Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.
Speaker 1: I think we're supposed to venture into the vault, but
Speaker 1: I'm hearing some odd creaking and squealing of metal in
Speaker 1: there that is giving me pause. Ah. Yes, we're going
Speaker 1: to be talking about Talos, the the automaton of of
Speaker 1: Greek myth in this episode. This, I have to say,
Speaker 1: Uh an episode that air January two, two thousand eighteen.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite episodes of I think one of
Speaker 1: mine too. This one was a lot of fun. Uh.
Speaker 1: And you know who would have thought that the best
Speaker 1: traditions of thinking about robot life go all the way
Speaker 1: back to ancient Greece. It's true. Let's pull the plug
Speaker 1: out let that ecore drain. Welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hey are
Speaker 1: you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind? My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and today we're
Speaker 1: gonna be talking about themes of technology in ancient Greek literature.
Speaker 1: But before we get there, we have to go to
Speaker 1: the slightly related, actually very related topic of what's your
Speaker 1: favorite killer robot movie, Robert? Oh, well, you know, outside
Speaker 1: of some of the obvious choices from say, you know,
Speaker 1: the Terminator movies, can't say Terminator or even the RoboCop movies,
Speaker 1: you get into a weird territory. Is that a robot?
Speaker 1: Is it a cyborg? Right? I would say my easy
Speaker 1: pick is the killer red robot Maximilian from the Disney
Speaker 1: movie The Black Hole. Oh yeah, I've never seen it.
Speaker 1: Oh he's terrifying because he just he floats around feet
Speaker 1: do not touch the surface of the ship and has
Speaker 1: his menacing red visor that just peers into your soul
Speaker 1: and has the spinning blade hands that it utilizes to
Speaker 1: at one point murder Anthony Perkins and cold Blood No
Speaker 1: Anthony Perkins. Yeah, well after Psycho, I guess he had it. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, and this movie is great. In this movie,
Speaker 1: you felt sorry for him if he showed up showing
Speaker 1: up in Psycho. Other than that would that would be
Speaker 1: a different matter altogether. Now I have probably got to
Speaker 1: go to the movie. Chopping Mall is a eighties robots
Speaker 1: slasher set in a shopping mall at night where security
Speaker 1: robots go haywire. I think their computer gets struck by
Speaker 1: lightning or something, and then they decide, well, they've got
Speaker 1: to kill all the people who are hanging out overnight
Speaker 1: in the in the mall. That is a delicious movie. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But also, how about You'll Brenner in the original West World.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, he's super menacing and I'm up until his
Speaker 1: face falls off, I guess. But before Westworld was like
Speaker 1: a thoughtful HBO series, it was a cheesy old movie
Speaker 1: with your You'll Brenner pulling guns on people. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he was. He was terrifying. He I mean, you Brenner
Speaker 1: was always entertaining, but he was kind of made to
Speaker 1: play a killer, emotionless robot. I would say some of
Speaker 1: the best killer robots stuff in movies. When killer robots
Speaker 1: are scary, the fact that they're scary comes in not
Speaker 1: from malice or ill intent like it might in a
Speaker 1: monster or in a human villain or something like that.
Speaker 1: The great thing about a killer robot in a scary
Speaker 1: movie is that it's terror is derived from the fact
Speaker 1: that it has no will of its own or no intention.
Speaker 1: It's just sort of like an efficient, emotionless killing machine.
Speaker 1: All it has is directive and it it absolutely will
Speaker 1: not stop until it achieves it. Now, we obviously think
Speaker 1: of themes like this emerging in the fiction primarily of
Speaker 1: the twentieth century. Right, that's when we think science fiction
Speaker 1: in earnest really shows up the way we know it now.
Speaker 1: I know you have Jules Verned before that, but the
Speaker 1: twentieth century is when you really start getting your killer
Speaker 1: robots everywhere. But today we're going to go back. Oh yes,
Speaker 1: we're gonna go back to a fabulous example of what
Speaker 1: is perhaps the very first killer robot that humans ever
Speaker 1: dreamt up. And it it's not from the twentieth century.
Speaker 1: It's not from the nineteenth or even eight. It is
Speaker 1: from the ancient Greek world. And its name is Talos. Talos, yes,
Speaker 1: the man of Bronze, the bronze automaton. I want to
Speaker 1: quote from Edith Hamilton's version of the Classic story of
Speaker 1: the Quest for the Golden Fleece, now Edith Hamilton's Classic Mythology,
Speaker 1: that this is a great old textbook on Greek mythology.
Speaker 1: If you haven't had a chance to check it out,
Speaker 1: it's just wonderful to leave through. Every personal library needs
Speaker 1: a copy of this. But so she does a really
Speaker 1: good job of taking disparate elements of story traditions and
Speaker 1: sort of pasting them together into composite, synthetic versions of
Speaker 1: the stories. So I want to sort of summarize the
Speaker 1: Quest for the Golden Fleece. You can't hit all the
Speaker 1: great points, but here's how it goes. So you've got
Speaker 1: this young hero Jason, and in order to reclaim his
Speaker 1: rightful kingdom from a usurper king, Jason is on a
Speaker 1: quest to retrieve a sacred artifact, which is a golden
Speaker 1: fleece from a magic ram that saved the life of
Speaker 1: a Greek prints long ago. And he's accompanied by a
Speaker 1: crew of other heroes known as the Argonauts. This is
Speaker 1: where we get Jason and the Argonauts, and on the
Speaker 1: way to retrieve the artifact, he has to face many
Speaker 1: trials with his companions. One of the trials that Hamilton's
Speaker 1: talks about is how Hercules is on the on the
Speaker 1: ship with him and hercules friend gets yanked down into
Speaker 1: a spring by this nymph type creature and Hercules is
Speaker 1: roaming around the woods trying to find him and eventually
Speaker 1: gets lost and wanders off. So you would think, you know,
Speaker 1: you got Hercules and your crew, You're set but it
Speaker 1: turns out he's easily distracted. Yes. Another trial is when
Speaker 1: Jason and the Argonauts have to battle with evil harpies
Speaker 1: on behalf of this wretched old man who has the
Speaker 1: gift of future site. So the old man is a prophet,
Speaker 1: but he's been cursed so that anytime he goes to
Speaker 1: eat some food, harpies zoomed down down out of the
Speaker 1: sky and they terrorize him, and they foul the food
Speaker 1: he's eating. I'm not sure exactly what they do to it.
Speaker 1: It's they're described as foul smelling, so maybe they just
Speaker 1: put him off fit well, and I'm just imagining just
Speaker 1: a tussle of harpy feathers and and harpy excrement and
Speaker 1: just all manner of nastiness. Yeah, And so they have
Speaker 1: to sail their ship through some crashing rocks and all
Speaker 1: all kinds of stuff like that. But eventually Jason is
Speaker 1: able to capture the artifacts the Golden Fleece, but only
Speaker 1: with the help of the powerful witch Princess Medea. Uh,
Speaker 1: one of the greatest sorceresses in all of fiction media.
Speaker 1: Is awesome. So she has fallen in love with him,
Speaker 1: but not entirely of her own volition, because she was
Speaker 1: compelled into love by an arrow of Cupid, because Aphrodite
Speaker 1: intervened on his behalf. So after they get the fleece,
Speaker 1: Jason and Medeia and the rest of the crew of
Speaker 1: the Argo or sailing towards Jason's home. And on the
Speaker 1: journey they passed by the island of Crete, and here
Speaker 1: I want to read a direct quote from Hamilton's telling
Speaker 1: of the story. Next came Crete, where they would have
Speaker 1: landed but for Medea. She told them that Talus lived there,
Speaker 1: the last man left of the ancient Bronze race, a
Speaker 1: creature made all of bronze except one ankle, where alone
Speaker 1: he was vulnerable. Even as she spoke, he appeared terrible
Speaker 1: to behold, and threatened to crush the ship with rocks
Speaker 1: if they drew nearer. They rested on their oars, and Medea, kneeling,
Speaker 1: prayed to the hounds of Hades to come and destroy him.
