30January

The androids of Homer

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The term “android” nowadays probably brings to mind the operating system of those smart-phone / tablet thingies. Whatever. To the mind of happy dwellers of the shining realm of Geekdom it instantly recalls fond memories of Lieutenant Commander Data of Star Trek, The Next Generation. And FYI, the crew of the Enterprise had tablets and smart-phone / iPad thingies decades before you trendy people had even contemplated the notion of pathologically craving them. So there. In. Your. Face. Sci-fi literature fans may think of Philip K. Dick’s masterpiece “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” (first published in 1968) or the subsequent movie adaptation of it in 1982, “Blade Runner”. 
 
An android, in popular fiction as well as modern robotic science, is a robot designed specifically to look and act like a human. It is a most intriguing high-tech notion gradually taking form on a prototype / experimental level in the last couple of decades. Prior to that androids existed only in the imagination of writers, film-makers and scientists ever since the amazing technological boom of the post-WWII era. 
 
And that was to be expected, I suppose. Science fiction is the eager little brother of science, always prancing excitedly ten steps ahead and poking around with its stick all the “what if” nooks and crevices along the way. Undoubtedly there is a relation or dependence if you will, between science fiction and scientific achievements in any given age. Jules Verne, in order to write about his archetypically steampunk airships, mechanical elephants and submarines had to know about the steam-powered locomotives and boats of his time, the hot-air balloons. Philip K. Dick was aware of the first crude steps of robotics in the 60s when his imagination gave birth to the idea of an android – the perfect robot. No big mystery there.
 
But what if I were to tell you that the idea of an android, in popular fiction, first appears in Homer’s gore-galore epic, the “Iliad”? Strange and out-of-place as it may sound, it’s true. 
 
Hephaestus, the god of metallurgy, fire, forging and technology, apparently has a sweet deal set up for him in his celestial workshop: two beautiful servant girls he has fashioned out of gold himself to help him around the place. And these veritable androids not only are automatons (we’ll go into the semantics of the word later on) but they could speak, operate with a will of their own and perform a multitude of tasks because they possessed knowledge.
 
In Iliad’s book XVIII, 410-420, we find the following description: 
 
The monarch's steps two female forms uphold, That moved and breathed in animated gold; To whom was voice, and sense, and science given Of works divine (such wonders are in heaven!)
 
It is interesting to note that Hephaestus (or Vulcan as he was called by the Romans) is a god like no other. Greek gods, at least on a physical level, were always the embodiment of ideal bodily harmony and beauty. They were a freaking super-model conclave of sorts. And they drank chic caramel macchiatos (“Nectar” they called it) while mortals were stuck with watered-down wine (the equivalent of black coffee nowadays). But not Hephaestus. Hephaestus, even though immortal like any other god, is an old hairy geezer, chubby and short, rather ugly by general admission. The poor bugger even has crooked legs which make it difficult for him to stand up - hence the need of android-servants to support him. His is very un-god-like in that respect. At the same time he is the god all other gods need at some point or other (Chains, bracelets, pendants, all their toys, I wrought. Nine years kept secret in the dark abode, Secure I lay, conceal'd from man and god). He is the tech-support guy of the Olympians and very often the inventions coming out of his forge amaze his divine peers. He builds all sorts of automatons to help cater the symposiums of the gods as well as to his own needs as a semi-handicapped god: In the Iliad we read about automatic golden-wheeled tripods which could come and go on their own from Hephaestus’ workshop to the conference halls of the Olympians as well as an automated, voice-command-operated series of blacksmith’s bellows to keep his own forges burning without having to move around pumping them.
 
Again, let us take a look at Iliad’s book XVIII, 372-377:
 
That day no common task his labour claim'd:
Full twenty tripods for his hall he framed,
That placed on living wheels of massy gold,
(Wondrous to tell,) instinct with spirit roll'd
From place to place, around the bless'd abodes
Self-moved, obedient to the beck of gods:
For their fair handles now, o'erwrought with flowers,
In moulds prepared, the glowing ore he pours.
 
