Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: And today we're gonna be talking about themes of technology
Speaker 1: in ancient Greek literature. But before we get there, we
Speaker 1: have to go to the slightly related, actually very related
Speaker 1: topic of what's your favorite killer robot movie? Robert? Oh, well,
Speaker 1: you know, outside of some of the obvious choices from
Speaker 1: saying you know, the Terminator movies, can't say Terminator or
Speaker 1: even the RoboCop movies, you get into a weird territory.
Speaker 1: Is that a robot? Is it a cyborg? Right? I
Speaker 1: would say my easy pick is the killer red robot
Speaker 1: Maximilian from the Disney movie The Black Hole. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I've never seen it. Oh he's terrifying because he just
Speaker 1: he floats around feet do not touch the surface of
Speaker 1: the ship, and has his menacing red visor that just
Speaker 1: peers into your soul and has these spinning blade hands
Speaker 1: that it utilizes to at one point murder Anthony Perkins
Speaker 1: in Cold Blood. No Anthony Perkins. Yeah, well, after Psycho,
Speaker 1: I guess he had it coming. Well, you know, and
Speaker 1: this movie was great. In this movie, you felt sorry
Speaker 1: for him. If he showed up showing up in Psycho
Speaker 1: were than that would that would be a different matter altogether.
Speaker 1: Now I have probably got to go to the movie.
Speaker 1: Chopping Mall is a eighties robots slasher set in the
Speaker 1: shopping mall at night where security robots go haywire. I
Speaker 1: think their computer gets struck by lightning or something and
Speaker 1: then they decide, well, they've got to kill all the
Speaker 1: people who are hanging out overnight in the in the mall.
Speaker 1: That is a delicious movie. Yeah. But also, how about
Speaker 1: You'll Brenner in the original West World. Oh yeah, he's
Speaker 1: super menacing and I'm up until his face falls off,
Speaker 1: I guess. But before Westworld was like a thoughtful HBO series,
Speaker 1: it was a cheesy old movie with You'll You'll Brenner
Speaker 1: pulling guns on people. Yeah, yeah, he was. He was terrifying.
Speaker 1: He I mean, you Brennan was always entertaining, but he
Speaker 1: was kind of made to play a killer, emotionless robot.
Speaker 1: I would say some of the best killer robots stuff
Speaker 1: in movies. When killer robots are scary, the fact that
Speaker 1: they're scary comes not from malice or ill intent, like
Speaker 1: it might in a monster or in a human villain
Speaker 1: or something like that. The great thing about a killer
Speaker 1: robot in a scary movie is that it's terror is
Speaker 1: derived from the fact that it has no will of
Speaker 1: its own or no intention. It's just sort of like
Speaker 1: a an efficient, emotionless killing machine. All it has is
Speaker 1: directive and it it absolutely will not stop until it
Speaker 1: achieves it. Now, we obviously think of themes like this
Speaker 1: emerging in the fiction primarily of the twentieth century. Right,
Speaker 1: that's when we think science fiction in earnest really shows
Speaker 1: up the way we know it now. I know you
Speaker 1: have Jules Verned before that, but the twentie centuries when
Speaker 1: you really start getting your killer robots everywhere. But today
Speaker 1: we're going to go back. Oh yes, we're gonna go
Speaker 1: back to a fat be list example of what is
Speaker 1: perhaps the very first killer robot that humans ever dreamt up.
Speaker 1: And it it's not from the twentieth century, it's not
Speaker 1: from the nineteenth or even it is from the ancient
Speaker 1: Greek world, and its name is Talos. Talos, yes, the
Speaker 1: man of Bronze, the bronze automaton. I want to quote
Speaker 1: from Edith Hamilton's version of the classic story of the
Speaker 1: 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 was just wonderful to leave through. Every personal library
Speaker 1: needs a copy of this. But so she does a
Speaker 1: really good job of taking disparate elements of story traditions
Speaker 1: and sort of pasting them together into composite, synthetic versions
Speaker 1: of the stories. So I want to sort of summarize
Speaker 1: the Quest for the Golden Fleece. You can't hit all
Speaker 1: the great points, but here's how it goes. So you've
Speaker 1: got this young hero j Son, and in order to
Speaker 1: reclaim his rightful kingdom from a usurper king, Jason is
Speaker 1: on a quest to retrieve a sacred artifact, which is
Speaker 1: a golden fleece from a magic ram that saved the
Speaker 1: life of a Greek prince long ago, and he's accompanied
Speaker 1: by a crew of other heroes known as the Argonauts.