Speaker 1: The dread powers of evil heard her, as the bronze
Speaker 1: man lifted a pointed crag to hurl it at the Argo.
Speaker 1: He grazed his ankle and the blood gushed forth until
Speaker 1: he sank and died. Then the heroes could land and
Speaker 1: refresh themselves for the voyage still before them. Now, this
Speaker 1: is only one telling of the story of Talos, the
Speaker 1: mighty Man of Bronze, And to get a little bit
Speaker 1: more detail, I think we should look at a translation
Speaker 1: of the text of the story as told by Apollonius
Speaker 1: of Rhodes in his work the Argonautica, which is one
Speaker 1: version of of this story I've just been talking about. Yes,
Speaker 1: Apollonius rights he was of the stock of bronze, of
Speaker 1: the men's spring from ash trees, the last left among
Speaker 1: the sons of the gods, and the sons of Chronos
Speaker 1: gave him to Europa to be the warder of Crete
Speaker 1: and destride around the island thrice a day with his
Speaker 1: feet of bronze. Now, in all the rest of his
Speaker 1: body and limbs he was fashioned of bronze and invulnerable.
Speaker 1: But beneath the sinew of his ankle was a blood
Speaker 1: red vein, and this, with its issue of life and death,
Speaker 1: was covered by a thin skin. Now, so you've got
Speaker 1: a bronze guy. You got a bronze guy, and he
Speaker 1: has this weak point in his his his ankle, very
Speaker 1: much like Achilles. The legend of Achilles also weak only
Speaker 1: in his ankle, his heel, right, because that's where he
Speaker 1: was held as he was dipped into into the river sticks.
Speaker 1: But we get a different explanation for the vulnerability in
Speaker 1: this story. Now it's a technological vulnerability. Yeah, And I
Speaker 1: think this is this is the key, and this is
Speaker 1: something we're going to discuss over and over in in
Speaker 1: this episode. Is that it's easy to just dismiss this
Speaker 1: tale because Talus does not have other adventures. He basically
Speaker 1: shows up kind of like a Dungeon and Dragons random
Speaker 1: encounter and he's dispatched. The main story about him is
Speaker 1: his death right. And you can also say, well, Italy
Speaker 1: sounds a lot like Achilles. It's kind of like a
Speaker 1: bronze It's like a robot knockoff of Achilles to a
Speaker 1: certain extent. But when you really start digging into it,
Speaker 1: the technological aspect of this is absolutely phenomenal. Now, one
Speaker 1: great source on the tradition of the Talus character is
Speaker 1: the author Merlin Paris, who wrote the article Talos and Dadalus,
Speaker 1: a Review of the authorship of the Abominable Bronze Man
Speaker 1: in the Ceylon Journal of Humanities from nineteen seventy one
Speaker 1: and this is a fantastic article, so we will bring
Speaker 1: him up several times throughout this episode. Now, one thing
Speaker 1: Paris points out is that not all versions of the
Speaker 1: Talus story described Talus exactly the same. Sometimes his body
Speaker 1: he has different features or characteristics depending on who the
Speaker 1: author is, Yes, and is we'll discuss. Even the size fluctuates.
Speaker 1: One thing we always have to remember with Greek myths
Speaker 1: in particular is that they evolve. I mean, all myths
Speaker 1: are subject to change over time and over place, depending
Speaker 1: on who's telling the tale and when they are telling it.
Speaker 1: And that's certainly the case with Greek mythology. So for example,
Speaker 1: Apollonius of Rhodes, who was writing in the third century,
Speaker 1: had said that this this vein, this vein inside him,
Speaker 1: was only apparent under the sinew of his ankle, right,
Speaker 1: the one ankle. Yeah, But then there are other accounts
Speaker 1: that say that it's stretched from the neck down to
Speaker 1: both ankles. So that was Appolodorus, right, Yes, So this
Speaker 1: vein is full of what's known as ichor, which in
Speaker 1: Greek myth is the lifeblood of the gods. Sometimes it's
Speaker 1: described as golden instead of red, though, and most of
Speaker 1: the stories I've seen about tall Us. It is described
Speaker 1: as red in the Iliad. When the gods, for example Aphrodite,
Speaker 1: are cut or dabbed with spears. They can be harmed,
Speaker 1: their skin can be pierced, and they leak fluid. But
Speaker 1: the fluid they leak is not blood but ecore. So
Speaker 1: to quote from the Iliad, quote the point tore through
Speaker 1: the ambrosial robe which the graces had woven for Aphrodite,
Speaker 1: and pierce the skin between her wrist and the palm
Speaker 1: of her hand, so that the immortal blood or echore
Speaker 1: that flows in the veins of the blessed gods came
Speaker 1: pouring from the wound. For the gods do not eat
Speaker 1: bread nor drink wine, hence they have no blood such
Speaker 1: as ours and our immortal. I love the conflicting ideas here,
Speaker 1: like the idea that the god can be injured and
Speaker 1: the god can bleed, but they are in some sense immortal.
Speaker 1: They have bodies, they can leak fluid, they can be hurt,
Speaker 1: but the idea of immortality is somehow more bound up
Speaker 1: in what goes into their body and what comes out
Speaker 1: of it than what can be done to it. Yes,
Speaker 1: and it's it's important to note here that this does
Speaker 1: not mean Talus is a god. All all of counts
Speaker 1: indicate that he is a manufactured thing. But of course
Speaker 1: the manufacturer changes depending on the different tales. But but
Speaker 1: still he is. He is like this artificial creation that
Speaker 1: has been filled with life because he's been filled with
Speaker 1: the core. So the ecre maybe for for the bronze men,
Speaker 1: Talus is not essential to his nature, but is something
Speaker 1: that has been used to give him the properties he has,
Speaker 1: maybe the properties of life for animation. Right, yeah, this
Speaker 1: it's the gasoline for your large bronze death gollum, the
Speaker 1: oil in the car. Now this makes me think about
Speaker 1: how both monsters and robots and fiction are often identified
Speaker 1: by the different color of their blood. I think about
Speaker 1: like the Aliens and the X Files that have green blood,
Speaker 1: or you know, it's not just the X Files. I
Speaker 1: think about it. There's a great scene in Fright Night
Speaker 1: where there's a guy who you just think is like
Speaker 1: a normal vampire, is familiar, but then he starts bleeding
Speaker 1: and I think his blood is green? Is that right?
Speaker 1: I believe so? Yeah. But anyway, it's it's all all
Speaker 1: all over the place in fiction. But it's not just
Speaker 1: monsters as robots too. I think about ash spraying the
Speaker 1: milk white blood everywhere an alien when he gets bashed up,
Speaker 1: and I think this goes to the deep metaphorical understanding
Speaker 1: we have of blood as like the essence of a person,
Speaker 1: in the sense that close family members, which in material
Speaker 1: terms are those animals with which you share the most
Speaker 1: essential genetic similarity, are quote your blood indeed, And of
Speaker 1: course it's also worth noting that I believe film ratings
Speaker 1: sometimes come into play. I've I've read that if you
Speaker 1: have a humanoid spouting green, pink, white, or say amber blood,
Speaker 1: you can still earn yourself with PG. Thirteen. But if
Speaker 1: it's if the if the stuff is red, then you're
Speaker 1: probably gonna get an r. Oh wow, you know I
Speaker 1: was gonna say, well, I wonder if that played a
Speaker 1: role in it's in its use in the Iliad, But no,
Speaker 1: the iliots full of blood. They didn't shy away from
Speaker 1: blood there. Oh well, without getting into the whole issue
Speaker 1: of of colors in the works of Homer, right, that's
Speaker 1: an entirely different maybe for a different day. So Talos,
Speaker 1: so we've got him as this bronze man made of
Speaker 1: bronze he's got this vein of ecore somewhere in his body,
Speaker 1: going down to his ankle or both ankles, that contains
Speaker 1: this lifeblood or essential ethereal liquid inside the gods that
Speaker 1: has animated this bronze creature to some extent. And he
Speaker 1: stands on the island throwing rocks at any ship that
Speaker 1: tries to dock. We saw in Apollonius Tail that he
Speaker 1: apparently runs around the island of crete three times a day,
Speaker 1: three times a day, and it is impossible. I was
Speaker 1: tempted to do the math on it, or I was
Speaker 1: actually kind of surprised that nobody else has a paper
Speaker 1: out there breaking down exactly how fast and how large
Speaker 1: Talos would have to be to pull this off. But
Speaker 1: that's not the only thing that Talous can do. So
Speaker 1: he can curl rocks at your ship, But what if
Speaker 1: you come ashore? Does he still pose a risk? Then? Oh?
