Gods and Robots

by Adrienne Mayor

  28. Description of the evil fembot, by the actor who played the “mad scientist,” Klein-Rogge 1927.

  29. Shapiro 1994, 65.

  30. Harrison 1999, 49–50.

  31. The Pergamon copy of Phidias’s Athena and base is in the Pergamon Museum, Berlin. The small replica, the Lenormant Athena and base, is in the National Archaeological Museum, Athens. Other small Roman copies also exist. Fragments of the marble Pandora frieze and “strange” smiling woman’s head: Neils 2005, 42–43, fig. 4.13.

  32. Pandora’s pithos was metal, not earthenware: Neils 2005, 41. Pandora myth in postclassical art and literature: Panofsky and Panofsky 1991, mistranslation, 14–26. Pandora in the arts: Reid 1993, 2:813–17.

  33. In later variants of the story, the forbidden jar comes into Epimetheus’s possession by other means or is opened by him instead of Pandora, e.g., in Philodemus, first century BC, and Proclus, fifth century AD, Panofsky and Panofsky 1991, esp. 8 and nn11–12.

  34. Neils 2005, 40. This pair of pithoi reflects the dual positive and ominous uses of large jars in antiquity, for storing food and other vital commodities and as coffins for burying poor folk. Confusingly, two writers of the sixth century BC, Theognis frag. 1.1135 and Aesop Fables 525 and 526/Babrius 58, claimed that Pandora brought Zeus’s jar of blessings to earth and that Elpis/Hope was a positive thing in that urn; see discussion below.

  35. British Museum 1865,0103.28: Neils 2005, 38–40 and figs. 4.1–2 and 4.6–8. LIMC 3, s.v. Elpis, no. 13; Reeder 1995, 51 fig. 1–4.

  36. Neils 2005, 41–42.

  37. The Early Christian Father Origen (b. AD 185) found the pagan myth of Pandora “laugh-provoking,” Panofsky and Panofsky 1991, 12–13; see 7n12 for Macedonius Consul’s cynical epigram (sixth century AD) that begins, “I smile when I look at Pandora’s jar.”

  38. Harrison 1986, 116; Neils 2005, 43.

  39. Gantz 1993, 1:157. Aesop (Fables 525 and 526, early sixth century BC) wrote that a jar of Good Things had been entrusted to mankind by Zeus, “but man had no self-control and he opened the jar—all the Good Things flew out.” They were chased away by the stronger evils in the world, and flew back up to Olympus to reside with the gods. Now they are doled out to humans one at a time, to “escape notice of the Evil Things which are ever-present. Hope remained in the jar, however, the one Good Thing left to humankind to console them with the promise of the Good Things we have lost.” In the late sixth century BC, Theognis (Elegies) tells a similar tale, remarking that hope was the “only deity left on earth, for the rest have flown.” Aesop and Theognis agree with Hesiod that Hope alone stayed behind, and they view Hope in a positive light.

  40. Fairy-tale versions, Panofsky and Panofsky 1991, 110–11. Aristotle On Memory 1.449b25–28.

  41. According to Plato (Gorgias 523a), it was Zeus who told Prometheus to deprive men of the foreknowledge of death. In Protagoras 320c–322a, Plato refers indirectly to Epimetheus’s mistake.

  42. Thanks to Josiah Ober for help in setting up a standard two-by-two, four-box matrix with rows designated “good” and “evil” and columns “activated” and “unactivated.” For various modern opinions, see, e.g., Hansen 2004, 258; Lefkowitz 2003, 233.

  43. Ethical challenges of advancing robotics and AI technologies: Lin, Abney, and Bekey 2014, 3–4, the qualms about automata and human enhancement via technology have very deep roots, going back to antiquity, already posing concerns that would anticipate the “cautionary tales” in modern literature “about insufficient programming, emergent behavior, errors, and other issues that make robots unpredictable and potentially dangerous”; 362, “The mere uttering of the word ‘robot’ opens up a Pandora’s box of images, myths, wishes, illusions, and hopes, which humanity has, over centuries, applied to automata.”

