Gods and Robots

by Adrienne Mayor

  31. Mattusch 1975, 313–15.

  32. Mattusch 1975, 313–15; Aristotle History of Animals 515a34–b; cf. Generation of Animals 743a2 and 764b29–31; Parts of Animals 654b29–34. See De Groot 2008 on Aristotle and mechanics. Cf. Berryman 2009, 72–74, who argues that Aristotle’s language is not mechanistic.

  33. Cohen 2002, 69. On free will, see Harari 2017, 283–85.

  34. The pioneer of Artificial Intelligence, Alan Turing, devised a test in 1951 to reveal whether a machine is sentient, Zarkadakis 2015, 48–49, 312–13. See also Cohen 1963 and 1966, 131–42; Mackey 1984; Berryman 2009, 30; Kang 2011, 168–69. Since Turing, other AI-human tests have been developed: Boissoneault 2017. Paranoid sci-fi themes of androids and false selfhood, Zarkadakis 2015, xv, 53–54, 70–71, 86–87.

  35. Boissoneault 2017; Zarkadakis 2015, 36–38, 112–15.

  36. Mackey 1984; Gray 2015; Mendelsohn 2015; Shelley 1831 [1818]; Weiner 2015; Cohen 1966; Harari 2017.

  37. Dougherty 2006. Note that this Athenian torch race honoring Prometheus had nothing to do with the ancient Olympic Games. The modern Olympic torch relay was introduced by the Nazis for the Berlin Olympics, 1936.

  38. Raggio 1958, e.g., 50–53. Reception of Prometheus, see Grafton, Most, and Settis 2010, 785.

  39. Godwin’s Lives of the Necromancers was published in 1834. Galvanism experiments and Shelley’s other influences: Zarkadakis 2015, 38–40; Hersey 2009, 106, 146–50; Kang 2011, 218–22. Zarkadakis 2015, 63–66. Frightening robots figure in E.T.A. Hoffman’s German short stories from Shelley’s time, “The Automata” (1814) and “The Sandman” (1816) about a wax automaton named Olympia: Cohen 1966, 61–62.

  40. Florescu 1975. A striking feature of the 1931 Karloff monster, the two metal bolts on his neck representing crude electrodes, placed on his jugular veins, bringing to mind the placement of the metal bolt on the ankle of the bronze robot Talos (chapter 1). See chapter 9 for the primitive electrical “Baghdad batteries.” Kant, “The Modern Prometheus,” Rogers and Stevens 2015, 3, and on Shelley’s Frankenstein, 1–4. Weiner 2015, 46–74.

  41. Prometheus making the first humans was a favored theme in “antiquarian” neoclassical gems carved by European craftsmen in the seventeenth to nineteenth century, collected by Tassie and Prince Poniatowski; Tassinari 1996.

  42. Shelley and Lucan: Weiner 2015, 48–51, 64–70; Lucan Civil War 6.540–915. On Egyptian demotic tales of necromancy, Mansfield 2015. On mechanical motion eliciting the Uncanny Valley reaction, Zarkadakis 2015, 69; Mori 2012.

  43. Shelley 1831. Raggio 1958. Quote, Simons 1992, 27–28. Rogers and Stevens 2015, 1–5.

  44. Hyginus Astronomica 2.15, Fabulae 31, 54, 144.

  45. David-Neel 1959, 84.

  46. Tales of artificial flying birds appear in ancient Hindu and Mongolian literature too, including a pair of mechanical swans (yantrahamsa) “programmed” to steal royal jewels and a legendary Garuda bird that was “steered by pins and pegs.” Cohen 2002, 67–69.

  CHAPTER 7. HEPHAESTUS: DIVINE DEVICES AND AUTOMATA

  1. For the smith god in ancient literature and art, Gantz 1993, 1:74–80. Hephaestus’s father was Zeus according to Homer, but he had no father according to Hesiod. For the works of Hephaestus, Pollitt 1990, 15–18. Prosthetic limbs and replacement body parts as artificial human enhancements, chapter 4. Zarkadakis 2015, 79–80.