And in 468-473: 
 
Thus having said, the father of the fires
To the black labours of his forge retires.
Soon as he bade them blow, the bellows turn'd
Their iron mouths; and where the furnace burn'd,
Resounding breathed: at once the blast expires,
And twenty forges catch at once the fires;
Just as the god directs, now loud, now low,
They raise a tempest, or they gently blow; 
 
It is evident that Homer’s fictitious account (we’ll take the mainstream view of history on this one and consider all mythological accounts as nothing more than mere fiction) does not portray in the imperfect, man-like Hephaestus a simple blacksmith of, let’s say, 800 BC but a highly-sophisticated hands-on engineer. 
To get to the bottom of this, we cannot rely on any translation of the aforementioned passages as many things are often lost in translation, as a skeptic might argue. We must, therefore, go directly to the original text - and there we find the adjectives “automaton” and “autokiniton”* describing these wondrous inventions.
 
“Automaton” is a Homeric word and it has the exact same meaning and context as today. As an adjective it is formed by “auto” + “memaa”. “Auto” means “by one’s self, by one’s powers / volition”. “Memaa” is a participle form of the verb “maeomae” which means A) “to charge, head towards a direction speedily, to run” and B) “I desire, I seek to, I wish something”. By definition, an automaton is not only something that moves on its own but moves by its own will. In the context of artificial servant-girls made of gold, we’re talking about full-fledged androids in the Star Trek sense. Interestingly enough, Homer describes these “golden servant-girls” of Hephaestus as “thaerapaenidae”. A “therapon” (male for “thaerapaenis, -dae) is a servant who offers his services of his own free will. He is not a slave or a domestic employee – he is more like a constantly obliging friend. 
 
The golden androids of Hephaestus are not subject to the narrow confines of pre-programmed artificial intelligence. They enjoy the same free-will as Lieutenant Commander Data of Star Trek who chooses to serve under Captain Picard on the Enterprise. 
 
This fine distinction made evident in the original text (and often lost in translation) is what sets Homer’s fiction apart from any fictitious account one would expect from a writer of that time.
 
It is uncertain exactly when the Iliad was committed to written word for the first time but the general consensus of mainstream historians is that it came to pass somewhere between the 9th and 8th century BC. 
Let’s look at this anomaly from a fictional writer’s point of view for a moment. As we said before, Jules Verne saw a locomotive in his time and imagined a steam-powered mechanical elephant carrying people across the jungles of India. Fair enough. However, what would an 8th century writer have to know or see to imagine a blacksmith creating free-willed androids? Even the notion of man-like machines is fairly modern, according to the popular understanding of history. The notion of individual and independent will in artificial entities is still the cutting edge of sci-fi fiction (remember that movie, “A.I.”?) and even neo-philosophical speculation. It makes no sense, from a historical point of view, that Homer should be so many light-years ahead of his time.
 
Then again, maybe it was not Homer. Maybe Homer just re-told or copied mythological stories already in circulation in the exclusive circles of the priesthoods of Museums (temples dedicated to the Muses, the poet’s best friends and almost mandatory companions for any writer). Be it as it may, the question remains.
Furthermore, it is amazing that such extraordinary feats of engineering invention are not attributed to Zeus or Poseidon or any of the high-ranking gods. Instead, they are the creations of a very un-god-like god – someone almost human you might say. Interestingly enough, according to the chronologies of Diodorus Siculus (drawn from the Egyptian archives), Hephaestus was the first king of Egypt and the founder of the first-ever pharaonic dynasty. Sure, yeah; it’s mythology. Nothing more. But nevertheless it’s an interesting connection if one were to contemplate the obscure origins of the engineering culture which gave birth to the pyramids of Egypt. 
 
I’m not proposing any far-fetched ideas here – I want to make that clear. I’m simply asking some rational questions from a writer’s point of view. The successful fictitious literature of any age (and truly one may consider Homer’s epics as the very first “best-sellers” of Western literature) is never the product of irrational thought or imaginative speculations entirely cut off from the actual scientific knowledge of the time – or at least the concepts men have about the world surrounding them. 
 
Perhaps our understanding of history is still in its infancy. Perhaps we should not be so quick to judge as “primitive” bygone times and minds only because we weren't there to take pictures. Then again, perhaps it’s all a misunderstanding. Perhaps I’m over-analyzing it and somewhere, Homer is spinning in his grave laughing his divinely-inspired ass off. Perhaps…
 
 
* “autokiniton” is another Homeric word of particular interest. It comes from “auto” (explained above) and the noun “kinisis”, movement. An “autokiniton” is something which moves by itself – literary speaking, it’s what we call “automobile” today. It’s just that in the Western world the Greek “kinisis” was replaced by the Latin adjective “mobilis”, moveable. 


-- Passages from the Iliad are taken from Alexander Pope's translation, 1899--

Article Published: Wednesday, 30 January 2013