Speaker 1: This is where we get Jason and the Argonauts, and
Speaker 1: on the way to retrieve the artifact, he has to
Speaker 1: face many trials with his companions. One of the trials
Speaker 1: that Hamilton's talks about is how Hercules is on the
Speaker 1: on the ship with him and hercules friend gets yanked
Speaker 1: down into a spring by this nymph type creature and
Speaker 1: Hercules is roaming around the woods trying to find him
Speaker 1: and eventually gets lost and wanders off. So you would think,
Speaker 1: you know, you got Hercules in your career, you're set,
Speaker 1: but it turns out he's easily distracted. Yes. Another trial
Speaker 1: is when Jason and the Argonauts have to battle with
Speaker 1: evil harpies on behalf of this wretched old man who
Speaker 1: has the gift of future site. So the old man
Speaker 1: is a prophet, but he's been cursed so that anytime
Speaker 1: him he goes to eat some food, harpies zoomed down
Speaker 1: down out of the sky and they terrorize him, and
Speaker 1: they foul the food he's eating. I'm not sure exactly
Speaker 1: what they do to it. It's they're described as foul smelling,
Speaker 1: so maybe they just put him off it. Well, I'm
Speaker 1: just imagining just a tussle of harpy feathers and and
Speaker 1: harpy excrement and just all manner of nastiness. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: so they have to sail their ship through some crashing
Speaker 1: rocks and all all kinds of stuff like that. But
Speaker 1: eventually Jason is able to capture the artifacts the Golden Fleece,
Speaker 1: but only with the help of the powerful witch, Princess Medea,
Speaker 1: Uh 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 Medea 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 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 destroyed 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've 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 at his heel, right, because that's where
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 again 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 Dragon's random encounter,
Speaker 1: and he's dispatched. The main story about him is his
Speaker 1: death right. And you can also say, well, it sounds
Speaker 1: a lot like Achilles. It's kind of like a bronze
Speaker 1: It's like a robot knockoff of Achilles to a certain extent,
Speaker 1: but when you really start digging into it, the technological
Speaker 1: aspect of this is absolutely phenomenal. Now, one great source
Speaker 1: on the tradition of the Talus character is the author
Speaker 1: Merlin Paris, who wrote the article Talos and Dadalus, a
Speaker 1: review of the authorship of the Abominable Bronze Man in
Speaker 1: the Ceylon Journal of Humanities from nineteen seventy one. And
Speaker 1: this is a fantastic article, so we will bring him
Speaker 1: up several times throughout this episode. Now, one thing Paris
Speaker 1: points out is that not all versions of the Talus
Speaker 1: story described tall Us exactly the same. Sometimes his body
Speaker 1: has different features or characteristics depending on who the author is.
Speaker 1: Yes and days we'll discuss. Even the size fluctuates. One
Speaker 1: thing we always have to remember with Greek myths in
Speaker 1: particular is that they evolve. I mean, all myths are
Speaker 1: subject to change over time and over place, depending on
Speaker 1: who's telling the tale and who and when they are
Speaker 1: telling it. And that's certainly the case with Greek mythology.
Speaker 1: So for example, Apollonius of Rhodes, who was writing in
Speaker 1: the third century, had said that this this vein, this
Speaker 1: vein inside him was only apparent under the sinew of
Speaker 1: his ankle, right, the one ankle, Yeah, But then there
Speaker 1: are other accounts that say that it's stretched from the
Speaker 1: neck down to both ankles. So that was Appolodorus, right, Yes,
Speaker 1: So this vein is full of what's known as echor,
Speaker 1: which in Greek myth is the life blood of the gods.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's described as golden instead of red, though in
Speaker 1: most of the stories I've seen about Talus it is
Speaker 1: described as red. In the Iliad, when the gods, for example, Aphrodite,
Speaker 1: are cut or stabbed 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 ichor. 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 ichor,
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. He is somehow more bound
Speaker 1: up in what goes into their body and what comes
Speaker 1: out 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 that tal Us is a god. All all
Speaker 1: accounts indicate that he is a manufactured thing, but of
Speaker 1: course the manufacturer changes depending on the different tails. But
Speaker 1: but still he is. He is like this artificial creation
Speaker 1: that has been filled with life because he's been filled
Speaker 1: with core. So the ecre maybe for for the bronze man,
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 column, 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
Speaker 1: blood or you know, it's not just the X File
Speaker 1: as I think about it. There's a great scene in
Speaker 1: Fright Night where there's a guy who you just think
Speaker 1: is like a normal vampire, is familiar, but then he
Speaker 1: starts bleeding and I think his blood is green? Is
Speaker 1: that right? I believe so. Yeah. But anyway, it's it's
Speaker 1: all all all over the place in fiction. But it's
Speaker 1: not just monsters. It's robots too. I think about Ash
Speaker 1: spraying the milk white blood everywhere an alien when he
Speaker 1: gets bashed up, and I think this goes to the
Speaker 1: deep metaphorical understanding we have of blood as like the
Speaker 1: essence of a person, in the sense that close family members,
Speaker 1: which in material terms are those animals with which you
Speaker 1: share the most essential genetic similarity, are quote your blood indeed,
Speaker 1: And of course it's also worth noting that I believe
Speaker 1: film ratings sometimes come into play. I've I've read that
Speaker 1: if you have a humanoid spouting green paint white or
Speaker 1: say amber blood, you can still earn yourself with PG. Thirteen.
Speaker 1: But if it's if the if the stuff is red,
Speaker 1: then you're probably gonna get an r. Oh wow, you
Speaker 1: know I was gonna say, well, I wonder if that
Speaker 1: played a role in it's in its use in the Iliad.
Speaker 1: But no, the iliots full of blood. They didn't shy
Speaker 1: away from blood there. Oh well, without getting into the
Speaker 1: whole issue of of colors in the works of Homer, right,
Speaker 1: that's an entirely different topic, maybe for a different day.
Speaker 1: So Talos, so we've got him as this bronze man
Speaker 1: made of bronze. He's got this vein of ecore somewhere
Speaker 1: in his body going down to his ankle or both ankles,
Speaker 1: that contains this lifeblood or essential ethereal liquid inside the
Speaker 1: gods that has animated this bronze creature to some extent.
Speaker 1: And he stands on the island throwing rocks at any
Speaker 1: ship that tries to dock. We saw in apollonius tale
Speaker 1: that he apparently runs around the island of crete three
Speaker 1: times a day, three times a day, which is impossible.