  2. Paipetis 2010 and Vallianatos 2017. On the vivid, kinetic descriptions of Achilles’s shield in Homer, in which an “impossible” object is described with hyperrealism and movement, see Francis 2009, 6–13. See also Kalligeropoulos and Vasileiadou 2008.

  3. Homer Iliad 18.136, 18.368–72, 19.23. “Artificial world,” Raphael 2015, 182.

  4. Francis 2009, 11–13.

  5. Bronze cuirasses and greaves with delineated musculature were used from the sixth century BC on, with many examples recovered from archaeological excavations. Steiner 2001, 29. Other warrior cultures, such as Rome, India, and Japan, also wore anatomical cuirasses.

  6. On a fresco from Pompeii, first century AD, Hephaestus, surrounded by tools and half-finished projects, shows Thetis the shield he has made for Achilles.

  7. Homer Iliad 5.745–50; Mendelsohn 2015, 1.

  8. The net, Homer Odyssey 8.267ff. Hera’s special chair in literature and art, Gantz 1993, 1:75–76.

  9. Argus Panoptes: Hesiod Aegimius frag. 5. Apollodorus Library 2.1.2; Ovid Metamorphoses 1.264. Many-eyed Argus appears on a red-figure hydria, fifth century BC, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Lefkowitz 2003, 216–17 fig. Argus Painter name vase, stamnos, 500–450 BC, Vienna Kunsthistorisches Museum 3729; Meleager Painter krater, 400 BC, Ruvo Museo Jatta 36930; another double-headed Argus, black-figure amphora, 575–525 BC, British Museum B164. The Pan Painter vase with janiform head and eyes: Misailidou-Despotidou 2012.

  10. Soldiers and sleep: Lin 2012, 2015; Lin et al. 2014.

  11. On modern “black box” technology inscrutable to users and makers, see introduction and Knight 2017.

  12. Apollodorus Epitome 5.15–18. LIMC 3,1:813–17. According to Bonfante and Bonfante 2002, 202, Pecse is the Etruscan name for the Trojan Horse.

  13. Bonfante and Bonfante (2002, 198) suggest that Etule is the Etruscan name for Aetolus, who was confused with his brother Epeius, maker of the Trojan Horse. Metapontum founded by Epeius and his tools displayed in the Temple of Athena: Pseudo-Aristotle On Marvelous Things Heard 840A.108, “in the district called Gargaria, near Metapontum, they say that there is a temple of the Hellenian Athene where the tools of Epeius are dedicated, with which he made the wooden horse. . . . Athena appeared to him in a dream and demanded that he should dedicate the tools to her.” Per Justin 20.2, Metapontum was founded by Epeius, the hero who constructed the wooden horse at Troy; in proof of which the inhabitants showed his tools in the Temple of Athena/Minerva.

  14. De Grummond 2006, 137–38, fig. VI.31. Images of blacksmiths, craftsmen, and Sethlans on Etruscan gems, Ambrosini 2014, 177–81. Plaster or clay molds for bronze casting, Konstam and Hoffmann 2004. Athena making clay horse, Cohen 2006, 110–11. Another vase painting shows Athena constructing the Trojan Horse, kylix by the Sabouroff Painter, fifth century BC, Archaeological Museum, Florence.

  15. Apollodorus Library 2.4.7–7, 3.192; Hyginus Fabulae 189 and Astronomica 2.35; Ovid Metamorphoses 7.690–862; Pausanias 9.19.1.

  16. Pausanias 10.30.2; Antoninus Liberalis Metamorphoses 36 and 41. Telchines and Dactyles associated with animated statues, Blakely 2006, 16, 24, 138, 159, 203, 209, 215–23. Kris and Kurz 1979, 89. Golden Hound versions: Faraone 1992, 18–35; Steiner 2001, 117. See chapter 8 for Pandora, who was made of clay, yet later authors could not resist claiming that she gave birth to offspring. A similar “miracle” is the theme in the 2017 film Blade Runner 2049.

  17. Faraone 1992, 18–19, 29n1. Marconi 2009.

  18. Faraone 1992, 19–23, 13n8. Pharmaka “animates” the statues with a kind of “soul” or life but does not necessarily make them move. Hollow statues as vessels that are vivified by being filled with substances, Steiner 2001, 114–20.

