practicable with available tools, materials, techniques—and formidable intelligence—in antiquity. Even so, it is important to resist the temptation to project modern motivations and assumptions about technology onto the ancient world.1 Although many of the ancient myths and ideas about artificial life certainly call to mind and seem to foreshadow later inventions, one cannot project direct lines of influence from antiquity to modern biomechanics and robots.

  The history of real mechanical designs and practical inventions, from artillery, the catapult, and theatrical technologies involving pulleys, levers, springs, and winches to self-operating devices, from the Mediterranean world to China, has been intensely and comprehensively studied.2 From the wealth of well-documented ancient concepts and designs of automata and machines in the history of ancient technology, I have selected examples for this chapter that echo or resound in some way with the self-moving objects, animated statues, and other ways of imitating life from the realms of mythology discussed in the previous chapters. As we move from myth to history, keep in mind that it is inevitable that elements of popular folklore and legend have seeped into some surviving and fragmentary accounts of actual inventions. The historical incidents in the following pages do not constitute an exhaustive survey but are meant to give an idea of the various kinds of lifelike replicas and automata—some deadly, some grandiose, others charming curiosities—that were really designed and/or tested between the sixth century BC and about AD 1000.

  Historians of robotics suggest that automata fall into three basic functions: labor, sex, and entertainment or spectacle. These features appeared in the ancient myths and legends about artificial life. Self-operating devices resembling living beings could be used to amplify human capabilities, to dazzle and awe, to trick and deceive, to injure and kill. Automata could serve as trappings and manifestations of power, sometimes in benign ways but other times with malicious intent.

  In Greek myths, Zeus is portrayed as a spiteful tyrant who takes joy in devising a hideous torture for Prometheus and dispatches the seductive artificial woman, Pandora, to inflict suffering on all humankind. These torments required the technological expertise of Hephaestus, who also constructed King Aeetes’s bronze bulls, to burn Jason, and King Minos’s bronze killer Talos. A pattern stands out in these and other myths about devices made to inflict pain and death: each artifice was commissioned and/or deployed by a despotic ruler, as a means of displaying arbitrary absolute power. As it turns out, a similar pattern can be traced in historical antiquity: a good number of real tyrannical rulers used wickedly clever contraptions and artifices that mimicked nature to humiliate, harm, torture, or even kill their subjects and enemies.3
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  As Ovid (Metamorphoses 8.189) envisioned the myth, Daedalus created his human enhancement of flight by imitating the power of birds. He made rows of real feathers, assorted by size in a curve, and arched the structures to imitate real bird wings. Then, attaching them to his back and arms, he “balanced his body between the wings and hung poised, beating the air.” Unlike the supernatural, effortless flight of the gods that defied time, physics, and space, however, his artificial wings required the physical effort of pumping one’s arms to soar like a bird.

  For a human being to attempt to fly by flapping man-made wings is of course aeronautically unsound, sure to end badly. That brute fact figured in a sadistic punishment using imitation bird wings meted out annually in ancient Leucadia (modern Lefkada), an Ionian island famed for its sheer sea cliffs. There, the ancient Greeks had “one regular opportunity to experiment with such flying devices without keen regard to safety.”4 Strabo (10.2.9) described the ancient custom on Leucadia known as Criminal’s Leap. Each year, as a sacrifice to Apollo, the Leucadians would force a condemned man to “fly” from the island’s white limestone cliff (the cliff was later known as Sappho’s Leap, after the poetess’s fabled suicide, and is now called “Lovers’ Leap”).5 Like Icarus of myth, the man was fitted with a pair of artificial wings. And for good measure, all sorts of live birds were fastened to him as well, to add to the spectacle. Spectators on the cliff and in small boats below watched the hapless victim flapping with all his might while surrounded by helplessly fluttering birds.

  During the Roman Empire, it was a popular sport to demean, torture, or execute people in amusing scenarios that re-created tragic Greek myths. The emperor Nero was a master of such perverse public entertainments in the Circus and at his banquets (AD 54–68). Two such performances were related by the imperial historian Suetonius (Life of Nero). For the play called The Minotaur, the individual forced to play Pasiphae was made to crouch “inside the hindquarters of a hollow wooden heifer” while an actor disguised as a bull mounted her. For a ballet reenacting the myth of Daedalus and Icarus, Nero commanded the man cast in the role of Icarus to fly with his artificial wings from a high scaffold. Suetonius records that the man fell “beside Nero’s couch, splattering the emperor with blood.”