Speaker 1: Does he? Ever? He has this this beautifully grotesque superpower
Speaker 1: of being able to apparently jump into the fire, heat
Speaker 1: its body up, and then come out and embrace the enemy.
Speaker 1: So here, so the enemy soldiers say they've landed. Here
Speaker 1: comes Talis leaping out of the fire, applies a huge
Speaker 1: bear hug and just immolates you in his embrace. And
Speaker 1: according to that's that's sick, that's amazing. And it gets
Speaker 1: even better according to to Merlin Paris. Uh. Some argue
Speaker 1: that the term sardonic grin may have originated with the
Speaker 1: victims of this death. This at least according to Simonides,
Speaker 1: who wrote, the Talis resided in Sardinia before coming to Crete,
Speaker 1: and he had already destroyed many of the Sardinians, presumably
Speaker 1: leaving them with peeled back, appealed back grin of of
Speaker 1: you know, of of the burnt gag. Yeah, the idea
Speaker 1: of the grimace And and this is a big question
Speaker 1: actually in the etymology of this term. Where does the
Speaker 1: idea of the sardonic grin come from? Or the resist sardonicus,
Speaker 1: which I think actually literally means sardonic laughter, not sardonic grin,
Speaker 1: But the ideas get conflated in the history of the terms. Um,
Speaker 1: so yeah, yeah, where does this idea come from? Now?
Speaker 1: Another version I've heard, so one is that he is
Speaker 1: crushing the Sardinians, and he's crushing them and burning them
Speaker 1: with his red hot embrace, and that in their death
Speaker 1: their grimaces turned into grins. But then also I Paris
Speaker 1: talks about the idea that the grin goes to the
Speaker 1: robot itself, right that this that Talos would grin have
Speaker 1: this creepy grin when he was hugging people to death
Speaker 1: with his burning arms. Another version of the explanation for this,
Speaker 1: which is kind of a side note from Talis. But
Speaker 1: I thought it was interesting, so I should bring it up.
Speaker 1: No one knows for sure where it came from, but
Speaker 1: the idea of the sardonic grin has also been potentially
Speaker 1: traced to a totally different Sardinian threat. So ancient historians
Speaker 1: told these stories that on the island of Sardinia, the
Speaker 1: pre Roman inhabitants had this ritual custom for dealing with
Speaker 1: criminals and for euthanizing elderly people who couldn't care for themselves.
Speaker 1: And what they do is they would drug them with
Speaker 1: an intoxicating poison that caused the victim's facial muscles to
Speaker 1: contract into a creepy grin and become paralyzed, hence the
Speaker 1: sardonic grin of Sardinia. And then while the victims were
Speaker 1: drugged out, they could be thrown off a cliff or
Speaker 1: beaten to death. It started offstounding reasonably humane for the
Speaker 1: ancient world, and maybe it still is, depending on how
Speaker 1: you look at it. There's just not much that's reasonably
Speaker 1: humane in the ancient world. But anyway, so in two
Speaker 1: thousand nine, a study by scientists at the University of
Speaker 1: Eastern Piedmont in Italy claimed to trace this story, if true,
Speaker 1: to an herb native to Sardinia called the hemlock water
Speaker 1: drop ward or Enanth crocata, also known commonly as water celery.
Speaker 1: But this is not a good candidate to stick in
Speaker 1: your bloody mary, because the stem and the root of
Speaker 1: this plant are apparently a significant threat to fatal human poisonings.
Speaker 1: One example, sometime in the late nineties, a Sardinian shepherd
Speaker 1: committed suicide by eating water drop ward, and his corpse
Speaker 1: was apparently found grinning. Now, the name en anth means
Speaker 1: wine flower, and Crocata in particular has apparently a quote
Speaker 1: paradoxical Swedish and pleasant taste and odor, and this makes
Speaker 1: it more dangerous than a lot of other plants, especially
Speaker 1: plants in the same genus, which are also poisonous but
Speaker 1: have a bitter taste which kind of keeps you from
Speaker 1: eating too much of it, and because of its ability
Speaker 1: to cause the facial muscles to contract into the risus sardonicus,
Speaker 1: and because Sardinia is the only place in the Mediterranean
Speaker 1: where this plant commonly grows, the researchers think that it
Speaker 1: is probably the Sardinian death or from the ancient stories,
Speaker 1: and thus the origin of the idea of the sardonic grin.
Speaker 1: Now back to Talos though. Okay, so I'm sorry to
Speaker 1: take a sup It's a fascinating diversion, but the bronze
Speaker 1: killer oasis is will explore. There are two key origin
Speaker 1: stories for this mechanical marvel. So in some tales he
Speaker 1: had been Really most of the older tales he was
Speaker 1: created by Festus, the god of the forge, the later
Speaker 1: known as Vulcan, the blacksmith god of Olympus. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: deformed god who and who. If you visit Birmingham, Alabama,
Speaker 1: you get to see his likeness on the horizon because
Speaker 1: they have the statue of Vulcan. I didn't know that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's interesting. It's one of the few I guess
Speaker 1: pagan uh tourist stops in the American South. But in
Speaker 1: later tellings, Uh the inventor Dadalists constructs this artificial being. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the master inventor, the creator of the Manoan Mayze, the
Speaker 1: Wings of Icarus and other marvels, the famed mythical inventor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's but this is interesting as well because Talos,
Speaker 1: the the bronze automaton here curiously bears the same name
Speaker 1: as the inventor the Dadalists tried to murder out of
Speaker 1: jealousy earlier on, pushing him out of it out of
Speaker 1: a tower, although Athena saves this more total Talus by
Speaker 1: turning him into a partridge so we can fly away. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and his paper Paris talks about the the number of
Speaker 1: stories along these lines. But it's like an Athenian tradition
Speaker 1: that Daedalus was in Athens and he had this pupil
Speaker 1: who was very talented, and he was a little too talented,
Speaker 1: so Dadalus got a little territorial, got a little jealous,
Speaker 1: and pushed him off the acropolis. Yeah. That the original Talus,
Speaker 1: if we want to call him that, the mortal Talus.
Speaker 1: He's attributed with with inventing the saw really things, So yeah,
Speaker 1: Deedal is the standing. There's like jeezus saw that's genius.
Speaker 1: Why didn't I think of that? I just want to
Speaker 1: push you out of a towel, and he does. This
Speaker 1: is a great argument for not showing up your boss
Speaker 1: in a meeting or being too clever. You're gonna get
Speaker 1: pushed out of a tower. You just know it's coming exactly.
Speaker 1: No One. Last note about that Talus. That original human
Speaker 1: Talus was apparently also known as Callous in some traditions,
Speaker 1: so there's some differences in the name. But anyway, so
Speaker 1: back to tell Us in the story of the Golden Fleet.
Speaker 1: So you've got Jason and the Argonauts and Dia especially
Speaker 1: now in most of the good versions of the story,
Speaker 1: Media is the one who takes him down right right
Speaker 1: and it and most of them, and has to do
Speaker 1: with the removing of a bronze nail from that ankle again,
Speaker 1: that weak point that's that's connected to the vein that
Speaker 1: runs all the way through Talus's body. Uh, she unplugs it.