  19. Asimov’s laws, Kang 2011, 302. Future of Life Institute’s Beneficial AI Conference 2017; FLI’s board included Stephen Hawking, Frank Wilczek, Elon Musk, and Nick Bostrom. https://futurism.com/worlds-top-experts-have-created-a-law-of-robotics/. See also Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence: http://lcfi.ac.uk/.

  20. Martinho-Truswell 2018.

  21. Four-wheeled carts, Morris 1992, 10. A small, shallow bronze basin-cart on three wheels, an ancient example of pen, bonsai basin, was excavated in a sixth/fifth century BC archaeological site in China, indicating that the idea of a wheeled tripod was put into practice elsewhere in antiquity, Bagley et al. 1980, 265, 272, color plate 65. Photo and explanation of the replica of Hephaestus’s wheeled tripod, Kotsanas 2014, 70. the museum is in Katakolo, near Pyrgos, Greece: http://kotsanas.com/gb/index.php.

  22. See chapter 9 for more automata in the form of humans and animals made by Philo; for diagr
ams and photos of a working model of the wine servant, Kotsanas 2014, 52–55.

  23. Truitt 2015a, 121–22, plate 27. Badi’ az-Zaman Abu I-Izz ibn ar-Razaz al-Jazari (AD 1136–1206): Zielinski and Weibel 2015, 9.

  24. Homer Iliad 18.360–473. Pasiphae’s cow and the Trojan Horse were also mounted on wheels in literature and art. On Hephaestus, his forge and automata, Paipetis 2010, 95–112.

  25. Diodorus Siculus 9.3.1–3 and 9.13.2; Plutarch Solon 4.1–3.

  26. Berlin Painter, Attic hydria from Vulci, ca. 500–480 BC; the quote comes from the Vatican Museum text, cat. 16568; Beazley archive 201984. The priestess seated on the tripod of the Delphic oracle appears on an Attic kylix by the Kodros Painter, from Vulci, ca. 440 BC, Berlin inv. F 2538.

  27. Hephaestus in the winged chair decorated with crane’s head and tail on an Attic red-figure kylix attributed to the Ambrosios Painter, Berlin 201595, now lost. Triptolemus in his winged chariot with two serpent heads and tails appears in several ancient vase paintings, e.g., a skyphos of about 490–480 BC attributed to Makron, British Museum E140, Beazley 2014683. The Berlin Painter’s stamnos showing Triptolemus in his flying chair, ca. 500–470 BC, is in the Louvre inv. G371; the Berlin Painter’s kylix with Triptolemus is in Museo Gregoriano Etrusco, Vatican Museums. On the winged chairs, see Matheson 1995b, 350–52.

  28. Only a fragment of Pindar’s poem survives, Faraone 1992, 28 and 35n86. Marconi 2009.

  29. Mendelsohn 2015.

  30. Steiner 2001, 117. Francis 2009, 8–10; the Golden Maidens are neither real humans nor inert matter, and so belong in a unique category of being, 9n23.

  31. Raphael 2015, 182. Human-computer interface and thought-controlled machines, Zarkadakis 2015; “The Next Frontier: When Thoughts Control Machines” 2018. The Golden Maidens would appear to be Type III AI; see glossary. On black box dilemmas, see “AI in Society: The Unexamined Mind” 2018.

  32. Mendelsohn 2015. Cf. Paipetis 2010, 110–12.

  33. Big data, AI, and machine learning, Tanz 2016; see also Artificial Intelligence, “general AI,” in the glossary.

  34. “Magic is linked to science in the same way as it is linked to technology. It is not only a practical art, it is also a storehouse of ideas,” Blakely 2006, 212. Maldonado 2017 reports that the sex robot-companion called “Harmony,” made by Realbotix for Abyss Creations, was endowed with a “data dump”: she is programmed with about five million words, the entirety of Wikipedia, and several dictionaries.