Speaker 1: I was tempted to do the math on it, or
Speaker 1: I was actually kind of surprised that nobody else has
Speaker 1: a paper oute there breaking down exactly how fast and
Speaker 1: how large Talos would have to be to pull this off.
Speaker 1: But that's not the only thing that tell Us can do.
Speaker 1: So he can curl rocks at your ship, But what
Speaker 1: if 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, that's amazing. And it gets even better,
Speaker 1: according to to Merlin paris Uh. Some argue that the
Speaker 1: term sardonic grin may have originated with the victims of
Speaker 1: this death. This at least according to Symonides, who wrote
Speaker 1: the Talus resided in Sardinia before coming to Crete, and
Speaker 1: he had already destroyed many of the Sardinians, presumably leaving
Speaker 1: them with peeled back, appealed back grin of a of
Speaker 1: a you know, of of the burnt dead. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: idea of the grimace. And and this is a big
Speaker 1: question actually in the the etymology you of this term.
Speaker 1: Where does the idea of the sardonic grin come from?
Speaker 1: Or the resist sardonicus which I think actually literally means
Speaker 1: sardonic laughter, not sardonic grin, but the ideas get conflated
Speaker 1: in the history of the terms. Um, so yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: where does this idea come from? Now? Another version I've
Speaker 1: heard so one is that he is crushing the Sardinians,
Speaker 1: and he's crushing them and burning them with his red
Speaker 1: hot embrace, and that in their death their grimaces turned
Speaker 1: into grins. But then also I Paris talks about the
Speaker 1: idea that the grin goes to the robot itself, right,
Speaker 1: that this that Talos would grin have this creepy grin
Speaker 1: when he was hugging people to death with his burning arms.
Speaker 1: Another version of the explanation for this, which is kind
Speaker 1: of a side note from Talis, but I thought it
Speaker 1: was interesting, so I should bring it up. No one
Speaker 1: knows for sure where it came from, but the idea
Speaker 1: of the sardonic grin has also been potentially traced to
Speaker 1: a totally different Sardinian threat. So ancient history told these
Speaker 1: stories that on the island of Sardinia, the pre Roman
Speaker 1: inhabitants had this ritual custom for dealing with criminals and
Speaker 1: for euthanizing elderly people who couldn't care for themselves, and
Speaker 1: what they would 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 outstounding reasonably humane for the
Speaker 1: ancient world world, and maybe it still is, depending on
Speaker 1: how you look at it. There's just not much that's
Speaker 1: reasonably humane in the ancient world. But anyway, so in
Speaker 1: two thousand nine, a study by scientists at the University
Speaker 1: of Eastern Piedmont in Italy claimed to trace this story,
Speaker 1: if true, to an herb native to Sardinia called the
Speaker 1: hemlock water drop ward or enanthe crocata, also known commonly
Speaker 1: as water cellery. But this is not a good candidate
Speaker 1: to stick in your you, mary, because the stem and
Speaker 1: the root of this plant are apparently a significant threat
Speaker 1: to fatal human poisonings. One example, sometime in the late nineties,
Speaker 1: a Sardinian shepherd committed suicide by eating water dropwoard and
Speaker 1: his corpse was apparently found grinning. Now the name ennth
Speaker 1: means wine flower, and crocata in particular has apparently a
Speaker 1: quote paradoxical Swedish and pleasant taste and odor, and this
Speaker 1: makes it more dangerous than a lot of other plants,
Speaker 1: especially plants in the same genus which are also poisonous
Speaker 1: but have a bitter taste which kind of keeps you
Speaker 1: from eating too much of it. And because of its
Speaker 1: ability to cause the facial muscles to contract into the
Speaker 1: risus sardonicus, and because Sardinia is the only place in
Speaker 1: the Mediterranean where this plant commonly grows, the researchers think
Speaker 1: that it is probably the Sardinian death herb from the
Speaker 1: ancient stories, and thus the origin of the idea of
Speaker 1: the sardonic grin. Now back to Talus though, Okay, so
Speaker 1: I'm sorry to take a sup it's a fascinating diversion,
Speaker 1: But the bronze killer oasis, as will explore, there are
Speaker 1: two key origin stories for this mechanical marvel, so in
Speaker 1: some tales he really most of the older tales he
Speaker 1: was created by Hephestus, the god of the forge, the
Speaker 1: later known as Vulcan, the Blacksmith, God of Olympus. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the deformed god when 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 tourists stops in the American South. But in
Speaker 1: later tellings, Uh, the inventor Daedalus constructs this artificial being. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the master inventor, the creator of the Manoan Maize, 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 atomic on here curiously bears the same
Speaker 1: name as the inventor. The Dadalists tried to murder out
Speaker 1: of jealousy earlier on pushing him out of out of
Speaker 1: a tower, although Athena saves this mortal Talus by turning
Speaker 1: 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 Dadalus was in Athens and he had this pupil
Speaker 1: who was very talented, and he was a little too talented.