Speaker 1: She unplugs the bronze nail, which causes uh the echer
Speaker 1: to pour out of his body, draining him of all
Speaker 1: life and movement. And there's actually a wonderful vase and
Speaker 1: Athenian vase from four hundred b C. That illustrates this,
Speaker 1: and I'll make sure to include that image on the
Speaker 1: landing page for this episode's Stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 1: dot Com, you should take a look at this because
Speaker 1: it's awesome. Talus has ripped. His pecks are like the
Speaker 1: size of cars. But actually, one thing that you might
Speaker 1: notice in this vase is that, so, okay, you've got
Speaker 1: a bronze man and he seems to be stumbling and
Speaker 1: falling down, but he's the same size as all the
Speaker 1: other dudes are round him, which makes sense when you
Speaker 1: think about the the the the embrace, the deadly burning
Speaker 1: bear hug of the giant exactly. So when I read
Speaker 1: this story in the say the version told by Apollonius
Speaker 1: of Rhodes, I think of Talus as this hundred foot
Speaker 1: tall giant, and it seems that most modern commentators have
Speaker 1: just assumed him to be towering, to be a giant,
Speaker 1: like in the Ray Harry House in movies, where when
Speaker 1: you see tal Us he's this huge godzilla like figure.
Speaker 1: But Paris points out that most of the ancient authors
Speaker 1: didn't describe him this way, and that logically, like you're
Speaker 1: saying he couldn't have been that much bigger than a man.
Speaker 1: How else could he do this, this heating embrace, heating,
Speaker 1: the scalding, burning, roasting embrace. Now, one exception to this
Speaker 1: seems to be the author of the Orphic Argonautica, which
Speaker 1: is a different telling of the Argonautica, who called him
Speaker 1: quote a bronze thrice giant or tree giganta. The line
Speaker 1: from there is we suffered a great enemy on crete
Speaker 1: when we observed a bronze giant who allowed no one
Speaker 1: to go into the harbor. So at least some ancient
Speaker 1: authors picked up on this idea that he was a giant,
Speaker 1: but it's not there in most of the stories, and
Speaker 1: most he's more like the tin man or something that's
Speaker 1: very strong, powerful metal figure, but basically human sized. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and I believe there's also sometimes some crossover from
Speaker 1: accounts of the Colossus of Rhodes. Oh yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: the the literally a giant statue that stood as a
Speaker 1: sort of a guardian of of the harbor. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: wait a minute, we got to go back to how
Speaker 1: tell Us gets defeated in those stories. So there are
Speaker 1: four different versions of his death that seemed to exist,
Speaker 1: but they all relate to draining the equal out of
Speaker 1: the ankle. So in one uh, the hero poets shoots
Speaker 1: him in the ankle, which is is one I reject.
Speaker 1: That's no fun, don't don't give this guy a chance
Speaker 1: to do it. It's this is a media's role, right.
Speaker 1: So there's another one where Medea's tricks him into thinking
Speaker 1: she can make him immortal by pulling out the nail.
Speaker 1: Now this is a common trick up Medea's sleeve because
Speaker 1: later in the same story, Media also kills the usurper
Speaker 1: king by tricking him into thinking he can be immortal.
Speaker 1: Actually not by tricking him, but she plays this wonderfully
Speaker 1: fatal and devious hoax on the daughters of the pretender
Speaker 1: king that Jason is trying to get his throne back from.
Speaker 1: I believe his name is Pelias, right, So she goes
Speaker 1: to Pelias's daughters and says, hey, look, I can make
Speaker 1: an old lamb young again. Or not not not a lamb,
Speaker 1: I guess an old ram And so she chops it up,
Speaker 1: puts it in boiling water, and does a spell to
Speaker 1: make a young lamb jump out. And then so Pelias's
Speaker 1: daughters are like, well, great, we're gonna do that for
Speaker 1: Dad Happy birthday. And so they chop him up and
Speaker 1: they boil him, and they try to do the spell
Speaker 1: and it doesn't work. She's something of an anti hero,
Speaker 1: isn't she. Yeah? Well, no, I mean Media, you gotta
Speaker 1: feel for her like she's she's the I would say
Speaker 1: she's the maragic heroine despite all of the killing she does. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The other two versions of this relate to magical efforts
Speaker 1: on Media's part, her hypnotic gaze spells, or even some
Speaker 1: sort of a magical potion of a drugging of Talus
Speaker 1: if you will that somehow make him stumble and rupture
Speaker 1: his ankle on a rock, or or at least open
Speaker 1: him up for attack, allow her to move in and
Speaker 1: pull that nail from the membrane. I would say the
Speaker 1: actual text of the Argonautica is too good not to read,
Speaker 1: so I think we should read the section where Media
Speaker 1: kills tell Us in side note, this would be a
Speaker 1: good one to throw some drums over some good and
Speaker 1: the barbarian trumps exactly, so please sub them in here.
Speaker 1: So the Talus shows up on a cliff, he threatens
Speaker 1: to crush them with rocks, and Media tells Jason and
Speaker 1: his men to back away from the shore and let
Speaker 1: her take care of it. And then the translation of
Speaker 1: what follows is by RC. Seaton. And with songs did
Speaker 1: she propitiate and invoke the death spirits, devourers of life,
Speaker 1: the swift hounds of Hades, who, hovering through all the air,
Speaker 1: swooped down on the living, kneeling in supplication. Thrice she
Speaker 1: called on them with songs, and thrice with prayers, and
Speaker 1: shaping her soul to mischief. With her hostile glance, she
Speaker 1: bewitched the eyes of Talus, the man of bronze, and
Speaker 1: her teeth gnashed bitter wrath against him, and she sent
Speaker 1: forth baneful phantoms in the frenzy of her rage. Father Zeus,
Speaker 1: surely great wonder rises in my mind, seeing that dire
Speaker 1: destruction meets us not from disease and wounds alone, but
Speaker 1: low even from afar. Maybe it tortures us so Tallos
Speaker 1: for all his frame of bronze yielded the victory to
Speaker 1: the might of Medea the Sorceress. And as he was
Speaker 1: heaving massy rocks to stay them from reaching the haven,
Speaker 1: he grazed his ankle on a pointed crag, and the
Speaker 1: ecre gushed forth like melted lead, and not long thereafter
Speaker 1: did he stand tower ring on the jutting cliff. But
Speaker 1: even as some huge pine high up on the mountains,
Speaker 1: which woodmen have left half hewn through their sharp axes
Speaker 1: when they returned from the forest. At first it shivers
Speaker 1: in the wind by night, then at last snaps at
Speaker 1: the stump and crashes down. So Tallos for a while
Speaker 1: stood on his tireless feet, swaying to and fro, when
Speaker 1: at last, all strengthless fell with a mighty thud. Oh
Speaker 1: that's beautiful. I love that. That is a robot death scene.
Speaker 1: If ever, I have read one that's better than the
Speaker 1: T one thousand melting. That's better than any of it.
Speaker 1: And I should also note it's better than what we
Speaker 1: see in the nineteen three film Jason and the Argonauts
Speaker 1: with those wonderful Ray Harry hoous In effects, because in
Speaker 1: that one, Jason kills Tallis rather than media sexist red
Speaker 1: con and it's boring too. Jason just runs up to
Speaker 1: his foot and pulls the thing out, and then all
Speaker 1: the fluid gushes out of him and he falls over.
Speaker 1: Why I mean, you gotta give media some spells to
Speaker 1: do I agree, she's in the movie, you might as
Speaker 1: well use her for that purpose. Is she not in
Speaker 1: the movie at that point? I don't remember. I believe
Speaker 1: she shows up after the Talus encounter, and they encounter
Speaker 1: Talus not on crete but on some island of bronze
Speaker 1: or something. Well, that's a bummer. You gotta get the
Speaker 1: Hounds of Hades. You do the Hounds eighties. That's a
Speaker 1: great line. Now. I love the way Media does this
Speaker 1: because she's like, of course, you got Jason and all
Speaker 1: his meathead buddies that I guess they probably just want
Speaker 1: to rush in there and slash him up with swords.
