Gods and Robots

by Adrienne Mayor

  24. “Relief skyphos with Pasiphae, Daedalus, and the Heifer,” Los Angeles Museum of Art, AC1992.152.15; Roman mosaic floors, House of Poseidon, second century AD, Zeugma Mosaic Museum, Gaziantep, Turkey; third century AD, Lugo, Spain; Roman frescoes, first century AD, in Herculaneum and in Pompeii’s House of the Vettii (which shows the bow-drill) and Casa della Caccia Antica. De Puma 2013, 280. Pasiphae in medieval and modern arts, Reid 1993, 2:842–44.

  25. Pasiphae and the Minotaur in ancient literature and art, Gantz 1993, 1:260–61, 265–66. Woodford 2003, 137–39. Rationalization in antiquity, Hawes 2014, 58, 126–27. Other ancient instances of humans copulating with animals such as horses and donkeys were reported, e.g., in Plutarch’s Moralia, Parallel Stories 29.

  26. Gantz 1993, 1:261–64, 273–75.

  27. Ancient Scandinavian sagas tell of the blacksmith Wayland who devised wonderful weapons and other marvels, including a garment made of real birds’ feathered skins, which allowed him to fly, Cohen 1966, 18.

  28. Daedalus and Icarus ancient sources and art, Gantz 1993, 1:274–75; in medieval and modern arts, Reid 1993, 1:586–93. Beeswax and feathers were said to be the building materials of one of the first temples to Apollo, according to Pindar and other poets, Marconi 2009.

  29. Morris 1992, 193.

  30. Etruscan bucchero olpe found at Cerveteri (Caere), ancient Etruria, Lane Fox 2009, 189. Boeotian Corinthianizing alabastron of ca. 570 BC, in Bonn. Etruscan bulla, Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, 57.371. Morris 1992, 194–96. Daedalus on Etruscan gems, Ambrosini 2014, 176–78, and figs. 1–15b.

  31. Icarus and Daedalus in art, Gantz 1993, 1:274; LIMC 3. “Fall of Icarus,” seascape wall painting from Pompeii, National Archaeological Museum of Naples. On the widespread folklore motif of an architect devising a way to fly from captivity, see Kris and Kurz 1979, 87–88.

  32. Flying in Greek comedy: D’Angour 1999. Keen 2015, 106–19.

  33. Stoneman 2008, 111–14. Aerts 2014, 27.

  34. Stoneman 2008, 114–19. For medieval images of Alexander as aviator, Schmidt 1995.

  35. Needham and Wang 1965, 587–88.

  36. Classic of Mountain and Seas, Birrell 1999, 256.

  37. Recorded in Zizhi Tongjian, the historical chronicle of Chinese history 403 BC to AD 959, compiled in AD 1084. Other ancient myths of flight by men, Cohen 1966, 95–96. See chapter 9 for forced flying punishments of criminals.

  38. Among the ancient texts that discuss Daedalus’s flight are Apollodorus Epitome 1.12–15; Strabo 14.1.19; Lucian Gallus 23; Arrian Anabasis 7.20.5; Diodorus Siculus 4.77; Ovid Metamorphoses 8.183, Heroides 4, Ars Amatoria 2, Tristia 3.4; Hyginus Fabulae 40, Virgil Aeneid 6.14. McFadden 1988.

  CHAPTER 5. DAEDALUS AND THE LIVING STATUES

  1. Daedalus and Sardinia, Morris 1992, 202–3, 207–9; Diodorus Siculus 4.30; Pausanias 10.17.4. Tools, Vulpio 2012. The Nuragic iron compass is in Sanna Museum, Sassari, Sardinia.

  2. Diodorus Siculus 4.78. See Morris 1992 for all the inventions attributed to Daedalus.

  3. Blakemore 1980.

  4. Michaelis 1992. Ayrton 1967, 179–84. Ayrton’s controversial modernist sculpture of the bronze robot Talos stands guard on Guildhall Street, Cambridge, UK.

  5. Honeycomb building blocks, Marconi 2009. Marcus Terentius Varro’s conjecture, in On Agriculture, was proven by Hales 2001.

