Notes to Pages 177–184 245
have very deep roots, going back to antiquity, already posing concerns that would
anticipate the “cautionary tales” in modern literature “about insufficient program-
ming, 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.”- 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- “Black box” technology, Knight 2017. “Relative modernism,” Bosak- Schroeder
2016. - 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. - On links between ruthless tyrants and devices, see Amedick 1998, 498.
- D’Angour 1999, 25; a jocular article juxtaposing historical evidence for human flight
with representations in ancient comedy and fiction. - 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). - Book of Sui (AD 636), Needham and Wang 1965, 587; Zizhi Tong jian 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. - 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). - Diodorus Siculus 9.18– 19. Plutarch Moralia 315. Lucian Phalaris.
- 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. - 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 - 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.