Paper short abstract:

This paper will deal with the Greek and Roman discourse on human progress and decline. By analyzing the role played by ancient deities as the engine of history, it will seek to understand the “ideology of work and technology” often used by the ruling classes to maintain their social power.

Paper long abstract:

“The gods did not reveal to men all things in the beginning, but in course of time by searching they find out better” (Xenophanes, fr. 18B).

Several Greek and Roman texts depict the deities as the driving force of human history, especially at the time of the origins of humankind. The ancient gods modified the living conditions of the human beings, by bestowing them with several useful skills and technical knowledge in various daily-life areas (agriculture, navigation, crafts, war, etc.). This technical development would contrast with an earlier period, supposedly characterized by a total absence of technology in human life. In the so-called Golden Age, human beings would have lived in harmony with nature without the need for technical skills.

Focusing on certain divine figures, such as Athena, Hephaestus or Prometheus, the paper will look at literary texts from different periods (Classical Athens, Augustan Rome, Late Antiquity). By changing with time and context, these discourses on the role of the “tech-gods” in the history of humanity have responded to different purposes: inquiring into the relationship between the divine world and the human world; insisting on the degrees of power of the divinities and their conflicts; associating the evolution of humanity with an idea of progress or, on the contrary, of decline; establishing the identity of a people or of a city.

The paper will show how these narratives contributed to shape an “ideology of work and technology” often used by the ruling classes to maintain their social status and power.

Paper short abstract:

The paper aims at exploring the relationship between the Telchines, monstrous entities without feet and hands, and the arts.

Paper long abstract:

The Telchines are envious creatures, whom mythical tradition reports as the children either of Nemesis and Tartarus, or of Ge and Pontos, or Thalassa, described as having neither feet nor hands. Diodorus Siculus (5.55) describes them as “protoi heuretai” of several arts and as the first to build statues for the gods, but also as monstrous and disturbing beings, capable of charming and bewitching. Innovators but also destroyers, the Telchines somehow represent the dark side of art and technology. From them and from the etymology of their name also derive some onomastic attributes such as Telchis; Telchinios/Telchinia, assigned to several deities (e.g. Apollo, Hera, the Nymphes). The paper aims at investigating the relationship between these monstrous entities and the arts and in particular their ability in the field of metallurgy, but also at exploring the profile of those deities whose names include a reference to these creatures or their attributes.

Paper short abstract:

This proposal aims to give an overview of the few mythical accounts assigning the invention of writing to gods in ancient Greek traditions in order to explain why, if compared to the more famous figure of heroes, these characters are so rarely credited with inventing this cultural object.

Paper long abstract:

The technology of writing has been widely discussed by poets, writers and intellectuals of ancient Greek world since the 6th century BC. In this regard, analysing all the mythical accounts concerning this subject, it is possible to notice that the attention has often been drawn to the topical moment of its invention to illuminate origin, functions and peculiarities of this tool.

Despite what could be expected if considering the tales hailing from other contexts – as for examples the ones from Mediterranean and Near East cultures –, gods in ancient Greek world seem less «bon à penser» the invention of writing than other mythical characters: in Greek mythology this process is ascribed to cultural heroes (Palamedes, Prometheus), figures showing an explicit ethnic characterization (Kadmos, Phoinix), historical characters (Simonides, Epicharmos), entire populations (Phoenicians, Egyptians, Chaldeans), but very rarely to divine beings. Hermes is one of the most important among these since its involvement in this mythical act is enough attested – taking into account his Latin (Mercurius) and Egyptian (Thoth) equivalents too. Besides Zeus herald, we find just a few notes indicating Athena or the Muses as inventors of this medium, but it’s relevant that all the sources concerning gods involved in this process barely reach a quarter of the ones related just to Palamedes.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the striking absence of divine beings in these accounts and it aims, through and exhaustive analysis of these traditions and their narrative patterns, at comparing Greek tales with their equivalents hailing from Mediterranean and Near East cultures and at understanding in this way the reasons behind this “silence”: whether it is caused by a lack of sources or by an assumed disinterest in the ancient Greek gods as narrative tool to elucidate the invention of writing.

Paper short abstract:

Ancient Greek gods can be pictured playing knucklebones games on vases or mirrors. Knucklebones, used for games, were discovered in ancient Greek sanctuaries. According to Pausanias, one of three Charites was holding a knucklebone. What meanings can an astragalus acquire in the hands of gods?

Paper long abstract:

Ancient gods have become protagonists of games in a virtual reality: there are an important number of video games where the main characters are ancient Greek gods, for example a game named “Zeus. Master of Olympus” or “Hades”. Therefore, if we look thoroughly at ancient Greece, we will see that there are a certain number of sources representing gods playing games. For example, Pan, Eros, or Aphrodite can be pictured playing knucklebones games on ancient Greek vases or mirrors.