Speaker 1: A dadalists 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: Dedalist is standing. There's like Jeesus as 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
Speaker 1: exactly now. One last note about that tell Us, that
Speaker 1: original human Talus was apparently also known as Callous in
Speaker 1: some traditions, so there's some differences in the name. But anyway,
Speaker 1: So back to tell Us. In the story of the
Speaker 1: Golden Fleet, so you've got Jason and the argonauts and
Speaker 1: Media especially now in most of the good versions of
Speaker 1: the story, Media is the one who takes him down
Speaker 1: right right, and it and most of them, and has
Speaker 1: to do with the removing of a bronze nail from
Speaker 1: that ankle again, that weak point that's that's connected to
Speaker 1: the vein that runs all the way through Talus's body. Uh,
Speaker 1: she unplugs it. She unplugs the bronze nail, which causes uh,
Speaker 1: the echer to pour out of his body, draining him
Speaker 1: of all life and movement. And there's actually a wonderful
Speaker 1: vase and Athenian vase from four hundred BC that illustrates this,
Speaker 1: and I'll make sure to include that image on the
Speaker 1: landing page for this episode. It'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 ours. 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 around him, which makes sense when you think
Speaker 1: about the the the the embrace that 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 tal Us as this hundred
Speaker 1: foot tall giant, And it seems that most modern commentators
Speaker 1: have 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 saying,
Speaker 1: 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: they literally a giant statue that stood as a sort
Speaker 1: of a guardian of of the harbor. Yeah, so wait
Speaker 1: a minute, we gotta go back to how tal Us
Speaker 1: gets defeated in those stories. So there there are four
Speaker 1: different versions of his death that seemed to exist, but
Speaker 1: they all relate to draining the equal out of the ankle.
Speaker 1: So in one, uh, the hero Poeus shoots him in
Speaker 1: the ankle, which is is one I reject. That's no fun.
Speaker 1: Don't don't give this guy a chance to do it.
Speaker 1: It's this is a media's role, right, right. So there's
Speaker 1: another one where Media's tricks him into thinking she can
Speaker 1: make him immortal by pulling out the nail. Now, this
Speaker 1: is a common trick up media's sleeve because later in
Speaker 1: the same story, media also kills the usurper King by
Speaker 1: tricking him into thinking he can be immortal. Actually not
Speaker 1: by tricking him, but she plays this wonderfully fatal and
Speaker 1: devious hoax on the daughters of the pretender King that
Speaker 1: Jason is trying to get his throne back from. I
Speaker 1: believe his name is Pelias right. So she goes to
Speaker 1: Pelias's daughters and says, hey, look, I can make an
Speaker 1: 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. Her
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 tragic heroine, despite all of the killing she does.
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 up
Speaker 1: through his ankle on a rock, or or at least
Speaker 1: open him up for attack, allow her to move in
Speaker 1: and pull that nail from the membrane. I would say,
Speaker 1: the actual text of the Argonautica is too good not
Speaker 1: to read, So I think we should read the section
Speaker 1: where Media kills tell Us inside. Note this would be
Speaker 1: a good one to throw some drums over something, and
Speaker 1: the barbarian drums exactly, so please sub them in here.
Speaker 1: So tell Us shows up on a cliff, he threatens
Speaker 1: to crush them with rocks, and Media tells Jason and
Speaker 1: his end back away from the shore and let her
Speaker 1: take care of it. And then the translation of what
Speaker 1: follows is by RC. Seaton. And with songs did she
Speaker 1: propitiate and invoke the death spirits, devourers of life, the
Speaker 1: 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: lo even from afar, maybe it tortures us. So Tallows,
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 towering on the jutting cliff. But even
Speaker 1: as some huge pine high up on the mountains, which
Speaker 1: woodmen have left half hewn through their sharp axes when
Speaker 1: they returned from the forest, at first it shivers in
Speaker 1: the wind by night, then at last snaps at the
Speaker 1: stump and crashes down. So Tallows for a while stood
Speaker 1: on his tireless feet, swaying to and fro, when at last,
Speaker 1: all strengthless fell with a mighty thud. Oh that's beautiful.
Speaker 1: I love that. That is a robot death, soone, if
Speaker 1: ever I have read one that's better than the t
Speaker 1: one thousand melting. That's better than any of it. And
Speaker 1: I should also note it's better than what we see
Speaker 1: in the nineteen sixty three film Jason and the Argonauts,
Speaker 1: with those wonderful Ray Harry House in effects because in
Speaker 1: that one, Jason kills tawe Us rather than Media sexist
Speaker 1: red con and it's boring too. Jason just runs up
Speaker 1: to his foot and pulls the thing out and then
Speaker 1: all the fluid gushes out of him and he falls over.
Speaker 1: Why I mean, you gotta give Media some spells to do.
Speaker 1: I agree, she's in the movie. You might as well
Speaker 1: use her for that purpose. Is she not in the
Speaker 1: movie at that point? I don't remember. I believe she
Speaker 1: shows up after the Talus encounter and they encounter Talus
Speaker 1: not on crete but on some island of bronze or something. Well,
Speaker 1: that's a bummer. You gotta get the Hounds of Hades
Speaker 1: dons eighties. That's a great line. Now. I love the
Speaker 1: way Media does this because she's like, of course, you
Speaker 1: got Jason and all his meathead buddies that I guess
Speaker 1: they probably just want to rush in there and slash
Speaker 1: him up with swords. But Medea is like, hold on,
Speaker 1: I got this. And that's actually possibly there in her name, because,
Speaker 1: as Adrian Mayor points out, the name Media seems to
Speaker 1: be derived from a Greek word that means to plan
Speaker 1: or to devise, Whereas she's surrounded by these heroes who
Speaker 1: are who are powerful because they're strong and brave. She's
Speaker 1: powerful because she's cunning and she can think it out.
