Gods and Robots

by Adrienne Mayor

  The story of how Daedalus enabled Pasiphae’s bestiality was very popular in Greek and Roman times, perpetuated by many ancient authors.23 Illustrations of the Pasiphae tale abound in frescoes, mosaics, sarcophagi, and other artworks. A relief on a clay cup made in Tarsus, Anatolia, in the first century BC, for example, depicts Daedalus showing Pasiphae the lifelike heifer. Daedalus presents the cow to Pasiphae in several colorful frescoes discovered in Pompeii and Herculaneum (in one of the paintings, Daedalus’s bow-drill is shown). A similar scene appears in the mosaic floor of a Roman aristocrat’s villa in Zeugma, Asia Minor. The story struck chords in the Middle Ages and later times too. Medieval miniatures tend to focus on the romance shared by Pasiphae and a gentle, love-struck bull, while modern paintings and etchings often show a lascivious Pasiphae eagerly entering the wooden cow.24

  As Palaephatus pointed out, what happened next in the myth would have been impossible because different species cannot reproduce offspring, and, moreover, no woman could tolerate sex with a bull or carry a fetus with hooves and horns. In the myth, Pasiphae gives birth to a monster: a baby boy with the head of a bull. The question of how Pasiphae could breastfeed the infant Minotaur arose in antiquity, with some suggesting that a real cow would have to have been his wet nurse. A fine red-figure painting on a cup of the fourth century BC found in an Etruscan tomb shows a frowning Pasiphae with the baby Minotaur on her lap (fig. 4.3). Her hand gestures suggest surprise or hesitation. The earliest artworks depicting the Minotaur antedate the written myth by centuries, going back to the eighth century BC, and by the sixth century BC the Minotaur had become a favorite subject for vase painters.25

  The Minotaur’s birth was a nasty shock for King Minos. Another branch of the myth tells how the Minotaur—who grows up to be a cannibalistic ogre—is imprisoned in the Cretan Labyrinth, a bewildering covered maze designed by Daedalus, of course. Every year a group of young men and maidens from Athens must be sacrificed to the Minotaur, until the Athenian hero Theseus manages to slay the man-bull monster in his maze. Theseus escapes from the Labyrinth with the help of Ariadne, daughter of Minos: Ariadne has given Theseus a ball of wool, telling him to tie one end to the entrance of the Labyrinth and unroll the yarn, so that after killing the Minotaur he can follow the thread, retracing his steps. It is none other than Daedalus who has given Ariadne the ball of wool and the instructions for threading his own Labyrinth.26

  FIG. 4.2. Daedalus, with saw, making a realistic cow for Pasiphae, Roman relief, first to fifth century AD, Palazzo Spada. Photo by Alinari.

  FIG. 4.3. Pasiphae and the baby Minotaur, red-figure kylix found at Vulci, fourth century BC, Cabinet des Medailles, Paris. Photo by Carole Raddato, 2015.

  Deeply offended by the inventor’s crimes, Minos imprisons Daedalus and his young son, Icarus, in the Labyrinth. What escape plan would Daedalus devise?

  Gazing at the horizon where sky met sea, Daedalus dreams up an audacious scheme to free himself and his son from Minos’s prison. What if they could fly away like birds? The myth of Daedalus and Icarus soaring aloft on wings made from real feathers and wax is another case of imaginary biomimetic technology to enhance human powers. Narrated by so many storytellers over the centuries, memorialized by countless artists, the tale is one of the most beloved myths of classical antiquity.27

  Daedalus collects bird feathers and layers them according to size like real pinions, using beeswax (or glue, one of his inventions). He makes two pairs of wings to strap onto himself and his son. Daedalus instructs Icarus to be careful not to fly too high, lest the sun’s heat melt the wax or glue, and to avoid dipping too low over the sea, because the moisture might cause the wings to fall apart. But young Icarus, enraptured by the experience of flight, soars too high. As the sun melts the wax, the feathers flutter away and the youth plummets into the sea.28

  In sorrow, Daedalus flew on, stopping at various Mediterranean islands, and finally making his way to Camicus, Sicily, ruled by King Cocalus. Some said Daedalus dedicated his wings to Apollo in a temple at Cumae, whose walls were decorated with the inventor’s life story painted by Daedalus himself. Some skeptical writers, such as Palaephatus (12 Daedalus) and Pausanias (9.11.4), rejected the myth of his flight, however. They suggested that the story arose because Daedalus was in reality the first inventor of sails, which archaic people had once likened to wings that allowed ships to “fly” over the waves. In this story, Icarus drowned at sea and was buried by Heracles on the island of Icaria.29 But the main thread of the myth continues with King Cocalus welcoming Daedalus and offering him protection from Minos. Everyone knows that the king of Crete is pursuing his escaped captive, looking for Daedalus in all the major cities across the Mediterranean.

  FIG. 4.4. Daedalus making wings for Icarus at his workbench, ancient Roman relief, Museo di Villa Albani, Rome, Alinari / Art Resource, NY.