Mentioned in ancient sources as ἀστράγαλος in Greek and talus in Latin, the astragalus or knucklebone is part of the hind-leg in four footed mammals such as sheep or goat and was used as gaming piece. Knucklebones were usually modified for the purpose of games: smoothed, perforated, inscribed, or filled with lead. However, scholars suggest that games weren’t the only sphere where knucklebones were used: for instance, astragali filled with lead could have been used like weights in ancient Greece. Furthermore, astragali were discovered in ancient Greek sanctuaries but their function is still poorly analysed.

Pausanias (II A.D.) mentions a sanctuary in Elis, in the Peloponnese, dedicated to the Charites, goddesses. Situated in the agora, this sanctuary sheltered a statuary group of the three Charites made of wood and gold: one of three goddesses was holding a knucklebone. Pausanias explains that the knucklebone was used in a game for young people, although his description does not explain why precisely one of the Charites holds the object. Does it mean that they were worshipped by individuals using knucklebones in games/rituals? How could we define the interaction between the goddesses and the people present in the sanctuary? Can other gods make use of knucklebones, why and how? Finally, what meanings can an astragalus acquire in the hands of gods?

Paper long abstract:

Medicine has been considered a technè since Antiquity. Ancient physicians agreed that medicine was invented by gods before being passed down to men: the first link in this transmission chain would be the centaur Chiron, who taught Asclepius pharmacopoeia and surgery: the Hippocratides medical dynasty claims this prestigious ancestry to legitimize its knowledge and skills. Thus, Asclepius is thought of as the divine ancestor of physicians, and even as a divine physician. Indeed, his art is similar to mortal physicians’: healing occurs through physical contact during incubation, and the healing narratives of the Asclepieia use the same technical vocabulary as in the Hippocratic corpus. Technical and family filiation is accompanied by collective and individual devotion, making Asclepius the divine model of human physicians.

Asclepius is also the heir of another god who contributes to the construction of his technical identity: his father, Apollo, who is a healing deity and not a medical one, because he is not a practitioner, technitès, as Asclepius is. It thus seems that Asclepius, son of Apollo and disciple of Chiron, is at the same time the heir of Chiron’s technical skills, which is manifested through his pattern of interaction with incubants, and of Apollo’s dynamis, making him a divine puissance with supra-human medical ability.

I would like to study Asclepius’ technical identity by distinguishing medical deities from healing deities, similar in terms of champ d’action but distinct in terms of modes d’action. I will argue that Asclepius’ accession from heroic status to divine status, in Greece during the 5th century, must be placed in the socio-historical context of the emergence of Hippocratic medicine. Thus, at the turn of the classical period, Apollo, healing god, gave way to Asclepius, medical god, as the preferred interlocutor of the sick and wounded.

Paper short abstract:

This paper aims to discuss how the representations of Mars in ancient discourse, both as an archetypal warrior and as a divine source of inner strength in battle, contributed to shape the identity of Roman soldiers in the Late republican and early imperial periods.

Paper long abstract:

The manifestations of Mars are diverse, yet they are systematically linked to war or combat, be it as a fierce warden guarding the city or the land against enemies both “visible and invisible” (Cat. Agr. 141; Mars Pater) or as a force active in the midst of battle slaying soldiers from both sides (Mars Caecus, Mars Communis). However, it seems his presence can also be felt at an individual level. Indeed, Augustan poetry often directly compares exceptional soldiers to the god of war, be it for their virtues or ferocity (e. g. : Verg. Aen. 12.107-109) or because of their way of fighting, reminiscent of the god (e. g. Flac. 7.644-648). Some may even appear to surpass him (e. g. Scaeva in Luc. 6. 250-256). Sometimes, a “personal” Mars (Mars suus) appears as well, giving strength and courage to the miles, so that he may act in a way worthy of the god. Therefore, in what ways did these representations of Mars contribute define the behaviour of the ideo typical soldier in Roman society ? How directly was he associated with the military life and ethos ?

This study aims therefore to examine the extent to which Mars as a divine figure contributed to shape the mindset and actions of Roman soldiers in the late republican and early imperial period, from the 1st century B. C. to the 2nd century A.D. To that end, we will examine literary - especially poetic – and epigraphic sources in which Mars is associated to individual military men. We will try to envision this divine figure as a form of "technology of the self", that could be used by soldiers to define their actions and conduct.

Paper short abstract:

My paper aim at studying the role played by Roman gods in craftsmanship. This question will be tackled by analyzing the latin sources coupling craftsmanship and felicitas, a concept used by Romans to identify positive outcomes resulting from the intervention of gods in earthly matters.

