196 Chapter 9
After the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BC, Rome was in turmoil.
Marc Antony delivered the dramatic funeral oration over the bier in
which Caesar’s ravaged corpse lay out of sight. The historian Appian
(Civil Wars 2.20.146– 47) described the effects of the speech on the
populace. Declaiming “in a kind of divine frenzy” and carried away by
“extreme passion,” Marc Antony grabbed a spear and with the point
lifted the robe from Caesar’s body and held it aloft so all could see the
bloodstained cloth pierced with dagger thrusts. The mourners raised
loud lamentations.
But the theatrical performance was not over. A hidden actor imperson-
ating Caesar’s voice recited the names of his murderers, further roiling the
audience. Then from the coffin slowly rose the ravaged body of Caesar. It
was an effigy made of wax, realistically displaying the twenty- three brutal
knife wounds. The pièce de résistance followed, as the effigy rotated “by a
mechanical device to display the pitiful sight.” Crazed with rage and grief,
the crowd rushed out to set fire to the Senate where Caesar was slain and
tried to burn down the houses of the assassins. The sensational stagecraft
of an automated, bloody, wax mannequin in Caesar’s image was carefully
orchestrated by Caesar’s allies to manipulate the populace.
Some monarchs in the ancient Greco- Roman world were enthusiastic
patrons of science and devised spectacles of animated statues in order to
demonstrate their vast power and grandeur. Such wondrous machines
told the world that the king could achieve the impossible.
One thwarted example of a Hellenistic ruler’s attempt to glorify him-
self by means of a mechanized spectacle occurred during the reign of
King Mithradates VI of Pontus, known for his prodigious ego and love
of marvelous machines. Mithradates attracted the best craftsmen, sci-
entists, and engineers to his court in the first century BC. His engineers
built stupendous naval and siege machines, and the famous Antikythera
device was looted from his kingdom by the Romans (70– 60 BC). In about
87 BC, to celebrate his defeat of Roman forces in Greece, Mithradates
commissioned a grandiose pageant. Bearing in mind classical Greek im-
ages of the winged goddess Nike hovering over victors’ heads, the royal
engineers created an immense statue of the goddess, suspended on cables