  6. Lane Fox 2009, 190.

  7. The shell and ant: Zenobius Cent. 4.92; also mentioned in Sophocles’s lost play The Camicians, Athenaeus 3.32.

  8. For Daedalus’s time in Sicily, Morris 1992, 193–210. Apollodorus Epitome 1.14–15; Herodotus 7.169–70. Diodorus Siculus 4.78–79 gives a slightly different version of the events.

  9. Apollodorus Library 3.15.8; Diodorus Siculus 1.97, 4.76–77; Pliny 36.9; Pausanias 1.21.4; Ovid Metamorphoses 8.236; Plutarch Theseus 19. This Athenian Talos is sometimes called Kalos or Perdix. Some versions say the saw was modeled on a fish spine. Daedalus in Athens, Morris 1992, 215–37; folding chair, 249–50; Talos grave, 260. There is no ancient account of the death of Daedalus.

  10. Pseudo-Aristotle On Marvelous Things Heard 81; Stephanus of Byzantium s.v. Daedalus; Diodorus Siculus 1.97; Scylax Periplus; Pausanias 2.4.5 and 9.40.3. Daedalus statues, Donohue 1988, 179–83.

  11. Bremmer 2013, 10–11. Several ancient accounts tell of statues of gods that were bound or fettered. Lucian Philopseudes (second century AD) satirizes beliefs in animated statues that arise at night to bathe, sing, wander, and foil thieves; Felton 2001. Vase paintings of animated statues coming to life on buildings, Marconi 2009.

  12. Morris 1992, 30–31, 221–25, 360.

  13. Socrates on Daedalus, Morris 1992, 234–37; 258–89 for the Attic deme Daedalidae; Daedalus in Athens, 257–68. Kang 2011, 19–21, Socrates’s statement shows that automata were viewed as slaves in antiquity. Cf. Walton 2015, a science-fiction novel set in a “utopia” based on Plato’s Republic, in which Socrates discovers that the robot-slaves, used as tools, turn out to have consciousness and a desire for freedom.

  14. Bryson 2010; Lin 2015; “AI in Society: The Unexamined Mind” 2018.

  15. Semen as the liquid that animates an embryo, Leroi 2014, 199. Quote, Berryman 2009, 72.

  16. Keyser and Irby-Massie 2008, s.v. Demokritos of Abdera, 235–36. Kris and Kurz 1979, 67–68. Leroi 2014, 79–80, 199–200; Kang 2011, 19–20 (erroneously claims that Aristotle attributed statues’ movement to mercury), 98, 117–18. Berryman 2009, 26, 37, 75; noting that Aristotle uses the mercury analogy to criticize atomist theory. Morris 1992, 224–25, 232–33; Donohue 1988, 165–66, 179–83; Steiner 2001, 118–19. Semen, Hersey 2009, 69–71, 100. Democritus also studied magnets, Blakely 2006, 141 and n24.

  17. James and Thorpe 1994, 131. Ali 2016, 473.

  18. Blakely 2006, 16, 25, 159, 215–26.

  19. Bremmer (2013) traces the chronological history and ancient sources for statues “with agency,” 13–15 on sweating, weeping, and bleeding statues. See also Poulsen 1945, 182–84; Donohue 1988; Cohen 1966, 26 n26; Felton 2001; Van Wees 2013.

  20. For contradictions in the artistic arguments, see Morris 1992, 240–56. Felton 2001, 79–80.

  21. Berryman 2009, 27–28, original italics; it seems “very unlikely” that “mechanistic conceptions” could have developed “prior to the existence of mechanics as a discipline,” 22. Some real devices invented before the time of Aristotle, such as catapults, voting machines, and wine and olive presses, could have inspired machine analogies. Cf. Francis 2009, 6–7.

  22. On ancient Greeks’ innovation and imagination, D’Angour 2011, 139–42. Rogers and Stevens 2015. “At the origin of any creation or invention lie the imagination and the ability to dream,” notes Forte 1988, 50; inventions require the “effort of imagination.”

  23. Simons 1992, 40. Francis 2009. “Where science fiction leads,” paraphrasing “The Next Frontier: When Thoughts Control Machines” 2018, 11.

  24. On aesthetic and philosophical reactions to statues in antiquity, Steiner 2001. On various Greek artists and sculptors of lifelike artworks, see entries in Pollitt 1990. Realistic statues, Spivey 1995.