Speaker 1: So she's definitely one of the really cool aspects of
Speaker 1: this story, the other, of course, being the giant Bronze robot. Yeah,
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. Thank alright, 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: with 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 scientific possibilities of the present age, and even
Speaker 1: then belonging more with the bizarre imaginings of the new
Speaker 1: mythology of science fiction than with the mechanisms created and
Speaker 1: used in real life. I think something that's interesting about
Speaker 1: looking at the fantastical literature of the ancient world is
Speaker 1: that a lot of times we have trouble discerning the
Speaker 1: difference between what was to them sort of magic fantasy
Speaker 1: and what was to them their equivalent of science fiction
Speaker 1: as we would imagine it today, because to us it
Speaker 1: all looks ancient, it's all, you know, because they're forward looking.
Speaker 1: Is still sort of backward to us. But I think
Speaker 1: there's a lot of literature in the ancient world that
Speaker 1: could quite well be characterized as sort of like science fiction.
Speaker 1: I think sometimes when you read, for example, the Book
Speaker 1: of Revelation or other apocalyptic literature we read that now
Speaker 1: is featuring is is kind of like uh, epic fantasy
Speaker 1: or something like that. But I think from the time
Speaker 1: it was created, the attitude toward it would have been
Speaker 1: more like our ideas, like dystopian future sci fi. I
Speaker 1: think it's a strong point. Yes. Now at this point
Speaker 1: where we want to just discuss some of the different
Speaker 1: versions of the tale relating where Tallos came from, because
Speaker 1: they're important in breaking down what this tale says about technology.
Speaker 1: So the first one that we've been talking about a
Speaker 1: good bit has been the story told by Apollonius of
Speaker 1: Rhodes and the Argonautica. Right, Yeah, this is the idea
Speaker 1: that he was a survivor of the Age of Bronze.
Speaker 1: And this is something that Merlin Paris viewed as a quote,
Speaker 1: dubious tradition, so that the Bronze Age we're discussing here,
Speaker 1: this is not an historical time period. This is not
Speaker 1: the technological Bronze Age that we will talk about that later. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what we're discussing here is one of the poet Hesiods
Speaker 1: five races, a race of humans created by Zeus from
Speaker 1: ash trees, violent clad in bronze, destroyed in the flood
Speaker 1: of de Coulian, who was the son of Prometheus and
Speaker 1: who is now confined to the quote dank house of Hades.
Speaker 1: Hades house. I didn't even know it was dank. It's
Speaker 1: dank down there. So this would frame Talos as the
Speaker 1: last bronze man, given by Zeus to Europa to protect
Speaker 1: her children, and then given to Minos to guard Crete. However,
Speaker 1: there seems little to suggest that anyone else viewed the
Speaker 1: bronze men as actual men of bronze, and Paris suspects
Speaker 1: that this was Apollonius's invention. Okay, so we're seeing sort
Speaker 1: of a mishmash of different ideas here. You've got Hessiad's
Speaker 1: bronze age of of creatures, these human creatures who are
Speaker 1: not literally made of bronze. But but it seems like
Speaker 1: Apollonius is sort of taking that idea and applying it
Speaker 1: to a creature that he does say explicit is made
Speaker 1: of bronze. Again, myths evolved, and myths are retold and
Speaker 1: retold and changed. So if he's made of bronze, who
Speaker 1: made him? Well. In the most popular version of the tale,
Speaker 1: as we've discussed, Talos is the create is a creation,
Speaker 1: a machine of some sort, born from the forge, and
Speaker 1: in the earlier traditions, the creator is Hephaestus a k
Speaker 1: a Vulcan god of the Forge. In Homer's the Iliad
Speaker 1: were told that Hephaestus creates golden females and wheel driven
Speaker 1: tripod stools to serve the table of the gods. And
Speaker 1: he's also the one who forged the armor or the
Speaker 1: armors of Achilles. Simonides, among others, identified Talos as a
Speaker 1: creature of Hephaestus. Okay, so created by the gods. That
Speaker 1: sort of takes away to some extent for me, the
Speaker 1: sci fi nature of the creature. Right. If it's an
Speaker 1: animated statue of bronze, but it's created by the gods,
Speaker 1: 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 Talus 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 Hephaestus 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
Speaker 1: time both and Paris makes a lot of this history
Speaker 1: of associations between Daedalus and statutory that he was a
Speaker 1: great innovator in life life sculptures. For example, Paris points
Speaker 1: out the Diadorus writes quote in the sculptor's art, He
Speaker 1: Dadalus so far excelled all other men. The statues he
Speaker 1: made were like human beings. They could see, they said,
Speaker 1: and walk and in a word, preserved so well. The
Speaker 1: composition of the whole body, that is handiwork seemed to
Speaker 1: be a living creature. So what have you the skeptically,
Speaker 1: it just sounds like he's he's an accomplished sculpture and
Speaker 1: can make life life like sculptures. Right. But this does
Speaker 1: seem to be taken literally all over the place, Like
Speaker 1: there are Platonic dialogues where Socrates and it's there in
Speaker 1: the youth of Row, and it's there in the Meno,
Speaker 1: I think they're Platonic dialogues where Socrates talks about Dadalus's
Speaker 1: statues literally walking away, so he'll use them as a
Speaker 1: metaphor for something. It's like, don't let this thing get
Speaker 1: away from you, like Dadalus's statues walking off from the workshop.