Speaker 1: But Medeia is like, hold on, I got this. And
Speaker 1: that's actually possibly there in her name, because, as Adrian
Speaker 1: Mayor points out, the name Medeia seems to be derived
Speaker 1: from a Greek word that means to plan or to devise.
Speaker 1: Whereas she's surrounded by these heroes who are who are
Speaker 1: powerful because they're strong and brave. She's powerful because she's
Speaker 1: cunning and she can think it out. So she's definitely
Speaker 1: one of the really cool aspects of this story. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the other, of course, being the giant bronze robot. Yes,
Speaker 1: so where does Talus come from in the literary tradition,
Speaker 1: like where where whence this Bronze Sentinel. We're gonna answer
Speaker 1: that question when we come back. All right, we're back.
Speaker 1: So before we proceed here, I want to read this
Speaker 1: excellent quote from Merlin Paris in that Talos in Dentalist
Speaker 1: article that we've been discussing, that really drives home why
Speaker 1: we're doing an episode about this myth. To begin with quote,
Speaker 1: Talus was not a mortal creature like the rest of them,
Speaker 1: but a product of the Bronze founder's art. In other words,
Speaker 1: we have in him a robot, perhaps man's first conception
Speaker 1: of such, not only in the outer form, but replete
Speaker 1: within an imaginary mechanical device which was thought to activate him.
Speaker 1: And in this capacity he does not draw his plausibility,
Speaker 1: as the other monsters did, from the wild and fantastic
Speaker 1: natures that belong to prehistory. Rather, he is remarkably futuristic,
Speaker 1: anticipating the s scientific possibilities of the present age, and
Speaker 1: even then belonging more with the bizarre imaginings of the
Speaker 1: new mythology of science fiction than with the mechanisms created
Speaker 1: and used in real life. I think something that's interesting
Speaker 1: about looking at the fantastical literature of the ancient world
Speaker 1: is that a lot of times we have trouble discerning
Speaker 1: the difference between what was to them sort of magic
Speaker 1: fantasy and what was to them their equivalent of science
Speaker 1: fiction as we would imagine it today, because to us
Speaker 1: it all looks ancient, it's all, you know, because they're
Speaker 1: forward looking. Is still sort of backward to us. But
Speaker 1: I think there's a lot of literature in the ancient
Speaker 1: world that could quite well be characterized as sort of
Speaker 1: like science fiction. I think sometimes when you read, for example,
Speaker 1: the Book of Revelation or other apocalyptic literature we read
Speaker 1: that now is featuring is kind of like, uh, epic
Speaker 1: fantasy or something like that. But I think from the
Speaker 1: time it was created, the attitude toward it would have
Speaker 1: been more like our ideas, like dystopian future sci fi.
Speaker 1: I think that's a strong point. Yes. Now at this
Speaker 1: point where we want to just discuss some of the
Speaker 1: different versions of the tale relating where Talos came from,
Speaker 1: because they're important in breaking down what this tale says
Speaker 1: about technology. So the first one that we've been talking
Speaker 1: about a good bit has been the story told by
Speaker 1: Apollonius of Rhodes and the Argonautica. Right, Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: the idea that he was a survivor of the Age
Speaker 1: of Bronze. And this is something that Merlin Paris viewed
Speaker 1: as a quote dubious tradition. So that the Bronze Age
Speaker 1: we're discussing here, this is not an historical time period.
Speaker 1: This is not the technological Bronze Age that we will
Speaker 1: talk about that later. Yeah, what we're discussing here is
Speaker 1: one of the poet Hesiods five races, a race of
Speaker 1: humans created by Zeus from ash trees, violent clad in bronze,
Speaker 1: destroyed in the flood of de Coulian, who is the
Speaker 1: son of Prometheus and who is now confined to the
Speaker 1: quote dank house of Hades. Hades house. I didn't even
Speaker 1: know it was dank. Yeah, it's dank down there. So
Speaker 1: this would frame Talos as the last Bronze man, given
Speaker 1: by Zeus to Europa to protect her children, and then
Speaker 1: given to Minos to guard Crete. However, there seems little
Speaker 1: to suggest that anyone else viewed the Bronze Men as
Speaker 1: actual men of Bronze, and Paris suspects that this was
Speaker 1: Apollonius's invention. Okay, so we're seeing sort of a mishmash
Speaker 1: of different ideas here. You've got Hessia's bronze age of
Speaker 1: of creatures, these human creatures who are not literally made
Speaker 1: of bronze. But but it seems like Apollonius is sort
Speaker 1: of taking that idea and applying it to a creature
Speaker 1: that he does say explicitly is made of bronze. Again,
Speaker 1: myths evolved, and myths are retold and retold and changed.
Speaker 1: So if he's made of bronze, who made him? Well.
Speaker 1: In the most popular version of the tale, as we've discussed,
Speaker 1: Talos is the create is a creation, a machine of
Speaker 1: some sort, born from the forge, and in the earlier traditions,
Speaker 1: the creator is Hephaestus, a k Vulcan god of the forge.
Speaker 1: In Homer's the Iliad were told that Hephaestus creates golden
Speaker 1: females and wheel driven tripod stools to serve the table
Speaker 1: of the gods, and he's also the one who forged
Speaker 1: the armor or the armors of Achilles. Simonides, among others,
Speaker 1: identified Talus as a creature of Hephaestus. Okay, so created
Speaker 1: by the gods, that sort of takes away to some
Speaker 1: extent for me, the sci fi nature of the creature. Right.
Speaker 1: If it's an animated statue of bronze, but it's created
Speaker 1: by the gods, it seems like it's nature is essentially magical. Right. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: Paris reminds us that the association here might have been
Speaker 1: that Tallus was a creation in the art of Hephestus,
Speaker 1: perhaps by another. And I suppose this would be like
Speaker 1: using satanic magic to make a monster, right, who is
Speaker 1: who is the master of the monster. Who's the true
Speaker 1: monster maker? Here? Is the wizard or the devil? Over time, though,
Speaker 1: we see this growth of association with Daedalus, and I
Speaker 1: think this is where we really can get into some
Speaker 1: fun questions about technology. So in time, Daedalus comes to
Speaker 1: serve as a human representative, representative of the skills and
Speaker 1: crafts that have fastest rules. Over so, the mythological inventor. Again,
Speaker 1: he said to have had walking statues of his own.
Speaker 1: He created the Minoan maze and crafted the wings of Icarus.
Speaker 1: He was a master of at least art, if not technology. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and usually in the traditions, both or at least over time,
Speaker 1: Both and Paris makes a lot of this history of
Speaker 1: associations between Dadalus and statuary that he was a great
Speaker 1: innovator in lifelike sculptures. For example, Paris points out the
Speaker 1: Diadorus writes quote in the sculptor's art, he Dadalus so
Speaker 1: far excelled all other men. The statues he made were
Speaker 1: like human beings. They could see, they said, and walk,
Speaker 1: and in a word, preserved so well the composition of
Speaker 1: the whole Boddy, that is handiwork seemed to be a
Speaker 1: living creature. So what have you the Skeptically, it just
Speaker 1: sounds like he's he's an accomplished sculpture and can make
Speaker 1: life life like sculptures. Right. But this does seem to
Speaker 1: be taken literally all over the place, Like there are
Speaker 1: Platonic dialogues where Socrates and it's there in the Youth
Speaker 1: of Row, and it's there in the Menno. I think
Speaker 1: they're Platonic dialogues where Socrates talks about Dadalus's statues literally
Speaker 1: walking away, so he'll use them as a metaphor for something.