  25. Haynes 2018. Pliny’s artistic descriptions, books 34–36.

  26. Quintilian Inst. 12.7–9; Lucian Philopseudes 18–20; Felton 2001, 78 and n10.

  27. These examples and many more, in Pliny 34.19.59–35.36.71–96; painted marble, e.g., 35.40.133; the invention of ceramic portraits from shadow profiles of the living, 35.43.151. On artistic phantasias, Pollitt 1990, 222 and n2.

  28. Plaster casts and clay and wax models of living people, Pliny 35.2.6, 35.43.151, and 35.44.153 (incorrectly cited as Pliny 36.44.153 by Konstam and Hoffmann 2004). Parrhasius, Seneca Controversies 10.5. Cf. earlier discussion of the “virtuosity” of the Riace sculptor, Steiner 2001. Kris and Kurz 1979.

  29. Blakely 2006, 141–44, 157. Magnetic lodestone’s properties were known to Thales of Miletus (sixth century BC); magnetism was described in Chinese chronicles, such as Guiguzi (fourth century BC) and Lus
hi Chunqiu (second century BC).

  30. Lowe 2016, 249, 267. Heron of Alexandria devised a continuously hovering hollow sphere over a funnel opening of a closed vessel of boiling water, but the design is nonfeasible for a large statue; James and Thorpe 1994, 134; re-created by Kotsanas 2014, 61. Today, magnetic suspension or levitation (for example, maglev trains) can be achieved only by extremely powerful electromagnetic technologies and with rotation (as with Levitron toys).

  31. Lowe 2016. Examples of floating statues, Rufinus, Historia Ecclesiastica ca. AD 550; Cedrenus, the Byzantine historian, ca. AD 1050, in Synopsis Historion; Nicephorus Callistus Church History 15.8. Stoneman 2008, 119, 261n38.

  32. Claudian, “De Magnete/Lodestone,” Minor Poems 29.22–51. Lowe 2016, 248n6.

  33. The Uncanny Valley effect was first articulated by the Japanese robotics engineer Masahiro Mori in 1970, inspired by attempts to make hyperrealistic prosthetics; Mori 1981 and 2012; Borody 2013; and see also Zarkadakis 2015, 68–73; Kang 2011, 22–24, 34–35, 41–43, 47–55, 207–20; Lin, Abney, and Bekey 2014, 25–26. Wonder, thauma, and wondrous works, thaumata, especially in ancient Greek art, D’Angour 2011, 150–56. On the strong mixed emotions aroused by hyperreal, seemingly animated sculptures in classical antiquity, Marconi 2009. Liu 2011, 201–48. Wonder in Indian automata tales, Ali 2016.

  34. Cohen 2002, 65–66. Cf. Mori 1981 and 2012; Borody 2013, and see also Raghavan 1952. See Liu 2011, 243–46, for discussion of the remarkably similar Chinese tale in the Book of Liezi.

  35. Pollitt 1990, 17; 15–18 for artificial life described in Homer.

  36. O’Sullivan 2000. Aeschylus Theoroi; Euripides Eurystheus; Bremmer 2013, 10–11; Marconi 2009; Morris 1992, 217–37. Faraone 1992, 37–38. Kris and Kurz 1979, 66–67. The “shock of the new” in ancient art, D’Angour 2011, 150–56.

  CHAPTER 6. PYGMALION’S LIVING DOLL AND PROMETHEUS’S FIRST HUMANS

  1. Hesiod Theogony 507–616; Works and Days 42–105. The final play is lost; Prometheus in ancient literature and art, see Gantz 1993, 1:152–66; Glaser and Rossbach 2011; Prometheus in modern arts, Reid 1993, 2:923–37.

  2. Hard 2004, 96. Raggio 1958, 45. Sappho frag. 207 (Servius on Virgil).

  3. Simons 1992, quote 28; from mud metaphor to mechanical engineering metaphors, Zarkadakis 2015, 29–34.

  4. According to Aesop Fables 516, “The clay that Prometheus used was not mixed with water but with tears.” Other sources for Prometheus’s creation of humans include Menander and Philemon, per Raggio 1958, 46; Aristophanes Birds 686; Aesop Fables 515 and 530; Apollodorus Library 1.7.1; Callimachus frag. 1, 8, and 493; Aelian On Animals 1.53; Pausanias 10.4.4; Ovid Metamorphoses 1.82 and 1.363 (Deucalion’s Flood); Horace Odes 1.16.13–16; Propertius Elegies 3.5; Statius Thebaid 8.295; Juvenal Sat. 14.35; Lucian Dialogi deorum 1.1; Hyginus Fabulae 142; Oppian Halieutica 5.4; Suidias (Suda) s.v. Gigantiai. Enlivened by fire: Raggio 1958, 49; Dougherty 2006, 50, citing Servius commentary on Virgil Eclogues 6.42.