  35. Valerius Flaccus Argonautica 1.300–314. Paipetis 2010. LaGrandeur 2013, 5. Homer Odyssey 8.267. In Hindu texts and Sanskrit epics, Vimāna is a flying palace or chariot controlled by the mind. A fleet of intelligent ships controlled by “the mind or minds” figures in The Culture science-fiction series (1987–2012) by Iain M. Banks; thanks to Ingvar Maehle for this reference. The Phaeacian ships appear to be Type III AI; see glossary.

  36. Mansfield 2015, 8–10; Lichtheim 1980, 125–51; and Raven 1983 on magical, realistic, and animated wax figures in Egyptian texts and archaeological examples.

  37. Paipetis 2010, 97–98.

  38. On the ancient human impulse to automate tasks and tools to save labor and improve on human abilities, Martinho-Truswell 2018. The automatic bellows appear to be Type II AI; see glossary.

  39. Aristotle’s comment (1253b29–1254a1) that self-animated devices could perform slave’s work, fitting the “economic” function of robots, suggests that the invention of such devices would abolish slavery. John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) studied Aristotle; it is interesting to compare his statement about automaton workers in On Liberty to Aristotle’s remarks: “Supposing it were possible to get houses built, corn grown, battles fought, causes tried, and even churches erected and prayers said, by machinery—by automatons in human form,” writes Mill. It would be a shame to replace with automatons “the men and women who at present inhabit the more civilized parts of the world, and who assuredly are but starved specimens of what nature can and will produce.” After all, “human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it.” It is the nature of living things to “grow and develop,” and humankind should concentrate on “perfecting and beautifying” human beings themselves. Thanks to Ziyaad Bhorat for bringing this passage to my attention. See Walker 2000 for prescient essays on the dangers of newly emerging genetic engineering and biotechnology. See Bryson 2010 for the caution that robots and AI ought to remain “slaves” of humans.

  40. Mendelsohn 2015. LaGrandeur 2013, 9–10. Robota derives from Slavic words for drudgery and medieval servitude, Kang 2011, 279; on robot rebellion, 264–96. Čapek, see Simons 1992, 33. Rogers and Stevens 2015. Walton 2015.

  41. Berryman 2009, 22, 24–27. Berryman’s earlier 2003 paper mentioned Talos.

  42. Truitt 2015a, 3–4, the duties of Hephaestus’s twenty tripods are conflated with those of the golden assistants.

  43. Kang 2011, 15–22.

  CHAPTER 8. PANDORA: BEAUTIFUL, ARTIFICIAL, EVIL

  1. Dolos, trick, snare, trap; Hesiod Theogony 589; Works and Days 83. “Mr. Afterthought,” Faraone 1992, 104.

  2. Pandora in ancient art and literature, Gantz 1992, 1:154–59, 162–65; Hard 2004, 93–95; Shapiro 1994, 64–70; Panofsky and Panofsky 1991; Reeder 1995, 49–56; Glaser and Rossbach 2011. Hesiod Works and Days 45–58 and Theogony 560–71, kalon kakon 585; Aeschylus frag. 204; Hyginus Fabulae 142 and Astronomica 2.15; Sophocles’s lost play Pandora; Babrius Aesop’s Fables 58. Reception of Hesiod and the Pandora myth, Grafton, Most, and Settis 2010, 435–36, 683–84.

  3. Early Christian writings compare Pandora and Eve: Panofsky and Panofsky 1991, 11–13.

  4. Morris 1992, 32–33; Steiner 2001, 25–26, 116–17, 186–90; Francis 2009, 13–16; Brown 1953, 18; Mendelsohn 2015; Lefkowitz 2003, 25–26.

  5. Morris 1992, 30–33, 230–31. Francis 2009, 14.

  6. Steiner 2001, 116, Hesiod in the Theogony presents Pandora as “nothing more than a compilation of her clothing and adornment”; while in Works and Days she is composed of interior attributes as well. Faraone 1992, 101.

  7. Steiner 2001, 191n25. Hesiod’s language and similes “draw attention simultaneously to the vividness and vigor” of this “fabricated living statue” and to the fact that she “is a representation, not the ‘real’ thing. Why use this language” otherwise? Pandora is the “first manufactured identity”; she is “quite literally built . . . not a product of nature.” Francis 2009, 14. Cf. Faraone 1992, 101–2.