  44. Compare the evil robot Tik-Tok in Sladek 1983. The premise of the android-hosted amusement park of the Westworld TV series is that human guests may indulge their darkest fantasies upon the bodies of the androids, whose programming prevents them from harming humans.

  CHAPTER 9. BETWEEN MYTH AND HISTORY: REAL AUTOMATA AND LIFELIKE ARTIFICES IN THE ANCIENT WORLD

  1. “Black box” technology, Knight 2017. “Relative modernism,” Bosak-Schroeder 2016.

  2. Berryman 2009, 69–75. James and Thorpe 1994, 200–225. Marsden 1971. Heron of Alexandria acknowledged that some of his automata mechanisms were related to catapults; Ruffell 2015–16.

  3. On links between ruthless tyrants and devices, see Amedick 1998, 498.

  4. D’Angour 1999, 25; a jocular article juxtaposing historical evidence for human flight with representations in ancient comedy and fiction.

  5. Sappho’s supposed suicide at the Leucadian cliff was first suggested in the late fourth century BC by the comic playwright Menander (frag. 258 K).

  6. Book of Sui (AD 636), Needham and Wang 1965, 587; Zizhi Tongjian 167 (AD 1044) in abridgment by Ronan 1994, 285. History of the Northern Dynasties 19. James and Thorpe 1994, 104–7 on man-bearing kites and parachutes. Yuan Hangtou survived but was executed.

  7. Lucian Phalaris. Phalaris’s reputation for cruelty: Aristotle Politics 5.10; Rhetoric 2.20. Pindar Pythian 1; Polyaenus Stratagems 5.1; Polybius 12.25. Kang 2011, 94–95. Phalaris’s sadism was exaggerated by the early Christian writer Tatian, b. AD 120, who claimed that Phalaris devoured infants (Address to the Greeks 34).

  8. Diodorus Siculus 9.18–19. Plutarch Moralia 315. Lucian Phalaris.

  9. Plutarch Moralia 315c–d, 39, citing Callimachus Aetia (fourth century BC, known only from fragments, and Aristeides of Miletus’s Italian History book 4 (lost). See also Stobaeus Florilegium, fifth century AD. Arruntius’s bronze horse recalls some descriptions of the Trojan Horse, hollow with an opening in the side.

  10. Diodorus Siculus 9.18–19 and 13.90.3–5; Cicero Against Verres 4.33 and Tusculan Disputations 2.7; 5.26, 5.31–33 (death of Phalaris), 2.28

  11. Consularia Caesaraugustana, the chronicle of Zaragoza, Victoris Tunnunnensis Chronicon, ed. Hartmann, Victor 74a, 75a, p. 23, commentary pp. 100–101. For sadistic public displays of roasting birds and animals alive in China, Tang dynasty, for the pleasure of Empress Wu Zetian, see Benn 2004, 130.

  12. Berryman (2009, 29–30) includes the Brazen Bull in the “homunculus”-driven variety of artifices in her classification system. For Indian automata worked by people inside, Cohen 2002, 69.

  13. Faraone 1992, 21. Blakely 2006, 16, 215–23. The Antikythera device is in the National Archaeological Museum, Athens. Iverson 2017.

  14. Faraone 1992, 21, 26. Timaeus in scholia to Pindar Olympian 7.160.

  15. A drawing of the stentorophonic tube is preserved in the Vatican Museums; see Kotsanas 2014, 83. Stoneman 2008, 121, Aristotle tells Alexander about the “pneumatic horn of Yayastayus,” the Horn of Themistius, a “war organ” believed to have been invented ca. AD 800–1100, perhaps powered by pneumatics or hydraulics.