Speaker 1: It's like, don't let this thing get away from you,
Speaker 1: like Dadalus's statues walking off from the workshop. But the
Speaker 1: idea of the innovation of lifelike poses and artistic sculpture
Speaker 1: does make me think about how when you look at
Speaker 1: Stone Age figurines. Maybe I just haven't seen enough of them,
Speaker 1: but almost all the ones I can think of seem
Speaker 1: to be posed with arms at their sides, almost like corpses.
Speaker 1: They don't seem to be an action. Even the Lowan
Speaker 1: Minch is like this, all the Venus figurines, the Lowan Minch.
Speaker 1: I'm just racking my brain for Stone Age statues that
Speaker 1: really have much much action or stuff going on, as
Speaker 1: if they're alive. But once you get closer to the
Speaker 1: modern Age, once you get the empires of Egypt and elsewhere,
Speaker 1: I guess later in the Stone Age and into the
Speaker 1: Bronze Age, you start to see more figurines of humans
Speaker 1: animated with action, like the striding figurines of ancient Egypt. Robert,
Speaker 1: I know you've seen these right where their legs are
Speaker 1: clearly like walking there like the walk sign on the street. Yes,
Speaker 1: walking like an Egypt And if you will and uh
Speaker 1: so you add to this. Paris says the Athenian tradition
Speaker 1: about Dadalus that we talked about earlier, which to remind
Speaker 1: you is that he once had a young pupil named
Speaker 1: Talos or Kalos, who was so talented that Dadalust got
Speaker 1: really jealous pushed him off the acropolis to his death.
Speaker 1: And then for this crime, Dadalus was banished to crete.
Speaker 1: And then meanwhile Paris notes that there are these traditions
Speaker 1: suggesting that the ancient Greeks knew of historical talo ay
Speaker 1: the plural of Talus in places like Attica and Sardinia,
Speaker 1: which were not actual robots but braunze statues set up
Speaker 1: on rocky coastlines as figures of apotropaic magic, meaning warding
Speaker 1: off magically gargoyles, driving away evil forces and beings, and
Speaker 1: Paris mentions the idea that there could have been such
Speaker 1: a figure once posed on the acropolis which fell off.
Speaker 1: And so for Paris, it seems like these disparate narrative
Speaker 1: traditions and historical memories sort of get blended together into
Speaker 1: the idea that Dadalus created Talos not just as a
Speaker 1: bronze statue, but as an animated, living, walking bronze robot.
Speaker 1: And I have to say, this is the version of
Speaker 1: the tale I like the most. I like the idea
Speaker 1: that that Dadalus is perhaps using the craft and the
Speaker 1: power of Hephaestus, but he's creating a thing himself. Yeah. Oh,
Speaker 1: it's much better if it's created by humans instead of
Speaker 1: created by the odds, because if it's created by the gods,
Speaker 1: like we said, it's magic. If it's created by humans,
Speaker 1: this is sci fi. Now, of course, if it's sci fi.
Speaker 1: One thing we know from sci fi's you've got to
Speaker 1: give a plausible, pseudo scientific explanation for why things work. Right,
Speaker 1: you can't just invoke magic. You've got to give some
Speaker 1: kind of chemical or material explanation for the technology. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: and we have this idea that perhaps the inventions of
Speaker 1: Daedalus are powered by quicksilver. And this Paris says. He
Speaker 1: suspects that Sophocles was the one who managed to steer
Speaker 1: the tradition towards Daedalus, and this idea of of quicksilver
Speaker 1: as the really the animating echo. Now you can see
Speaker 1: why that would be the case, because if you've ever
Speaker 1: seen quicksilver, it's got this kind of dancing, dancing, jiggling
Speaker 1: quality that makes it look as if it's quick, as
Speaker 1: if it's alive. And so this provides an interesting chemical
Speaker 1: substitute to the mythological magical concept of ecore, the lifeblood
Speaker 1: of the gods. Alright, on that note, we're going to
Speaker 1: take one more break, and when we come back we
Speaker 1: are going to discuss technology. G and tell us. All right,
Speaker 1: we're back. Now. We've already talked about the Bronze Age
Speaker 1: as defined as one of Hesiod's five ages in the
Speaker 1: mythological Bronze Age, But what about the technological Bronze Age. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this this is where we get into some really interesting
Speaker 1: technological explanations here. So the Bronze Age generally covers the
Speaker 1: period of Greek history from thirty BC to tw BC,
Speaker 1: and we know that they used other medals during this
Speaker 1: time gold, silver, lad tim, electrom and even iron on
Speaker 1: rare occasions. Bronze, however, it was the predominant metal of
Speaker 1: choice for weapons, tools, vessels, and statuettes. Right, So, what
Speaker 1: exactly did it mean for this robot to be composed
Speaker 1: of bronze as opposed to any other thing that he
Speaker 1: could have been composed of in the story. Well, for starters,
Speaker 1: it means that he's composed of bronze, which is an alloy,
Speaker 1: which is n cop and ten tin. Yeah, So for
Speaker 1: thousands of years before the Bronze Age, people had been
Speaker 1: making crafts out of copper. Copper was a metal you
Speaker 1: could find in the rocks, but copper was soft and
Speaker 1: easily deformed. You can't make a sword out of copper
Speaker 1: because you know, you clash against a shield or something
Speaker 1: is just gonna bend or break. So the alloy with
Speaker 1: tin changed all that and left us with bronze, which
Speaker 1: is a metal that changed the world. Yeah. It was
Speaker 1: the hardest and strongest metal at their disposal and could
Speaker 1: they could form complex shapes with it. Plus there were
Speaker 1: no production obstacles for the for preparation because that and
Speaker 1: we're talking to casting and the hammering of bronze. All
Speaker 1: of this was fully mastered at the time. This was
Speaker 1: this was an age of peak bronze technology. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: bronze was important. It was a major innovation in the
Speaker 1: history of technology because it meant we suddenly had access
Speaker 1: to hard objects that could be formed into blades and
Speaker 1: pre cast shapes that wouldn't chip or shatter under impact
Speaker 1: and could hold a sharp edge after heavy use. Iron,
Speaker 1: of course, later would be even stronger, but before people
Speaker 1: figured out the process for drawing iron out of its
Speaker 1: or at scale, bronze was the best human kind had,
Speaker 1: and I've even read I know in the past that
Speaker 1: bronze working may have been one of the first real
Speaker 1: drivers of long distance trade because sources of tin were
Speaker 1: very rare and it often had to be imported to
Speaker 1: the Mediterranean or the Mesopotamian empires from somewhere far away,
Speaker 1: So you might have you might think, did bronze create
Speaker 1: the foundations of globalism? Also, just a side question, I
Speaker 1: wonder why it is that so many technological revolutions seem
Speaker 1: based on the creation of blades and cutting materials. Well, well,
Speaker 1: I think there's there's an answer there that that relates
Speaker 1: to the basic nature of humanity. Well, yeah, obviously one
Speaker 1: of them is the idea of weapons. But I think
Speaker 1: it actually goes deeper than that, because I think it's
Speaker 1: almost as if blades, by being able to cleave naturally
Speaker 1: adhering materials, represent the very essence of technological power in
Speaker 1: the natural world, which is the transformation of things. By
Speaker 1: cutting a thing, you change its nature and you shape
Speaker 1: it to what you want. Now, that could be changing
Speaker 1: the nature of a live person into a dead person,
Speaker 1: but it could also be changing the nature of a
Speaker 1: piece of wood into a building material that you can
Speaker 1: easily work with, or any number of things like that.
Speaker 1: Now some of you might be saying, all right, Robert
Speaker 1: and Joe, you're you're chewing more than you bid off here,
Speaker 1: But I want to add it. In the book The Robot,
Speaker 1: The Life Story of a Technology by Lisa Knox, the
Speaker 1: author points out that despite the imaginative and symbolic nature
Speaker 1: of tales such as this, we shouldn't dismiss connections between
Speaker 1: myths and the history of technology, because we if we
Speaker 1: look closely, we can derive clues about people's attitudes toward technology,
Speaker 1: toward tool making and the use of tools. Joan are
Speaker 1: Martens in Greek Bronzes in the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Speaker 1: writes that Talos illustrates a recurring trope in Greek myth,
Speaker 1: the endowment of works of art with animate being. We
Speaker 1: see it in the bull Dedalus makes for Pacife, as
Speaker 1: well as such a notable myths as Pandora and Pygmalion.
