Mechanical Miracles: Automata in Ancient Greek Religion

Abstract

What role did technologies of automation play in the ancient Greek religious experience? In this dissertation, I investigate the use of self-animated machines, known as automata, in their religious contexts. As no thorough examination of the topic has been undertaken to date, the thesis brings together the ancient evidence for the use of large automata in festival processions, as well as smaller gadgets set up in temples. Having gathered together the primary sources attesting to the phenomenon, I insist on the importance of moving beyond viewing these self-animated machines as mere illustrations of ancient mechanics. Instead, I investigate the subtleties behind the interaction of the spheres of mechanical ingenuity and religious spectacle in the ancient Greek world. I look at the ancient evidence in order to understand both the symbolic and aesthetic value of the machines, and how they might have been conceptualised by spectators given a disposition to interpret animation according to a certain framework. The study investigates the place that automata occupied more broadly in the ancient imagination in order to understand the role of mechanical ingenuity when it combines with religious occasion and religious space. We will see, above all, the way in which technologies of animation were used in religious contexts to provoke a particular type of ‘thaumastic’ awe in the ancient Greek viewer. The project’s originality lies in the way in which it intersects with a number of scholarly discourses: It takes part in the reassessment of the use and sophistication of technology in the ancient world, contributes to discussions on human-divine relations and, in particular, it introduces the novel element of human artifice (technē) in shaping ancient Greek religious experience.