  16. Musical automata: Zielinski and Weibel 2015, 49–99. Pollitt 1990, 89.

  17. Cohen 1966, 21–22 and n20; other speaking statues, 18–24. Chapuis and Droz 1958, 23–24.

  18. Cohen 1966, 15–16. Philostratus Life of Apollonius of Tyana 6.4; Imagines 1.7. “The Sounding Statue of Memnon” 1850.

  19. Cohen 1966, 24; McKeown 2013, 199; LaGrandeur 2013, 22. Himerius Orations 8.5 and 62.1.

  20. Oleson 2009, 785–97 for Greek and Roman automata. Poulsen 1945; Felton 2001, 82–83.

  21. Frood 2003; Keyser 1993, for experiments, diagrams, and photos. The theory that the batteries were used to electroplate silver has been discarded. Thanks to Sam Crow for pointing out that if thin wires once existed, they may have corroded away.

  22. Brunschwig and Lloyd 2000, Archytas: 393, 401, 403, 406, 926–27, 932–33; ancient mechanics: 487–94. Keyser and Irby-Massie 2008, 161–62; D’Angour 2003, 108, 127–28, 180–82.

  23. Chirping bird devices: Kotsanas 2014, 51 and 69. Sources for Archytas: Aristotle Politics 8.6.1340b25–30; Horace Odes 1.28; D’Angour 2003, 180–82, ;
Plutarch Marcellus 14.5–6. Diogenes Laertius 8.83; Aulus Gellius Attic Nights 10.12.9–10; Vitruvius On Architecture 1.1.17; 7.14. Berryman 2009, 58 and n14, 95 n159 (Aristotle and Archytas); 87–96, Berryman speculates that the “dove” was a nickname for a catapult or projectile, but neither would account for the “current of air and weights” said to propel the flying device. Aulus Gellius’s source, Favorinus, a philosopher and historian who was also a friend of Plutarch, wrote nearly thirty works, most known from fragments.

  24. See Brunschwig and Lloyd 2000, 933; D’Angour 2003, 181. Huffman 2003, 82–83, 570–78 (dove); for a working aerodynamic replica of Archytas’s Dove using a pig’s bladder and compressed air or steam, see Kotsanas 2014, 145. The Dove is placed in the category of “mythic self-moving devices of human creation” by Kang 2011, 16–18.

  25. Aristotle Politics 5.6.1340b26; Huffman 2003, 303–7 (clapper).

  26. Plutarch Demetrius.; Diogenes Laertius 1925b78.

  27. Demochares’s history of his times is lost but quoted by Polybius 12.13. D’Angour 2011, 164. Berryman 2009, 29–30.

  28. Koetsier and Kerle 2015, fig. 2a and b. The Giant Snail and problems with Rehm’s theory, see Ian Ruffell’s University of Glasgow blog post “Riding the Snail,” March 31, 2016, http://classics.academicblogs.co.uk/riding-the-snail/.

  29. Snails in Greek folklore, Hesiod Works and Days 571; Plautus Poen. 531; Plutarch Moralia 525e. Donkeys (asses): Homer Iliad 11.558; Simonides 7.43–49; Plautus Asinaria; Apuleius Golden Ass; etc.

  30. Diodorus Siculus frag. 27.1.

  31. Polybius 13.6–8; Apega 18.17; also 4.81, 16.13, 21.11. Sage 1935. Pomeroy (2002, 89–90 and n51) accepts authenticity of account, 152.

  32. Aristotle Constitution of Athens, describes the kleroterion; for a surviving example, Dow 1937. Demetrius and Mithradates’s attempt to surpass him in 88 BC, Mayor 2010, 179–83. Ancient military technology: Aeneas Tacticus; Philo of Byzantium; Berryman 2009, 70–71; Cuomo 2007; Hodges 1970, 145–53, 183–84; Marsden 1971. Archimedes, Plutarch Marcellus 14–18; Brunschwig and Lloyd 2000, 544–53; Keyser and Irby-Massie 2008, 125–28.

  33. Mayor 2010, 182, 291–92, 193–94. Kotsanas 2014, deus ex machina model, 101.

  34. Koetsier and Kerle 2015.

  35. Keyser 2016 on the date of the Grand Procession, marriage to Arsinoe II, and the reliability of Callixenus’s account, based on Accounts of the Penteterides.

