180 Chapter 9
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 Mediter-
ranean 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 se-
lected 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 seduc-
tive 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 tyranni-
cal rulers used wickedly clever contraptions and artifices that mim-
icked nature to humiliate, harm, torture, or even kill their subjects and
enemies. 3