  FIG. 4.5. Icarus with wings, small bronze figure, about 430 BC, inv. 1867,0508.746. © The Trustees of the British Museum.

  FIG. 4.6. Icarus flying over fisherman in boat; King Minos in the city of Knossos. Roman lamp, first century AD, inv. 1856,1226.470. © The Trustees of the British Museum.

  The earliest references to the escape from Crete by human-powered flight are not written but artistic. The oldest image, discovered in 1988, is fascinating for two reasons. It is Etruscan, not Greek, evidence that the Daedalus flight legend had already reached Italy by word of mouth by the seventh century BC, long before the myth was first written down. On an Etruscan bucchero jug made in about 630 BC a winged man is labeled “Taitale,” Daedalus’s name in Etruscan. On the other side is Medea with her cauldron, inscribed with her Etruscan name “Metaia.” This unique pairing of Daedalus and Medea is unparalleled in ancient art; it suggests that the Etruscans linked these two mythical figures because of their wondrous biotechne.

  Many Etruscan carved gems depict Daedalus/Taitale at work. Another unusual Etruscan artifact, a beautiful golden bulla (locket, 475 BC) is decorated with images of Daedalus and Icarus on each side, labeled with their Etruscan names, Taitale and Vikare. They are wearing their wings and carrying tools (saw, adze, axe, and square), details that emphasize craftsmanship and technology.

  FIG. 4.7. Daedalus hovering over the body of Icarus fallen on the shore, an eighteenth-century drawing of an ancient mural, Pompeii, first century AD. Ann Ronan Picture Library, London, HIP / Art Resource, NY.

  The earliest Greek representation of Daedalus is on a vase of about 570 BC: he is wearing wings and carrying an axe and a bucket. The earliest confirmed image of Icarus is on a fragment of black-figure Athenian pottery of about 560 BC showing the lower half of a man with winged footgear, clearly labeled “Ikaros” (wings on his feet appear in other ancient artworks too). A painted red-figure fragment of about 420 BC shows Daedalus fastening the wings on Icarus, and on a fifth-century BC vase, Icarus plunges into the sea. On a fragment of a fine red-figure vase (390 BC, fig. 4.8) we see a devastated Daedalus carrying his dead son.30

  FIG. 4.8. Daedalus carrying his dead son, Icarus, Apulian red-figure pottery fragment of a krater, Black Fury Group, about 390 BC, inv. 2007,5004.1. © The Trustees of the British Museum.

  More than a hundred ancient images of Icarus and Daedalus are known. Many of them show Daedalus at work surrounded by his tools, making the wings; others show him attaching the wings to his son, Icarus, and Icarus falling from the sky. In Roman times, the story continued as a favorite poignant subject for artists, appearing on carved gems, molded clay lamps, bronze figurines, reliefs, and frescoes. A large group of Roman cameos and glass gems illustrate the story, while several murals in Pompeii capture the moment of Icarus’s death, with a horrified Daedalus hovering above his son’s broken body on the seashore. The myth’s merging of optimism and despair made it a compelling allegorical topos in the Middle Ages too. Although the story may seem a cliché today, one can appreciate how it may have been read: high hopes for man-made technology to artificially enhance human capabilities are cruelly dashed by compla
cency, hubris, and unanticipated consequences.31

  Yet the dream that men could somehow fly like birds far above the earth did not die with Icarus. After all, in the myth Daedalus and Icarus did become airborne and flew successfully, and—despite the high cost of his innovation—Daedalus himself survived the flight to Sicily. Humans hitching rides on birds and insects are featured in Aristophanes’s plays, in Aesop’s fables, and in ancient Persian traditions. A unique ancient “science fiction” about human flight was written by Lucian of Samosata (b. ca. AD 125). In Icaromenippus (or “The Sky Man”), Lucian’s popular tale, the philosopher Menippus imitates Daedalus and makes himself a pair of wings to fly to the moon. On his voyage, he observes that earthlings resemble tiny ants scurrying about meaninglessly.32

  One of the most memorable flying “machine” designs in antiquity appears in the Alexander Romance legends, in which Alexander is consumed by the desire to explore two great unknowns, the heavens and the oceans. He harnesses the power of birds to fly and dives like a fish in the deep sea, thanks to two inventions. One device is decidedly magical but the other involves technological ingenuity.

  Alexander’s diving bell required creative technology. His discovery of a huge crab and giant pearls on a beach fuels Alexander’s wish to explore the mysterious depths of the ocean and see its denizens for himself. In classical Greece, primitive diving bells, described by Pseudo-Aristotle (Problems 32.960b32), already allowed deep-sea sponge divers to remain under water longer by breathing air trapped in an upside-down cauldron let down into the sea. In the Romance legend, Alexander explains how he made a diving bell by encasing a large, man-sized glass jar inside an iron cage, sealed by a lead lid. Alexander climbs inside. Breathing the air trapped in the glass vessel, he is lowered into the ocean by a chain from his companions’ ship. At a depth ranging between 454 and 1,400 feet depending on the version, Alexander observes many fabulous deep-sea creatures.

