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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.