  5. Early European travelers visited the ravine: in the eighteenth century Sir William Gell reported that some stones there emitted an odor; in the nineteenth century Colonel Leake found the pair of boulders but discerned no smell; George Frazer noticed reddish earth but no large rocks. See Peter Levi’s note 19 in vol. 1 of 1979 Penguin edition of Pausanias.

  6. Pygmalion myth and ancient statue lust, Hansen 2017, 171–75.

  7. Buddhist tale of a mechanical girl for sex, Lane 1947, 41–42, and Kris and Kurz 1979, 69–70. Ambrosino 2017. Kang (2005) points out the misogynistic impulse in Pygmalion’s creation of a perfect woman and compares modern narratives of female sex robots, which, unlike the ancient myth, have unhappy endings.

  8. Marshall (2017) compares the female replicants of the Blade Runner films to Pygmalion’s creation.

  9. Some interpret Apollodorus Library 3.14.3 to suggest that a son, Paphos, and a daughter, Metharme, were born to Pygmalion’s living statue. Similarly, the plot of Blade Runner 2049 turns on the magical existence of two children, a girl and a boy who is an exact copy, born to the replicant Rachael, who died in childbirth. See chapter 8 for a Roman-era fantasy about the offspring of the ancient replicant female Pandora.

  10. Pygmalion: Ovid Metamorphoses 10.243–97; Heraclides Ponticus (lost work) cited by Hyginus Astronomica 2.42; Hyginus Fabulae 142; Philostephanus of Styrene cited in Clement of Alexandria Protepticus 4; Arnobius Against the Heathen 6.22. Hansen 2004, 276. Hersey 2009, 94. Reception of Pygmalion myth, Grafton, Most, and Settis 2010, 793–94; Wosk 2015.

  11. Raphael 2015, 184–86.

  12. Hersey 2009. “Pygmalionism” differs from statue lust; it requires a lover to mimic a statue and then come to life.

  13. Philostratus Lives of the Sophists 2.18.

  14. Homer Iliad 2.698–702 and commentary at 701 by Eustathius; Apollodorus Epitome 3.30; Ovid Heroides 13.151; Hyginus Fabulae 104; for other ancient sources, see George Frazer’s commentary in the Loeb ed. of Apollodorus Epitome, pp. 200–201n1.

  15. Wood 2002, 138–39. Hersey 2009, 90–97. Athenaeus Learned Banquet 13.601–606; citing the poets Alexis, Adaeus of Mytilene, Philemon, and Polemon. Truitt 2015a, 101.

  16. Scobie and Taylor 1975, 50. Hersey 2009, 132. Cohen 1966, 66–67. Innovations in art evoked awe in antiquity, D’Angour 2011, 148–56. An early prototype is Harmony, a realistic AI sexbot from Abyss Creations, made for sex and “companionship,” Maldonado 2017. On sex robots, see Devlin 2018.

  17. The Tocharian version (sixth to eighth century AD) of a lost Sanskrit text of unknown date, translated by Lane (1947, 41–45). For Hindu and Buddhist automata, see Cohen 2002, 70–71, for discussion of this tale. See also Raghavan 1952; Ali 2016.

  18. Cohen 2002, 69, 71, original italics. On Buddhism and robots, Simons 1992, 29–31; Buddhism and biotechnology, see essay by David Loy in Walker 2000, 48–59; on Buddhism and robots, see Mori 1981 and 2012; Borody 2013. On Chinese Buddhism and replicas, Han 2017. On Buddhist perspectives on robots and AI, see Lin, Abney, and Bekey 2014, 69–83.

  19. Kang 2011, 15–16; Kang does not address the ancient literary and artistic evidence for Prometheus’s construction of the first humans using artisans’ tools and methods.