Speaker 1: But the idea of the innovation of life like poses
Speaker 1: in artistic sculpture does make me think about how when
Speaker 1: you look at Stone Age figurines. Maybe I just haven't
Speaker 1: seen enough of them, but almost all the ones I
Speaker 1: can think of seem to be posed with arms at
Speaker 1: their sides, almost like corpses. They don't seem to be
Speaker 1: an action. Even the lowand Minch is like this, all
Speaker 1: the Venus figurines, the Lowan Mench. I'm just racking my
Speaker 1: brain for Stone Age statues that really have much much
Speaker 1: action or stuff going on, as if they're alive. But
Speaker 1: once you get closer to the modern Age, once you
Speaker 1: get the empires of Egypt and elsewhere, I guess later
Speaker 1: in the Stone Age and into the Bronze Age, you
Speaker 1: start to see more figurines of humans animated with action,
Speaker 1: like the striding figurines of ancient Egypt. Robert, I know
Speaker 1: you've seen these right where the their legs are clearly
Speaker 1: like walking there like the walk sign on the street. Yes,
Speaker 1: walking like an Egypt if you will, and uh so
Speaker 1: you add to this, Paris says, the Athenian tradition about
Speaker 1: Dadalists that we talked about earlier, which to remind you,
Speaker 1: is that he once had a young pupil named Talos
Speaker 1: or Kalos, who was so talented that Dadalists got really
Speaker 1: jealous pushed him off the acropolis to his death, and
Speaker 1: then for this crime, Dadalus was banished to crete. And
Speaker 1: then meanwhile, Paris notes that there are these traditions suggesting
Speaker 1: that the ancient Greeks knew of historical Taloi the plural
Speaker 1: of Talus in places like Attica and Sardinia, which were
Speaker 1: not actual robots, but bronze statues set up on rocky
Speaker 1: coastlines as figures of apotropaic magic, meaning warding off magic
Speaker 1: like gargoyles driving away evil forces and beings. And Paris
Speaker 1: mentions the idea that there could have been such a
Speaker 1: figure once posed on the acropolis which fell off. And
Speaker 1: so for Paris it seems like these disparate narrative traditions
Speaker 1: and historical memories sort of get blended together into the
Speaker 1: idea that Dadalus created Talos not just as a bronze statue,
Speaker 1: but as an animated, living, walking, bronze robot. And I
Speaker 1: have to say, this is the version of the tale
Speaker 1: I like the most. I like the idea that that
Speaker 1: Dadalus is perhaps using the craft and the power of Hephaestus,
Speaker 1: but he's creating a thing himself. Yeah. Oh, it's much
Speaker 1: better if it's created by humans instead of created by
Speaker 1: the gods, because if it's created by the gods, like
Speaker 1: we said, it's magic. If it's created by humans, this
Speaker 1: 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 the really the animating equor. Now you can
Speaker 1: see why that would be the case, because if you've
Speaker 1: ever seen quicksilver, it's got this kind of dancing, dancing,
Speaker 1: jiggling quality that makes it look as if it's quick,
Speaker 1: as if it's alive. And so this provides an interesting
Speaker 1: chemical substitute to the mythological magical concept of ecor the
Speaker 1: lifeblood of the gods. Alright, on that note, we're going
Speaker 1: to take one more break, and when we come back,
Speaker 1: we are going to discuss technology and tell us than alright,
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, the mythological
Speaker 1: 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 b C to b C.
Speaker 1: And we know that they used other medals during this
Speaker 1: time gold, silver, lead, 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 that he's composed of bronze, which is
Speaker 1: an alloy which is copper and ten percent pin. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So for thousands of years before the Bronze Age, people
Speaker 1: had been making crafts out of copper. Copper was a
Speaker 1: metal you could find in the rocks, but copper was
Speaker 1: soft and easily deformed. You can't make a sword out
Speaker 1: of copper because you know, you clash against a shield
Speaker 1: or something is just gonna bend or break. So the
Speaker 1: alloy with tin changed all that and left us with bronze,
Speaker 1: which is a metal that changed the world. Yeah. It
Speaker 1: was the hardest and strongest metal at their disposal and
Speaker 1: could they could form complex shapes with it. Plus there
Speaker 1: were no production obstacles for 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 techno oology, because it meant we suddenly had
Speaker 1: access to hard objects that could be formed into blades
Speaker 1: and 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 seemed
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 humanity. Well, yeah, obviously one of
Speaker 1: them is the idea of weapons. But I think it
Speaker 1: actually goes deeper than that, because I think it's almost
Speaker 1: as if blades by being able to cleave naturally adhering
Speaker 1: materials represent the very essence of technological power in the
Speaker 1: natural world, which is the transformation of things. By cutting
Speaker 1: a thing, you change its nature, you shape it to
Speaker 1: what you want. Now, that could be changing the nature
Speaker 1: of a live person into a dead person. But it
Speaker 1: could also be changing the nature of a piece of
Speaker 1: wood into a building material that you can easily work with,
Speaker 1: or any number of things like that. Now, some of
Speaker 1: you might be saying, all right, Robert and Joe, you're
Speaker 1: you're chewing more than you bid off here. But I
Speaker 1: want to add it into book The Robot, The Life
Speaker 1: Story of a Technology by Lisa Knox. The author points
Speaker 1: out that despite the imaginative and symbolic nature of tales
Speaker 1: such as this, we shouldn't dismiss connections between myths and
Speaker 1: the history of technology, because we if we look closely,
Speaker 1: we can derive clues about people's attitudes to war technology,
Speaker 1: toward tool making and the use of tools. Joan are
Speaker 1: Mertens 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 bold Daedalus makes for Pacife, as
Speaker 1: well as such a notable myths as Pandora and Pygmalion quote.
