Artificial Intelligence in Greek and Roman Epic, edited by Andriana Domouzi and Silvio Bär, is the sixth installment of the Bloomsbury Classical Studies Monographs series of handsomely produced case-wrap volumes published by Bloomsbury Academic in Great Britain. In our era of rampant digitization, this is the sort of well-crafted artifact that exemplifies why “real books” are making a comeback. Yet the contents of the book more than do justice to its exquisite packaging, comprising seventeen chapters (with extensive endnotes and bibliographic citations) by specialists in both classics and science fiction. Some of the articles consist of reworkings and expansions of papers delivered at an international conference (Greek Epic and Artificial Intelligence) held online near the end of the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic “under the auspices of the Research Group ‘Novel and Epic, Ancient and Modern’ of the Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas at the University of Oslo,” while others were commissioned specifically for this volume.
The articles are organized into three parts, the first two chronologically, treating Archaic Greek Epic and Hellenistic and Roman Epic, the third thematically, focusing on Conceptualization and Reception. The main purpose of the book, as stated by the editors, is “to showcase how early…ideas of a technologically enhanced life made their appearance in some of the earliest pieces of literature,” with special attention to “mak[ing] the connection between AI and Greek and Roman epic more familiar among both classicists…as well as readers interested in computer science or technology.” One need not dwell on the obvious relevance of such an effort to the world we live in. Suffice it to say that insofar as understanding the roots of AI is instrumental to coming to terms with its nature and where it is going, this book is an invaluable step in that direction.
If there is one overarching leitmotif to the book, it is the way many of the chapters are concerned with blurring the line between human and non-human and, by extension, defining the notion of hybridization. The first two chapters, “Hesiod’s Pandora: Animal, Vegetable, Mineral” by Lilah Grace Canevaro and “The Homeric Trojan Horse: An Intelligent Device” by Giulia Maria Chesi confront this theme head on, the former focusing on how Pandora invites exploration of this ostensible dichotomy and how it “lead[s] us to question our own ontology, our own boundaries…” the latter on how the speech of the Trojan Horse initiates a distinction between (in the case of the eponymous [con]trap[tion]) “intelligent devices that put human life at risk” and (in the case of, e.g., the Phaeacian ships) those that “improve human and divine life.”
A bone of contention between several contributors lies in how they portray ancient Greek and Roman attitudes toward automata and hybrid beings: while Brett M. Rogers, in his chapter “Cyber-Dogs, ‘Gut Thinkings’ and the Limits of Recognition,” characterizes the Phaeacian dogs crafted by Hephaestus in a decidedly negative light, citing their failure “as thinking machines and…feeling animate beings,” and Jurgen R. Gatt, in “Homertron: The Poet-Construct of Il. 2.489-90,” focuses on the “limited cognitive abilities” of the eponymous shriek-machine featured in the Catalogue of Ships as a foil for Homer’s own superior “Muse-inspired ability of ‘recall,’” Genevieve Liveley’s portrayal of the eponymous creature near the end of the Argonautica in her chapter “Talos: Overcoming the AI Monster?” is decidedly more positive, detailing how an it eventually becomes a he through both Medea’s reference to it/him as “human” and the tragic manner in which he falls to his death like the sort of tree elsewhere poignantly compared to a slain soldier on a battlefield.
Ahuvia Kahane offers a reality-check to the proceedings in his chapter “Hephaestus’ Wheeled Tripods, Braitenberg Vehicles and Entangled Being: The Problem of Homer’s Technology,” warning against what he sees as the anachronism of projecting notions of cyborgs, automata, and robots onto an ancient Greek context. Alessandro Giardini, on the other hand, in his chapter “The Tyrants and Their Robots: The Perverted Use of Artificial Intelligence in Apollonius of Rhodes,” argues that “Homeric automata meet the prerequisites for being considered harbingers of the technology today labeled artificial intelligence (AI).” From here we segue into the final three chapters of the two chronological portions of the book, which focus on Roman reception of Archaic and Hellenistic approaches to proto-AI themes. In her chapter, “Between Nature and Technology: Moschus’ Europa and Ancient Automata,” Katherine Mawford demonstrates, through “ekphrasis of the eponymous heroine’s basket,” how Moschus “employs the characteristics of nonhuman (or dehumanized) automata to explore the depths of Io’s dehumanization,” while Bev Back, in “Rocking the Boat: Sentient Technology and Metapoetics in Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica” indicates how Flaccus avoids merely rehashing the hackneyed theme of the Argo by shifting from Apollonius’ preoccupation with the intelligence of proto-Avengers deftly navigating the ship to the ship itself, “mak[ing] the first ship ‘daring’…rather than the men who sail upon it…shifting the focus from personnel to technology.” Alicia Matz, on the other hand, in “Pygmalion and Pandora in Ovid’s Metamorphoses” focuses primarily on artificial life itself, especially on the way “Ovid…utilize[s] Hesiod’s Pandora myth…” to explore how “Pygmalion’s woman is…not under the control of the tyrant…but an artist…a new automaton of woman created to counteract the wicked ones living in the world,” and proceeds to refer to her quite cleverly (and persuasively) as “Pandora 2.0.”