Speaker 1: Quote in the hands of an inspired craftsman, the proper
Speaker 1: combination of imitation and imagination could result in a creation
Speaker 1: of extraordinary potential the Talos Smith reminds us also that
Speaker 1: these creations were always made to serve a purpose, in
Speaker 1: the case of the giant, to guard the island of crete.
Speaker 1: Here again we've got an author assuming it's a giant. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's kind of impossible to resist that, but yeah,
Speaker 1: I see exactly what's going on here. Uh. Marten's is
Speaker 1: drawing this connection between the creative power of human beings
Speaker 1: and the idea that you could actually create something animated,
Speaker 1: something that's alive. Uh. And we totally see that the
Speaker 1: blurring of that distinction in what we were talking about
Speaker 1: with Dadalus Daedalus creating lifelike statues and sculptures that at
Speaker 1: some point are seen to be literally alive. Now, one
Speaker 1: of the cool ways to look at the Talos Smith
Speaker 1: is to see it as a metaphor for bronze versus Iron,
Speaker 1: of the Bronze age essentially ending and the Iron Age dawning. Uh.
Speaker 1: So we've already discussed how in some versions of the myth,
Speaker 1: Talos is a gift given to King Minos or another
Speaker 1: person of power, and in this Knox points out that
Speaker 1: it quote reflects the way that bronze objects were reserved
Speaker 1: for the elite classes by the time the Iliad was
Speaker 1: first told. So the idea here's that the things size
Speaker 1: and power may imply the important civil and military applications
Speaker 1: of practical metallurgy. And historians believe that the invaders who
Speaker 1: attacked Greece from the north around twelve b c. Used
Speaker 1: iron weapons. So it's possible that this tale, this is
Speaker 1: a tale of the transition from bronze to iron. It's
Speaker 1: a it's showing that here's this marvelous weapon. The symbolic well,
Speaker 1: this is basically bronze weaponry and bronze technology incarnate and
Speaker 1: it crumbled, it goes up against this new metal that
Speaker 1: is even more potent. Well, all the more reason that
Speaker 1: you should always show talos being destroyed by magic, the
Speaker 1: magic of media and the spells, rather than by just
Speaker 1: somebody shooting an arrow. Really good, because if it's magic
Speaker 1: that implies, you know, this higher advanced level level of technology,
Speaker 1: the iron working of some of their culture is in
Speaker 1: fact magic to you. You you can't figure it out,
Speaker 1: so it is a power beyond your reach. Now there's
Speaker 1: there's one more fascinating technological angle on all of this,
Speaker 1: and it it relates to that vein of Talos that
Speaker 1: we see. So here's a quote once more from Joan
Speaker 1: are Mardens in Greek bronzes. Quote. The myth also relates
Speaker 1: in an interesting way to the production of bronze objects.
Speaker 1: One's attention is drawn to the mention of a single
Speaker 1: vein running through Talos's body and plugged at the ankle,
Speaker 1: a detail that may possibly have been taken from the
Speaker 1: molds for casting by the lost wax technique, the lost
Speaker 1: whack technique. Yes, now tell me about this, Robert, all right, So,
Speaker 1: first of all, I do want to mention that this
Speaker 1: is an interpretation that seems to originate with British classical
Speaker 1: scholar Arthur Bernard Cook, who lived through ninety two. But
Speaker 1: the idea here is that the functionality of Tallow's the
Speaker 1: thing that gives him live, closely resembles the way you
Speaker 1: would make a bronze statue, or at least a statue
Speaker 1: at So here's the basic process of creating a bronze work,
Speaker 1: an inanimate one, mind, not one that walks around. First
Speaker 1: of all, you prepare a core of soil and clay
Speaker 1: to mold into a figure. Then you layer that in wax.
Speaker 1: Then you add a third layer of fine clay baked
Speaker 1: with Courser clay, and this is where you'd sculpt in
Speaker 1: the details. Okay, so you've got like a clay mold
Speaker 1: and then you put wax around the shape of it,
Speaker 1: and then another clay mold on top right, and when
Speaker 1: you sculpt in the details, that's of course affecting the
Speaker 1: wax underneath. The wax has then left exposed at two
Speaker 1: points at the base. Think again to the idea that
Speaker 1: there are two veins running down Tallis's body. So this
Speaker 1: leaves us with a three layer construction core at the center,
Speaker 1: wax representation around it, and a clay mold over the
Speaker 1: wax with metal pins holding everything in alignment. And then
Speaker 1: once the clay dries, you heat it up and the
Speaker 1: wax drains out of those holes, so then you've got
Speaker 1: a gap, right, and then that's where you pour molten bronze.
Speaker 1: You pour that into the void, and then once it cools,
Speaker 1: you remove the clay and the former wax details are
Speaker 1: now in bronze. So then you all you have to
Speaker 1: do is repair casting flaws, smooth and polish the surface.
Speaker 1: Rework the details is needed at additional embellishments as desired
Speaker 1: like silver inlays, etcetera, and you have perhaps a being
Speaker 1: of bronze. So this means that the Tallos figure as
Speaker 1: depicted in myth could be a direct metaphor for how
Speaker 1: bronze figures and figurines are created, because it's got this
Speaker 1: vein for the wax to drain out. Uh yeah, that
Speaker 1: that's really interesting. It is this idea that this this
Speaker 1: ng is is mirroring technology in more than one way,
Speaker 1: and perhaps this is in doing so in a way
Speaker 1: that would have been more obvious I guess to people
Speaker 1: hearing the tale, like it might have been kind of
Speaker 1: a joke one can imagine at the time. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean I think very often the humor of ancient
Speaker 1: myths is lost on us because we don't get the context.
Speaker 1: I mean, you can you can even imagine it being
Speaker 1: kind of like, hey, you know what this robot's achilles
Speaker 1: heal was? What was his achilles heal? We just pulled
Speaker 1: the plug out and then everything drained out and he
Speaker 1: lost his his life force and then Greek laughter ensus.
Speaker 1: It would be almost like if you in you know,
Speaker 1: thousands of years, we're looking back on some modern sci
Speaker 1: fi story where somebody undoes the killer robot by unplugging
Speaker 1: it from the wall. Yes, and they think that, like
Speaker 1: that is a wow. It has this long tail that's
Speaker 1: attached to the building it's in, and like, what a
Speaker 1: strange mythological feature. But in fact it's just a joke
Speaker 1: about how easy it is to kill this thing by
Speaker 1: unplugging it. Yeah, they might think, well, this is a
Speaker 1: metaphor for how shackled to electricity and technology that people
Speaker 1: of the time felt, and that and and you know,
Speaker 1: all of these various uh, you know, complex interpretations when
Speaker 1: it's really just a pluck. Now, speaking of modern times,
Speaker 1: what evenything can we draw from tallos about modern technology? Now?