Speaker 1: In the hands of an inspired craftsman, the proper combination
Speaker 1: of imitation and imagination could result in a creation of
Speaker 1: extraordinary potential. The Talos Smith reminds us also that these
Speaker 1: creations were always made to serve a purpose, in the
Speaker 1: 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. Martens 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 all five. Uh, and we totally see that
Speaker 1: the blurring of that distinction and what we were talking
Speaker 1: about with Dedalus. Dedalus creating lifelike statues and sculptures that
Speaker 1: at some point are seen to be literally alive. Now,
Speaker 1: one of the cool ways to look at the Talos
Speaker 1: Smith is to see it as a metaphor for bronze
Speaker 1: versus iron of the Bronze age essentially ending and the
Speaker 1: Iron Age dawning. Uh So, we've already discussed how in
Speaker 1: some versions of the myth, Talos is a gift given
Speaker 1: to King Minos or another person of power, and in
Speaker 1: this Knox points out that it quote reflects the way
Speaker 1: that bronze objects were reserved for the elite classes by
Speaker 1: the time the Iliad was first told. So the idea
Speaker 1: here's that the things size and power may imply the
Speaker 1: important civil and military applications of practical metallurgy. And historians
Speaker 1: believe that the invaders who attacked Greece from the north
Speaker 1: around twelve b c. Used iron weapons, So it's possible
Speaker 1: that this tale, this is a tale of the transition
Speaker 1: from bronze to iron. It's a it's showing that here's
Speaker 1: this marvelous weapon is symbolic we this is basically bronze
Speaker 1: weaponry and bronze technology incarnate, and it crumbles if it
Speaker 1: goes up against this new metal that is even more potent. Well,
Speaker 1: all the more reason that you should always show Talos
Speaker 1: being destroyed by magic, the magic of media and the spells,
Speaker 1: rather than by just somebody shooting an arrow. Really good,
Speaker 1: because if it's magic that implies, you know, this higher
Speaker 1: advanced level level of technology. The iron working of some
Speaker 1: of their culture is in fact magic to you. You
Speaker 1: can't figure it out, so it is a power beyond
Speaker 1: your reach. Now there's a there's one more fascinating technological
Speaker 1: angle on all of this, and it it relates to
Speaker 1: that vein of Talos that we see. So here's a
Speaker 1: quote once more from Joan our Merdens in Greek bronzes. Quote.
Speaker 1: The myth also relates in an interesting way to the
Speaker 1: production of bronze objects. One's attention is drawn to the
Speaker 1: mention of a single vein running through Talis's body and
Speaker 1: plugged at the ankle, a detail that may possibly have
Speaker 1: been taken from the molds for casting by the lost
Speaker 1: wax technique. The Lost wax technique. Yes, now tell me
Speaker 1: about this, Robert, all right. So, first of all, I
Speaker 1: do want to mention that this is an interpretation that
Speaker 1: seems to originate with British classical scholar Arthur Bernard Cook,
Speaker 1: who lived through two But the idea here is that
Speaker 1: the functionality of Tallos, the thing that gives him life,
Speaker 1: closely resembles the way you would make a bronze statue,
Speaker 1: or at least a statue at So here's the basic
Speaker 1: process of creating a bronze work, an inanimate one, mind,
Speaker 1: you's not one that walks around. First of all, you
Speaker 1: prepare a core of soil and clay to mold into
Speaker 1: a figure. Then you layer that in wax. Then you
Speaker 1: add a third layer of fine clay baked with Courser clay.
Speaker 1: And this is where you'd sculpt in the details. Okay,
Speaker 1: So you've got like a clay mold, and then you
Speaker 1: put wax around the shape of it, and then another
Speaker 1: clay mold on top. Right, And when you sculpt in
Speaker 1: the details, that's of course affecting the wax underneath. The
Speaker 1: wax is then left exposed at two points at the base.
Speaker 1: Think again to the idea that there are two veins
Speaker 1: running down Tallus's body. So this leaves us with a
Speaker 1: three layer construction core at the center, wax representation around it,
Speaker 1: and a clay mold over the wax with metal pins
Speaker 1: holding everything in alignment. And then once the clay dries,
Speaker 1: you heat it up and the wax drains out of
Speaker 1: those holes. So then you've got a gap, right, And
Speaker 1: then that's where you pour molten bronze. You pour that
Speaker 1: into the void, and then once it cools, you remove
Speaker 1: the clay and the former wax details are now in bronze.
Speaker 1: So you're then you All you have to do is
Speaker 1: repair casting flaws, smooth and polish the surface, rework the
Speaker 1: details is needed, add additional embellishments as desired, like silver inlays, etcetera,
Speaker 1: and you have perhaps a being of bronze. So this
Speaker 1: means that the tallos figure as to pick To in
Speaker 1: myth could be a direct metaphor for how bronze figures
Speaker 1: and figurines are created, because it's got this vein for
Speaker 1: the wax to drain out. Uh yeah, that that's really interesting.