  8. Faraone 1992, 102–3, discusses Pandora’s creation as an animated statue. On alternative versions claiming that Prometheus was the maker of the first woman, see Tassinari 1992, 75–76.

  9. On myths describing the Trojan Horse as an animated statue and ancient “tests” to determine whether it and other realistic statues were real or artificial, Faraone 1992, 104–6. Turing test and the like: Kang 2011, 298; Zarkadakis 2015, 48–49, 312–13; Boissoneault 2017.

  10. Hesiod’s poems do not mention offspring. As they did for Pygmalion’s Galatea (see chapter 6), later writers embellished the myth by giving Pandora a daughter by Epimetheus, Pyrrha, wife of Deucalion: Apollodorus Library 1.7.2; Hyginus Fabulae 142; Ovid Metamorphoses 1.350; Faraone 1992, 102–3. No myths recount Pandora’s death. Pandora is “outside the natural cycles”: Steiner 2001, 187.

  11. Raphael 2015, quote 187; compare Steiner 2001, 25. Plato Laws 644e on human agency and chapter 6.

  12. Mendelsohn 2015. Faraone 1992, 101. On the similarities between Pandora and the golden servants of Hephaestus, Francis 2009, 13. Pandora does not speak in any surviving myths.

  13. For ancient representations of Pandora in Italy, Boardman 2000.

  14. Reeder 1995, 284–86.

  15. Gantz 1993, 1:163–64; Shapiro 1994, 69; Neils 2005, 38–39. Satyrs with hammers, Polygnotus Group vase, Matheson 1995a, 260–62. Penthesilea Painter vase, Boston Museum of Fine Arts 01.8032.

  16. Neils 2005, 39. The sown army of automaton soldiers a
lso rose from the earth, chapter 4.

  17. Gantz 1993, 1:157–58 and n12; Mommsen in CVA Berlin V, pp. 56–59, Tafel 43, 3–4, and Tafel 47, 6, citing Panofka. Thanks to David Saunders for valuable discussion of this vase. For Etruscan gems depicting Prometheus or Hephaestus working on a small female figure in their laps, see Tassinari 1992, 75–76.

  18. Reeder 1995, 281 (quote); 279–81.

  19. Shapiro 1994, 66.

  20. Steiner 2001, 116–17.

  21. As far as I know, this intriguing border pattern on the Niobid and Ruvo kraters has not been noticed by scholars. The British Museum calls it a “dart and lotus” design; others have referred to a slightly similar motif as “Lesbian kyma.” A variation of this design appears on the volute kraters Naples H2421 and Bologna 16571 attributed to the Boreas Painter, ca. 480 BC. The design on the Niobid Painter’s Pandora vase appears to more strongly represent blacksmith’s tongs or an artisan’s compass (fabled to have been invented by Daedalus or his nephew Talos). Some also point out that it could represent a blacksmith’s bellows. I thank Bob Durrett, Steven Hess, Fran Keeling, David Meadows, and David Saunders for discussing this border design with me.

  22. Shapiro 1994, 67. The frieze below Pandora on the Niobid Painter’s vase depicts dancing satyrs, suggesting an association with Sophocles’s lost satyr play about Pandora. See also Reeder 1995, 282–84. Pandora holds a wreath or leafy branch in each hand.

  23. The Geta Vase is in Agrigento, Sicily; the Niobid massacre krater is in the Louvre.

  24. Rarity and meaning of frontal faces and emotions on vases, Korshak 1987; Csapo 1997, 256–57; Hedreen 2017, 163 and n17.

  25. The archaic smile appears on the face of a dying warrior on the Temple of Aphaia, Aegina, Greece, and on the face of Antiope being abducted by Theseus, Temple of Apollo, Eretria.

  26. The screenplay was written by Lang and his wife, Thea von Harbrou, based on her novel of 1924. Simons 1992, 185; Dayal 2012; Kang 2011, 288–95; Zarkadakis 2015, 50–51.

  27. The female robot in Metropolis is capable of becoming a simulacrum of Maria. The actress Brigitte Helm was born in 1906; filming began in 1925.