  36. Koetsier and Kerle 2015. Athenaeus Learned Banquet 11.497d; Keyser and Irby-Massie 2008, 496.

  37. Philo, Ctesibius, Heron: Hodges 1970, 180–84. Neither Ctesibius nor Philo of Byzantium receives notice in Minsoo Kang’s “historical study of the automaton” as a working object and concept in the European imagination. The unparalleled Nysa automaton is relegated to a footnote, and Demetrius’s Great Snail and the deadly Apega “robot” of Sparta are also omitted from Kang’s categories of actual mechanical automata of human design in antiquity: Kang 2011, 16–18, 332n66 (Nysa); 1. Sylvia Berryman (2009, 116) briefly mentions the possibility that Ctesibius made the Nysa automaton.

  38. Zielinski and Weibel 2015, 20–47; Truitt 2015a, 4, 19; Keyser and Irby-Massie 2008, 684–56.

  39. Huffman 2003, 575; Philo Pneumatics 40, 42. Diagram of the bird-and-snake assemblage, James and Thorpe 1994, 117. For working models of bronze and wood and explanations of the serving woman, the bird and owl, and the Pan and dragon, see Kotsanas 2014, 51–55.

  40. Heron: Woodcroft 1851; Keyser and Irby-Massie 2008, 384–87. Ruffell 2015–16.

  41. Working models and explanation of the Heracles-and-dragon mechanism, and the automatic theater, James and Thorpe 1994, 136–38; Kotsanas 2014, 58 and 71–75. Anderson 2012 (the first programmable device is often said to be the Jacquard loom of 1800). Berryman 2009, 30 citing Heron Automata 4.4.4. Huffman 2003, 575. Kang (2011) includes Heron’s works in his third category of actually constructed automata, 16.

  42. Ruffell 2015–16; for more 3-D re-creations and explanations of Heron’s self-moving artifices, see the Heron of Alexandria/Automaton Project directed by Ian Ruffell and Francesco Grillo at the University of Glasgow. http://classics.academicblogs.co.uk/heros-automata-first-moves/.

  43. Medieval Islamic and European automata: Brunschwig and Lloyd 2000, 410, 490–91, 493–94. Zielinski and Weibel 2015, 20–21; James and Thorpe 1994, 138–40; Truitt 2015a, 18–20. By the tenth century, Arabic translations of the automata designs of Greek inventors such as Philo and Heron were adapted in India; Ali 2016, 468. Strong 2004, 132n17.

  44. Needham 1986; 4:156–63 and throughout, on the history of Chinese mechanical engineering and automatic devices. As Forte (1988, 11) points out, not all mechanical innovations in China were transmitted from Europe; some arose from what Needham termed “diffusion stimulus.” South-pointing chariot, James and Thorpe 1994, 140–42.

  45. Tang inventions, Benn 2004, 52, 95–96, 108–9, 112, 143–44, 167, 271. Empress Wu Zetian’s ambition to outdo Asoka: Strong 2004, 125 and n6 sources. Empress Wu was also called Wu Zhao.

  46. Keay 2011, 69 and n19, citing R. K. Mookerji, in History and Culture of the Indian People, 2:28. Mookerji describes the armored war chariot with whirling clubs or blades as like a “tank”; Keay calls it a “robot” swinging a club; others compare the “machine” to a scythed chariot with spinning blades attached to the wheels.

  47. Strong 2004, 124–38. Keay 2011, 78–100; Ali 2016, 481–84.

  48. Strong 2004, 132–38; Pannikar 1984; there are other versions in Cambodian and Thai. Higley 1997, 132–33. Cohen 2002. Zarkadakis 2015, 34. “Drew on a rich store of legends,” Ali (2016, 481–84) discusses the legend and the date and sources of the Lokapannatti.

  49. Strong 2004, 132–33. In some versions, the engineer is beheaded by the robot assassin sent to kill Asoka, Higley 1997, 132–33, and Pannikar 1984.