Speaker 1: It is this idea that this this thing is is
Speaker 1: mirroring technology in more than one way, and perhaps this
Speaker 1: is in doing so in a way that would have
Speaker 1: been more obvious. I guess to people hearing the tale
Speaker 1: like it might have been kind of a joke one
Speaker 1: can imagine at the time, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I
Speaker 1: mean I think very often the humor of ancient myths
Speaker 1: 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? Well, you just
Speaker 1: pulled the plug out and then everything drained out and
Speaker 1: he 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 tailed, it'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 plug. 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 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 what one example
Speaker 1: is I wonder if you can draw broad parallels between
Speaker 1: the way technology is envisioned in free societies that value
Speaker 1: human rights versus slave owning societies and so. For example,
Speaker 1: in his book Politics Aristotle, written around three Aristotle is
Speaker 1: writing about the idea of possessions versus instruments, and he
Speaker 1: sort of characterizes slaves who are human beings as a
Speaker 1: type of instrument or tool. He says, quote for if
Speaker 1: every instrument could accomplish its own work, obeying or anticipating
Speaker 1: the will of others, like the statues of Deadalus or
Speaker 1: the tripods of Hephaestus, which says the poet quote of
Speaker 1: their own accord entered the assembly of the gods. If
Speaker 1: in like manner the shuttle would weave and the plectrum
Speaker 1: touched the liar without a hand to guide them, chief
Speaker 1: workmen would not want servants, nor mass or as slaves.
Speaker 1: So Aristotle believed that that slavery, that that slavery and
Speaker 1: being masters were a state of nature. Some people, for him,
Speaker 1: were born to be masters and other people were born
Speaker 1: to be slaves, and this was a basic feature of
Speaker 1: the character of each person. Now, obviously this goes completely
Speaker 1: in the face of our modern ideas about individual rights
Speaker 1: and equality and freedoms. This is the worst part of
Speaker 1: Aristotle to read, and yet I wonder if it's illuminating
Speaker 1: about how perfect perhaps a defender of a slave owning
Speaker 1: culture like Aristotle and other Greek elites would have had
Speaker 1: to blur the line between human labor and inanimate technology
Speaker 1: in order to justify their enslavement of other humans. Like
Speaker 1: but by being pro slavery, they think of human labor
Speaker 1: and inanimate labor, or at least as they'd imagine sort
Speaker 1: of robot labor in their fantasies, to be sort of
Speaker 1: similar things. So we in the modern a would make
Speaker 1: a complete, you know, a very hard line distinction between
Speaker 1: the labor of a human being and the workings of
Speaker 1: a mechanical robot. I'm not sure that Aristotle and many
Speaker 1: of the Greeks always would, So if they didn't necessarily
Speaker 1: make that distinction. How did it inform their myths and
Speaker 1: their ideas of automata and and robots and artificial beings.
Speaker 1: But this is interesting too when when you consider, if
Speaker 1: I remember correctly, our word robot even derives from an
Speaker 1: old Slavic word robota, which means a servitude. So you
Speaker 1: could you see this definite connection between even our modern
Speaker 1: conception of a robot with slaved 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, right,
Speaker 1: Like if you are in a society that just does
Speaker 1: not really have the idea of human rights, you may
Speaker 1: may very well not have such a clear idea of
Speaker 1: the distinction between a human and a robot. Indeed, and
Speaker 1: I think we see this line blurred very much in
Speaker 1: the different traditions of how the talos is represented. But
Speaker 1: what can I wonder what talos can tell us about
Speaker 1: modern technology? Well, for one thing, it connects to ideas
Speaker 1: about the nature of a robot, like what is a
Speaker 1: robot or an android? And could a robot or an
Speaker 1: android ever attain the human kind of status. We you know,
Speaker 1: we've just been talking about the distinction between humans and
Speaker 1: robots can but can a robot ascend the ladder and
Speaker 1: become something we would think of like a human is
Speaker 1: a self moved but artificial creature capable of feeling. Now,
Speaker 1: Paris says that according to Aristotle, Dadalus's 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 iireless 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 ichor for the ability to be
Speaker 1: self moved like the gods. Uh and the stories of
Speaker 1: Talos several times say he was quote alive, and that
Speaker 1: he was quote faded to die, and that when he
Speaker 1: fell he was not only deactivated or destroyed, but he died.
Speaker 1: Yet again, we're seeing the sort of blurring of the
Speaker 1: distinction between a human and a robot. We would talk
Speaker 1: about humans and robots much more differently, I think in
Speaker 1: modern science fiction than the ancient Greeks did when they
Speaker 1: talked about their their humans and their gods and their robots.
Speaker 1: It seems like the lines are much blurrier all throughout,
Speaker 1: and certainly we see a lot of modern science fiction
Speaker 1: that reblurs those lines. I mean, there's a tremendous amount
Speaker 1: of of narrative of fun to be had there. Oh yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean earlier we brought up the obvious robot of
Speaker 1: you old Brenner in Westworld, But in the New West World,
Speaker 1: I think it spends a lot of times trying to
Speaker 1: reblur these lines we were talking about being blurrier in
Speaker 1: the ancient literature but becoming more distinct in the twentieth century.
Speaker 1: If you've if you've got a West World where these
Speaker 1: characters are robots, but you're wondering like, do they feel
Speaker 1: is 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 ah Believe. It's
Speaker 1: a Channel four 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 and complications arise. Yeah. And one thing we
Speaker 1: can definitely see being dealt with in these new versions
Speaker 1: of science fiction that are blurring the lines between humankind
Speaker 1: 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 Talus,
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 Houses Talous from Jason and
Speaker 1: the Argonauts in nineteen sixty three, I know we were
Speaker 1: in on it because they take away Medea's role in it,
Speaker 1: but it's still a really cool stop motion in emotion. 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 Hairy
Speaker 1: Housing 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.
Speaker 1: That's our Facebook group that you can join and interact
Speaker 1: not only with us, but plenty of other listeners to
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Speaker 1: you can do so on email at blow the Mind
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