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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.