Paper long abstract:

Just like the relief (https://mann-napoli.it/en/gabinetto-segreto-2/#gallery-3) on the outter arch of the oven of the bakery in Pansa’s house in Pompey, numerous Latin sources couple the concept of felicitas and craftsmanship. This fact gains a very interesting value in the light of the main constant of the Latin corpus of felicitas: the link Romans traced between this concept and their gods. Indeed, my doctoral research showed that the Romans used the concept of felicitas to identify a very specific kind of results: positive outcomes resulting from the intervention of gods in earthly matters. This is, for example, the case of Cicero during the speech he gave in 66 in favor of the bill granting to Pompey the command of the war against Mithridates (Man., 16, 47):

"It remains for me to speak – though guardedly and briefly, as is fitting when men discuss the prerogative of the gods (potestate deorum) – on the subject of good luck (felicitate), which no man can claim as his own, but which we may remember and record in the case of another."

Therefore, analyzing the sources articulating felicitas and craftsmanship appears as a relevant mean of studying the role that the Romans gave to their gods in their crafting activities. What task did Romans entrust to their gods? What part of the crafting process did the Romans apply divine power to? Taking my lead from the results of my doctoral research, my paper will aim at comparing the role played by felicitas in craftsmanship to the one it played in other context, such as military success for instance.

Paper short abstract:

This paper will focus on the "sacralization" of Graeco-Roman techniques carried out by Emperor Julian (361-363): his antichristian discursive strategy, the link between foundation narratives and ritual prescription, the reconfiguration of divine powers, the consequences that this polemic produced.

Paper long abstract:

The relationship between divine powers and humans, such as divine gifts to improve conditions of humankind and the practices adopted as a result are a common theme in much ancient literature.

In Plato, some techniques are divine gifts (Plato, Phaedrus 274d) and humans started worshipping gods – through altars and statues – when Prometheus gave them a technical skill and fire (Plato, Protagoras, 321c-322a). Centuries later, Aelius Aristides as well linked cultic practices to technical development: before Zeus everything was chaotic, then humans had laws and altars (To Rome, 103).

According to Emperor Julian (361-363), who’s an heir of this tradition, the deities providentially oversee human existence: human developments, techniques, and knowledge, are divine gifts, including cultic practices, that have to be respected and preserved. This traditional topic is compelling in Julian’s works, given his anti-Christianism: knowledge and practices of the Graeco-Roman world are hierotechnai as a whole, “sacred techniques”, divine gifts, aimed at maintaining the relationship with the gods, for human well-being (Against the Galileans, fr. 45 Masaracchia). That’s why he tries to take Christians back to ancient traditions: apostates of the gods, the “Galileans” have exchanged divine gifts with a superstition that brings back humans to a feral condition and leads the empire into chaos.

The aim of this paper is to deepen Julian’s discursive strategy, the “sacralization” of Graeco-Roman techniques in a competitive perspective: the link, if any, between mythic foundation narratives and ritual prescription, the reconfiguration of divine powers in the light of this dynamic, and the consequences that this polemic may have produced.

Paper short abstract:

This paper aims to analyze tech-animated divine statues as one of the tools of powerful materialization and interaction with the gods in the Greco-Roman world, highlighting their underlying religious strategies from an anthropological perspective.

Paper long abstract:

The visual representation of the divine played an active role in the Graeco-Roman world regarding the human relationship with the gods. Their statues, in particular, were one of the focal crafted tools through which men interacted with the divine and the latter manifested its presence and action. In this paper, I will offer an insight into the religious ‘technology’ of image interactions focusing on ‘animated’ divine simulacra considered as really existing and functioning before the astonished eyes of ancient observers; in other words, statues which craftsmen technologically equipped with (more or less) visible mechanical and pneumatic devices endowing them with an apparent life, especially voice and movement. By means of emblematic examples selected (given the complete absence of finds) throughout Greco-Roman literature from the archaic to the late imperial age, two types of artefacts will be discussed: (i) actual automata and (ii) artefacts that do not involve sound or mechanical automatism but the appearance of admirable visual or auditory features as the result of craft expedients or tricks. Although several works have addressed the broad matter of ‘animated’ images in antiquity, these studies remain confined to the surface of the phenomenon about divine artefacts, limiting the discussion to the label of mirabilia or technical-scientific data. This contribution aims to provide a basis for completing this partial analysis through an anthropological perspective, highlighting the religious strategies and cultural models behind the fabrication and empowering of these divine images, thus stimulating new and more in-depth studies on the subject.

Paper short abstract:

Following the iconographical motif of the staff in Early Christian and traditional Greco-Roman iconography, this paper will analyse the way and the reasons why a tool could have been used in Early Christian art to manifest divine power, contributing to the construction of a miracle-worker figure.