The last six chapters adopt an overtly theoretical stance toward proto-AI. In “Artifice of Intelligence? Theories of Mind in Ancient Epic,” Benjamin Eldon Stevens argues that the use of language provides common ground between human and non-human, to the degree that “Helen’s feat [of naming the Greek and Trojan warriors in the Teichoskopia of Book 3 of the Iliad] is the dramatic equivalent of the static horse,” passing Turing tests Homer himself proves incapable of matching without inspiration from the Muse. Treasa Bell, in “Heroic Machines: Epic Heroes as Cyborgs,” adopts a kind of McLuhanesque approach to hybridization (vis-à-vis his notion of “the extensions of man”) through a demonstration of how ancient armor was an extension of the hero pronounced enough to justify considering him a kind of hybrid being, a cyborg, thereby “blur[ring] the boundaries between metal and flesh,” whereas Michiel Meeusen, in “At the Gates of Mt Olympus: Where AI and Literary Culture Meet” explores the “broader cultural implications of…concepts of automation and concomitant notions of artificial intelligence in antiquity.” Rocki Wentzel, in her chapter “Hesiod’s Age of Heroes and Technological Evolution in Film” argues that the “ways in which we anthropomorphize technological creatures and in turn render them heroes” points to an underlying desire to learn from them to become better people. And the chapters by Stefan Weise (“Homeric Robots and Computers in Love: Artificial Intelligence in Jan Křesadlo’s Ancient Greek Epic Astronautilia (1995)”) and Tony Keen (“A Perfect Woman to Order: The Pygmalion Myth in Chris Beckett’s The Holy Machine” explore two contemporary narratives, “a Homerizing satire of modern life” and “Ovid’s Pygmalion myth in a science fiction novel,” respectively.
The chapters on offer in this volume are as thought-provoking as they are timely, as variegated as they are relevant to our times, interrogating both the promises and potential problems of unquestioned adoption of technologies calling into question the very definition of what it means to be human, and whether this criterion is as central to our relationship to AI and its future implementation as we once took (and perhaps continue to take) it for granted to be.
Authors and titles
- Introduction: Greek and Roman Authors Imagining Artificial Intelligence: The Case of Epic Poetry, Andriana Domouzi and Silvio Bär
I: Archaic Greek Epic
- Hesiod’s Pandora: Animal, Vegetable, Mineral, Lilah Grace Canevaro
- The Homeric Trojan Horse: An Intelligent Device, Giulia Maria Chesi
- Cyber-dogs, ‘Gut Thinkings’, and the Limits of Recognition in Homer’s Odyssey, Brett M. Rogers
- Homertron: The Poet-Construct of 2.489–490, Jurgen R. Gatt
- Hephaestus’ Wheeled Tripods, Braitenberg Vehicles and Entangled Being: The Problem of Homer’s Technology, Ahuvia Kahane
II: Hellenistic and Roman Epic
- Talos: Overcoming the AI Monster?, Genevieve Liveley
- The Tyrants and Their Robots: The Perverted Use of Artificial Intelligence in Apollonius of Rhodes, Alessandro Giardini
- Between Nature and Technology: Moschus’ Europa and Ancient Automata, Kat Mawford
- Pygmalion and Pandora in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Alicia Matz
- Rocking the Boat: Sentient Technology and Metapoetics in Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica, Bev Back
III: Conceptualisation and Reception
- Artifice of Intelligence? Theories of Mind in Ancient Epic, Benjamin Eldon Stevens
- Heroic Machines: Epic Heroes as Cyborgs, Treasa Bell
- At the Gates of Mt Olympus: Where AI and Literary Culture Meet, Michiel Meeusen
- Hesiod’s Age of Heroes and Technological Evolution in Film, Rocki Wentzel
- Homeric Robots and Computers in Love: Artificial Life Forms in Jan Kresadlo’s Ancient Greek Epic Astronautilia (1995),Stefan Weise
- A Perfect Woman to Order: The Pygmalion Myth in Chris Beckett’s The Holy Machine, Tony Keen