  50. Cohen 2002, 73–74. It is assumed that the Lokapannatti story was solely influenced by later Byzantine and early medieval automata. For the history of automata and elaborate mechanical wonders, comparable to the fabulous Byzantine “Throne of Solomon,” in early medieval India, see Ali 2016, esp. 484 on the circulation of techne, and Brett 1954 on the automated Throne of Solomon.

  51. Ali 2016, 484.

  52. Greco-Buddhist syncretism, McEvilley 2001; Boardman 2015.

  53. Asoka and Hellenistic rulers, Hinuber 2010, 263 (Megasthenes). Megasthenes Indica fragments; Arrian Indica 10. Megasthenes and Deimachus were envoys to Mauryan emperor Chandragupta and his son; Dionysius was Ptolemy’s envoy to Asoka. See Arrian Anabasis 5; Pliny 6.21; Strabo 2.1.9–14; 15.1.12.

  54. Keay 2011, 78–100; McEvilley 2000, esp. 367–70; on Indian technology, 649 and n19. On Asoka’s envoys to Hellenistic rulers, Jansari 2011.

  55. Legge 1965, 79. Animated Buddhist statues and carts in China, Needham 1986, 159–60, 256–57. On miracle tales of animated Buddhist statues, Wang 2016.

  56. Rotating attendants, Needham 1986, 159. Wrathful Vajrapani, Wang 2016, 32 and 27. Daoxuan, Strong 2004, 187–89. Dudbridge 2005. Daoxuan’s sacred technology and descriptions of the utopian Jetavana monastery automata in India, Forte 1988, 38–50nn86 and 92; 49–50, one cannot know whether Daoxuan was describing real automata of India that he had heard or read about, but Empress Wu apparently wished to construct physical replicas of those wonders in her shrines.

  57. Hsing and Crowell 2005, esp. 118–23. Greek-Indian influences, Boardman 2015, 130–99; Heracles in Buddhist art, 189, 199, figs 116, 118, 122. Relief panel of Heracles in lion skin with sword: British Museum 1970,0718.1.

  58. Simons 1992, 29–32. Mori 1981 and 2012. Borody 2013. Han 2017.

  59. Borody 2013. Thanks to Ruel Macraeg for telling me about Mazinger Z and 18 Bronzemen and thanks to Sage Adrienne Smith for telling me about the ancient robots in Laputa: Castle in the Sky. “Whistlefax” robot by Glorbes (B. Ross), Fwoosh Forums November 13, 2007, http://thefwoosh.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=12823&start=4380.

  60. Berryman 2009, 28 original italics. D’Angour
2011, 62–63, 108–9, 127, 128–33, 180–81.

  61. Zarkadakis 2015, xvii, 305.

  EPILOGUE. AWE, DREAD, HOPE: DEEP LEARNING AND ANCIENT STORIES

  1. An earlier version of parts of this epilogue appeared in Aeon, May 16, 2016. On love/hate responses to AI, Zarkadakis 2015.

  2. Microsoft’s Tay and Zo, Kantrowitz 2017; human bias in AI, Bhorat 2017. Tay’s debut and demise: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/03/24/microsofts-teen-girl-ai-turns-into-a-hitler-loving-sex-robot-wit/.

  3. Raytheon: http://www.raytheon.com/news/feature/artificial_intelligence.html.

  4. Hawking quote, Scheherazade: Flood 2016. http://www.news.gatech.edu/2016/02/12/using-stories-teach-human-values-artificial-agents. http://realkm.com/2016/01/25/teaching-ai-to-appreciate-stories/. Summerville et al. 2017, 9–10. Scheherazade: R. Burton, trans. and intro by A. S. Byatt. Arabian Nights, One Thousand and One Nights.

  5. Zarkadakis 2015, 27, 305. Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence “AI Narrative” project, http://lcfi.ac.uk/projects/ai-narratives/.

  6. “Dawn of RoboHumanity”: Popcorn 2016,112–13.

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  ANCIENT GREEK AND LATIN TEXTS ARE AVAILABLE

  IN TRANSLATION IN THE LOEB CLASSICAL LIBRARY

  OR ONLINE, UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED.

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