Paper long abstract:

While the ancient texts describe Jesus performing miracles with a verbal command or a gesture of the hand, the first Christian images of the 3rd and 4th centuries, whose repertoire is rich in representations of Jesus making wonders, often present him holding a wand or a staff. He touches the body of Lazarus with this object to resurrect him, the baskets of bread to multiply them or the jars at his feet to turn water into wine. In a similar iconographical construction and also interpreted as wonder-making figures, Moses and Peter use the same instrument in the scenes of the miracle of the spring.

Many theologians and art historians have interpreted this “wand” as a way of presenting Jesus as a philosopher or a magician (e.g. Smith 1978, Mathews 1993). Without insisting on this debate, this paper will focus on the tool of the staff itself rather than interpreting the way it could have put Jesus in categories whose bounderies where not as clear and as real as one could think during Late Antiquity. Why did the Christians use this iconographical detail although it does not appear in the texts? Is the motif of this “miracle-working staff” a Christian invention or does it belong to a more ancient tradition? The analysis of the iconographical motifs of the virga and of the staff and the meaning they bring to the images, both in early Christian and traditional Greco-Roman iconography, will bring to light interesting dynamics around the notion of tools manifesting divine power.

Paper short abstract:

Epiphanius of Salamis in his Panarion treatise the and refute all the heresies from the creation of the world. The third one, the Hellenismos, correspond to the diffusion of "pagan" errors. The rise of civilization and of the "techne" correspond to the creation and veneration of the idols.

Paper long abstract:

Epiphanius of Salamis, monk and bishop who lived between the end of the 4th and the beginning of 5th centuries, is the author of the Panarion, a heresiological work in which he treats and refutes in chronological order all heresies that have arisen since the creation of the world. The first chapters of this treatise are dedicated to what the heresiologist calls the “mothers” of all errors. The third of these heresies to emerge in human history is the Hellenismos, through which the errors of “paganism” spread throughout the world. According to Epiphanius, the Hellenismos was arisen through the work of certain magicians and was characterized by various execrable practices: the creation of idols, the deification of dead, etc. Such practices were later adopted by the heretical masters, for example the Carpocrates. Regarding the relationship between the Hellenismos and the creation of idols, the heresiologist makes an interesting statement. In Epiphanius’ reconstruction of human history, in fact, the Hellenismos marked an evolution from the barbaric and the nomadic states of the previous periods. However, this evolution, leading to the organisation of communities, the construction of cities, the drafting of laws, and the development of technai, corresponds to the very beginning of the “error”. Through the mastery of these technai, mankind would have begun to manufacture idols and to create meaningless gods for themselves. For this reason, the inventor of this technē, the biblical character Tharra, would have been punished by God. In short, the heresiologist seems to declare that the development of the technē, which is a sign of human “progress”, inexorably led to the rise of errors among people. In this paper, I will analyse the polemic against the technē and how it fits into Epiphanius’ heresiological strategy.

Paper short abstract:

The introduction of writing as a divine gift in Hellenistic Jewish Literature solidified the Biblical god as a tech creator deity against the framework of Greek myths. A Christian text combined the Jewish and Greek versions to prove the superiority of the Christian god over the others.

Paper long abstract:

In the Bible, writing is first mentioned when God ordered Moses to “write down in a scroll” the story of Joshua’s victory (Exodus 17.14). Writing was thus introduced as an already existing technology, with its origins unexplained. On Sinai, the commandments were written both by Moses (Ex. 24.4-7; 34.27) and “the finger of God” (Ex. 31.1). While writing was defined as means of communication between a divinity and their people, its status as either a divine creation or as a human invention remained unspecified.

During the Hellenistic period, Enoch, an ancestor of Noah (Genesis 5.24), was described in many Jewish texts as a righteous man who “introduced new kinds of technology among his peers” (Reed and Reeves 2018, 111). In a text dated to the mid-2nd century BCE, Enoch was said to have been “the first among men born on earth to learn to write” (Jubilees 4.17). The phrasing implies that he was taught characters by a divine entity. I will argue that the surprising emergence of Enoch as a full-fledged “cultural hero” can be understood as the result of fruitful competition with the Greek myths that attributed many technological discoveries to either gods and goddesses or heroes.

Indeed, the hero credited with the introduction of writing into the Greek world, Cadmus, was associated with Enoch during Late Antiquity. A 6th century Christian text stated that letters were not invented by men but inscribed on stone by God and learned by a divinely inspired Enoch (On the Mysteries of the Letters 19.20). Cadmus then found the inscribed stone and introduced writing to Phoenicia (Stroumsa 2014). The Christian author of this text aimed at reconciling the Jewish and the Greek versions of the introduction of writing to better prove the superiority of Christianity.