Speaker 1: One thing to keep in mind and all of this,
Speaker 1: we've talked about how myths change over time, but of
Speaker 1: course society changes as well, and there are changes in
Speaker 1: like the moral and social dimension of how we treat
Speaker 1: our technology. Yeah. Absolutely, I mean there's definitely a sense
Speaker 1: in which technology influences the development of human ideology and culture,
Speaker 1: but it also goes the other way. Our ideas about
Speaker 1: technology come from our values and are the way our
Speaker 1: society is ordered in our beliefs. And one example is
Speaker 1: I wonder if you can draw broad parallels between the
Speaker 1: way technology is envisioned in free societies that value human
Speaker 1: rights versus slave own societies, and so. For example, in
Speaker 1: his book Politics Aristotle were written around three fifty BC,
Speaker 1: Aristotle is writing about the idea of possessions versus instruments,
Speaker 1: and he sort of characterizes slaves, who are human beings,
Speaker 1: as a type of instrument or tool. He says, quote
Speaker 1: for if every instrument could accomplish its own work, obeying
Speaker 1: or anticipating the will of others, like the statues of
Speaker 1: dead LUs or the tripods of Hephaestus, which says the
Speaker 1: poet quote of their own accord entered the assembly of
Speaker 1: the gods, if in like manner at the shuttle would
Speaker 1: weave and the plectrum touched the liar without a hand
Speaker 1: to guide them, chief workmen would not want servants, nor
Speaker 1: masters slaves. So Aristotle believed that that slavery, that that
Speaker 1: slavery and being masters were a state of nature. Some people,
Speaker 1: for him, were born to be masters, and other people
Speaker 1: were born to be slaves, and this was a basic
Speaker 1: feature of the character of each person. Now, obviously this
Speaker 1: goes completely in the face of our modern ideas about
Speaker 1: individual rights and equality and freedoms. This is the worst
Speaker 1: part of Aristotle to read, and yet I wonder if
Speaker 1: it's illuminating about how perfect perhaps a defender of a
Speaker 1: slave owning culture like Aristotle and other Greek elites would
Speaker 1: have had to blur the line between human labor and
Speaker 1: inanimate technology in order to justify their enslavement of other
Speaker 1: humans like but by being pro slavery, they think of
Speaker 1: human labor and inanimate labor, or at least as they'd
Speaker 1: imagine sort of robot labor in their fantasies, to be
Speaker 1: sort of similar things. So we in the modern age
Speaker 1: would make a complete, you know, a very hard line
Speaker 1: distinction between the labor of human being and the workings
Speaker 1: of a mechanical robot. I'm not sure that Aristotle and
Speaker 1: many of the Greeks always would. So if they didn't
Speaker 1: necessary really make that distinction, how did it inform their
Speaker 1: myths and their ideas of automata and and robots and
Speaker 1: artificial beings. But this is interesting too when when you consider,
Speaker 1: if I remember correctly, our word robot even derives from
Speaker 1: an old Slavic word robota, which means a servitude. So
Speaker 1: you could you see this definite connection between even our
Speaker 1: modern conception of a robot with slavey, slavery or servitude. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think maybe this very firm distinction we make between
Speaker 1: human beings and humanoid robots, thinking of them as very different,
Speaker 1: fundamentally different things might come from our idea of human rights,
Speaker 1: right Like, if you are in a society that just
Speaker 1: does not really have the idea of human rights, you
Speaker 1: may may very well not have such a clear idea
Speaker 1: of the distinction between a human and a robot. Indeed,
Speaker 1: and I think we see this line blurred very much
Speaker 1: in the different traditions of how the talos is represented.
Speaker 1: But what can I wonder what talos can tell us
Speaker 1: about modern technology? Well, for one thing, it connects to
Speaker 1: ideas about the nature of a robot, like what is
Speaker 1: a robot or an android? And could a robot or
Speaker 1: an android ever attain the human kind of status we
Speaker 1: you know, we've just been talking about the distinction between
Speaker 1: humans and robots can but can a robot ascend the
Speaker 1: ladder and becomes something we would think of like a
Speaker 1: human is a self moved but artificial creature capable of feeling. Now,
Speaker 1: Paris says that according to Aristotle, Dadalus statues were able
Speaker 1: to quote carry out tasks which they had been instructed
Speaker 1: to do or had learned beforehand. So Paris says, the
Speaker 1: deadly silence, the impersonal efficiency, the tireless thoroughness with which
Speaker 1: he executed his gory tasks mark him out as a
Speaker 1: machine without a speck of thought or feeling. And on
Speaker 1: Aristotle's idea that a statue, especially a robot, could carry
Speaker 1: out tasks which they had been instructed to do or
Speaker 1: had learned beforehand, this seems to imply that creative or
Speaker 1: novel behaviors are not possible for it that the robot
Speaker 1: does as its programmed, but that it can't achieve a
Speaker 1: will of its own basically. But then at the same time,
Speaker 1: Talos is animated with e coor for the ability to
Speaker 1: be self moved like the gods uh and the stories
Speaker 1: of Talos several times say he was quote alive, and
Speaker 1: that he was quote faded to die, and that when
Speaker 1: he fell he was not only deactivated or destroyed, but
Speaker 1: he died. Yet again, we're seeing the sort of blurring
Speaker 1: of the distinction between a human and a robot. We
Speaker 1: would talk about humans and robots much more differently, I think,
Speaker 1: in modern science fiction than the ancient Greeks did when
Speaker 1: they talked about their their humans and their gods and
Speaker 1: their robots. It seems like the lines are much blurrier
Speaker 1: all throughout, and certainly we see a lot of modern
Speaker 1: science fiction that re blurs those lines. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: a true in this amount of of of narrative fund
Speaker 1: to be had there. Oh yeah, well, I mean earlier
Speaker 1: we brought up the obvious robot of you Ole Brenner
Speaker 1: in Westworld, but in the New West World, I think
Speaker 1: it spends a lot of times trying to reblur these
Speaker 1: lines we were talking about being blurrier in the ancient
Speaker 1: literature but becoming more distinct in the twentieth century. If
Speaker 1: you've if you've got a West World where these characters
Speaker 1: are robots, but you're wondering, like, do they feel is
Speaker 1: their labor more like human labor? Can they be exploited?
Speaker 1: Should they have some kind of rights of their own?
Speaker 1: It's almost like they're like, we're reverting to this this
Speaker 1: miasma of confusion about the nature of beings that can
Speaker 1: move and act. That's a that's a good point. Another
Speaker 1: great show that comes to mind is I believe it's
Speaker 1: a channel for AMC co production. But Humans explores a
Speaker 1: lot of this. They have these humanoid robots that are created,
Speaker 1: uh to serve us, and then they some of them
Speaker 1: become conscious in complication to arise. Yeah, and one thing
Speaker 1: we can definitely see being dealt with in these new
Speaker 1: versions of science fiction that are blurring the lines between
Speaker 1: humankind and robots is that, unlike many of these Greek myths,
Speaker 1: they are much more informed by the idea of human rights. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so what happens if you reblur the lines, but
Speaker 1: suddenly you've got a much higher standard for what humans
Speaker 1: deserve and how they should be treated. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: I think that pretty much wraps it up for Talos,
Speaker 1: the Man of Bronze. However, I would be I would
Speaker 1: be remiss if I did not mention the giant warriors
Speaker 1: in Miyazaki's Nasaka The Valley of the Wind. Those are
Speaker 1: some amazing giant robots that play an important role in
Speaker 1: that film. Yeah, and now I would say, if you
Speaker 1: haven't seen Ray Harry has housinges Talus from Jason and
Speaker 1: the Argonauts in nineteen sixty three, I know we were
Speaker 1: hating on it because they take away media's role in it,
Speaker 1: but it's still a really cool stop motion animation. Yeah all.
Speaker 1: I mean it's the same way with all of Ray
Speaker 1: harry House and stuff. Right, If nothing else, seek out
Speaker 1: the Hairy Housing sequences and watch them, because Talos does
Speaker 1: look amazing in this. Yeah, it's like all the Harry
Speaker 1: House and sin Bad movies. Usually the story is just garbage,
Speaker 1: but it's got some great monsters in it. Indeed, now
Speaker 1: I know we have some some listener thoughts on this
Speaker 1: you'd like to share about Talos, about the nature of
Speaker 1: robots and machines. I'm sure that anyone out there who
Speaker 1: was really inspired by the Bicameral Mind episodes, I'm sure
Speaker 1: you have some bicameral uh thoughts on this particular topic.
Speaker 1: Because we're talking about statues coming to life, share those
Speaker 1: with us. We'd love to talk with you about them,
Speaker 1: either an email or hey over at the discussion module.
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