Gods and Robots. Myths, Machines, and Ancient Dreams of Technology

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 NOTES 

CHAPTER 1. THE ROBOT AND THE WITCH: TALOS AND MEDEA

1. Apollonius Argonautica 4.1635– 88; Apollonius (Hunter trans.) 2015, 6, 298– 304.
   The Greek word automaton, “acting of one’s own will,” was first used in Homer Iliad
   5.749 and 18.371- 80 to describe the automatic door opening and automatic wheeled
   tripods built by Hephaestus for the gods; see chapter 7. Hound and javelin, Ovid
   Metamorphoses 7.661- 862.


2. On the “slippery” terms robot and automaton for an ancient “object constructed to
   move on its own,” see glossary; cf. Bosak- Schroder (2016, 123, 130– 31), who argues
   that the earliest automata in Greek literature were originally imagined as solely
   magical and only later attained mechanical life. The idea of automated tools that
   can finish a task without continued human input, along with the impulse to make
   them, is very ancient, beginning with the Stone Age atlatl (spear thrower) and the
   bow and arrow. Once the arrow is nocked, aimed, and released, the bow fires “this
   little spear further, straighter, and more consistently than human muscles ever
   could,” remarks Martinho- Truswell (2018).


3. For a classicist’s perspectives on Harryhausen’s Talos: Winkler 2007, 462– 63.


4. Hesiod Works and Days 143– 60. In Hesiod’s poem, the “Age of Bronze” was a sym-
   bolic chronology of the warlike Bronze Age generations that preceded present- day
   Iron Age humans; Apollonius’s poetic license makes the men of that age literally
   of bronze. Gantz 1993, 1:153. There was also a legendary Athenian inventor named
   Talos; see chapter 5. Various genealogies of Talos: Buxton 2013, 77– 79.


5. Ancient Colchis is now the Republic of Georgia. “Medea’s oil,” Suda s.v. Medea.


6. Apollodorus Library 1.9.26; Apollonius Argonautica 3.400– 1339.


7. Medea’s technai, devices: Pindar Pythian 4.


8. Another version of Medea and her relationships with Jason and the Argonauts:
   Diodorus Siculus 4.45– 48. Motif of heroes’ and monsters’ sole vulnerability, Buxton
   2013, 88– 94.


9. Colossus of Rhodes, Pliny 34.18; Strabo 14.2.5. N. F. Rieger in Ceccerelli 2004, 69–
   86. Centuries earlier, Rhodes was also famous for its “living statues”; see chapters
   5 and 9.


10. Why people tend to attribute life to machines and Artificial Intelligence, Bryson
    and Kime 2011; Shtulman 2017, 138; Zarkadakis 2015, 19– 23, 25– 27. Trust and
    empathy in human- robot interactions: Darling, Nandy, and Breazeal 2015; Lin,
    Abney, and Bekey 2014, 25– 26; and Lin, Jenkins, and Abney 2017, chapters 7– 12.