  20. The differences between Neoplatonism and Christianity were expounded by the Church Father Tertullian, who was active in the third century AD when these sarcophagi were made. Raggio 1958, 46–50 and figs. Tertullian Apologeticum 18.3. Roman mosaic of Prometheus creating the first man, Shahba, Syria, third century AD. Roman sarcophagus showing Prometheus with first man lying at his feet, fourth century AD, Naples museum. See Tassinari 1992 on Neoplatonic, Pythagorean, Orphic, Christian, and Gnostic links to Prometheus as creator.

  21. Simons 1992, 24–28, also contrasts Pygmalion and Prometheus.

  22. I am grateful to Gabriella Tassinari for discussing the difficulties of determining the dates (and authenticity) of the gems in her catalogue and in other museum collections. For each gem discussed and illustrated in this chapter, see the sources for dating cited in Tassinari 1992; 75–76 for Prometheus working on the form of a woman. I thank Erin Brady for providing an English translation of Tassinari’s monograph.

  23. Raggio 1958, 46. Apollodorus Library 1.7.1; Pausanias 10.4.4. Tassinari 1992, 61–62, citing works by Philemon, Menander, Erinna, Callimachus, Apollodorus, Aesop, Ovid, Juvenal, and Horace referring to Prometheus as the creator of man. See chapter 4, on Prometheus’s concerns for the vulnerable human race.

  24. Ambrosini 2014; Richter 2006, 53, 55, 97; Dougherty 2006, 17. De Puma 2013, 283. LIMC 7 (Jean-Robert Gisler). Spier 1992, 70, 87, nos. 144 and 200, for examples and bibliography. Craftsmen and artisans on Etruscan gems, Ambrosini 2014; for artisans working on herms or busts, 182. Larissa Bonfante, per. corr. March 11, 2017. The customers who owned the gems like those in figs. 6.3–6.11 may have been fellow craftsmen taking pride in their craft, Tassarini 1992.

  25. Tassinari 1992, 73–75, 78–80. The antiquity of the gems in figs. 6.3 and 6.4 is not in doub
t.

  26. Gems showing Prometheus assembling the first man are catalogued by Tassinari (1992). Hatched borders, as in figs 6.7 and 6.10, were favored by Etruscan engravers. Richter 2006, 48, 53, 55, on 97 notes that gem no. 437, plate 14, is not a warrior with a mutilated body because the decapitated head and limbs are not included; compare Boston Museum of Fine Arts, third century BC, Etruscan gem acc. no. 23.599, depicting maschalismos, with two warriors with weapons hacking up an enemy’s body. Maschalismos, Tassinari 1992, 72; and De Puma 2013, 280–95, esp. 286, discussion of gem no. 7.100. Ambrosini 2014, 182–85, Etruscan gems depicting sculptors working on herms, busts, and statues of women.

  27. The exceptional imagery of the second type of gems leads some scholars to question whether some could be neoclassical copies. Thanks to Laura Ambrosini, Ulf Hansson, Ingrid Krauskopf, Claire Lyons, Gabriella Tassinari, and Jean Turfa for discussion and bibliography. Martini 1971, 111, cat. no. 167, pl. 32,5; Krauskopf 1995; Ambrosini 2011, 79, no. 5, fig. 126a–c and bib. Tassinari 1992, 81–82.

  28. Carafa 1778, 5–6, plate 23, for the engraving of the first gem with horse and ram; see Scarisbrick, Wagner, and Boardman 2016, 141, fig. 129, for the quoted text, color photos of the gem, ring, and cast, now in the Beverley Gem Collection, Alnwick Castle, United Kingdom. See also Tassinari 1992, 78–79. Skeletons rare in art, Dunbabin 1986.

  29. The dates of figs. 6.7 and 6.10 are unresolved (numbers 63 and 54, respectively, in Tassinari 1992 catalogue; figs. 6.8 and 6.10 were not analyzed by Tassinari in 1992; fig. 6.11 (number 59 in Tassinari 1992) is certainly ancient. Thanks to Gabriella Tassinari, personal communications, January–February 2018.

  30. Richey 2011, quote 194, 195–96, 202–3; Needham 1991, 2:53–54; Liu 2011, 243–44. Cf. Ambrosino 2017 on the innards of cyborg humanoids.