  But he almost does not survive the expedition. Suddenly a gigantic fish seizes the diving bell, dragging it and the ship along more than a mile. The great fish crushes the iron bars in its jaws, and finally spits the glass vessel with Alexander still inside onto the beach. Gasping on the shore, Alexander tells himself to give up “attempting the impossible!”33 As with the fall of Icarus, the “moral” often attached to the Romance traditions cautions against the hubris of overreaching human limits. But, in fact, the thrilling audacity of Alexander’s undersea and space adventures—to go where no human had gone before—seems more likely to obscure that message. Despite the risks, like Daedalus the bold explorer did live to tell the tale.

  Pictures of Alexander “piloting” his diving bell and his flying machine appear in literally hundreds of illustrations in manuscripts, mosaics, sculptures, and tapestries from AD 1000 to 1600. Unlike the technological construction of his iron and glass diving bell, the flying machine is powered by two huge unidentified white birds, vultures, or griffins, goaded ever upward by horse livers dangled on spears above them. The fantasy plays on the folk motif of the donkey lured forward by a carrot on a stick.34 Alexander flies higher and higher and the air becomes colder and colder, until he peers down at the earth, which now resembles a small globe in the blue ocean’s bowl, seemingly insignificant compared to the vastness of the heavens. The scene is remarkably prescient, anticipating the humbled reactions of modern astronauts and viewers of the first pictures of the small blue planet Earth seen from space. This story elaborates on Alexander’s wishes to surpass the limits of human capacities, seeking knowledge “beyond the world.” Satisfied with his bird’s-eye perspective from the stratosphere, Alexander returns to earth.

  Daedalus too returned to earth. As we saw, he landed in Sicily and found refuge from King Minos in the court of King Cocalus of Camicus. We pick up the thread of this peripatetic inventor’s exploits in the next chapter.

  HUMAN-POWERED FLIGHT

  The experiments by Daedalus and Alexander reflect an age-old fascination with technology’s potentials, envisioned in early myth, legend, and folklore, to exceed human boundaries and create artificial human enhancements. The wish to imitate birds’ exhilarating freedom persists, leading many others to try to achieve Daedalus’s feat. In the Greek myth, Daedalus’s “impossible” human-powered flight involved simply imitating birds, by flapping man-made feathered wings attached to one’s back and arms. Large kites in the shape of birds’ wings and other wing-beating flying devices were tested in China as early as the first century AD.35 A Chinese text of the fourth century AD relates that a people of the Far West invented a flying machine driven by wind and had to make an emergency landing in Shang dynasty territory (Yellow River valley, ca. 1600–1046 BC). The Shang ruler destroyed the machines so that they could not be copied, but the stranded pilots rebuilt them and flew back home.36

  In about 1500, Leonardo da Vinci, who was familiar with Greek myths, not only made designs for a diving bell and suit, but also sketched several plans for human-powered ornithopters (mechanical wing-flapping devices modeled on bird and bat wings). There is no evidence of physical prototypes or test flights for Leonardo’s plans. But models based on his drawings have been made, most recently in 2006 by the Victoria and Albert Museum in London for an exhibit on early flight.

  The glorious notion of flying by human power alone has inspired numerous intrepid modern inventors to find ways to overcome the problems of aerodynamics and power-to-weight ratio. One clever suggestion was to find a way to use foot-pedaling energy. Leg-powered flight was long considered to be impossible. Aeronautical engineers believed that no aircraft could be light enough to fly on such a limited source of power and yet be robust enough to carry a pilot—who of course would have to possess extraordinary strength and endurance. One of the first attempts was a “cycleplane” built in 1923, but it achieved only twenty-foot hops. In 1977, advances in strong, lightweight materials resulted in a human-powered plane flown by a cyclist-hang-glider pilot, who reached the modest altitude of ten feet and flew just over a mile.

  It’s diverting to speculate on some potential practical options that existed in antiquity for the mythic Daedalus, such as kites or glider sail-wings. Chinese chronicles record that a prisoner named Yuan Huangtou unwillingly soared about one and a half miles with an owl-shaped kite in about AD 559, a primitive approximation of uncontrolled “hang gliding” (chapter 9).37 Notably, in some ancient Greek traditions Daedalus was credited with the invention of sails for ships. Coarse linen with high tensile strength was used for sailcloth in Minoan Crete, known for its fine spinners and weavers. Linen sailcloth could be waxed for waterproofing. The natural materials and technical skills to make a simple glider were available in antiquity. A simple, experimental glider design could have been constructed by stretching and gluing waxed sailcloth over a lightweight wicker framework of giant reeds (Arundo donax), similar to the working gliders made by aeronautics pioneer Sir George Cayley (1773–1857), who tested his ideas with small models before building larger ones.

  In myth, Daedalus was associated with weavers’ and spinners’ balls of thread. In antiquity the membraned wings of bats captured attention, and spiders were admired for floating on fine silk gossamer and weaving strong silken webs. Venturing for a moment into an ancient realm of science fiction to imagine an alternative myth for Daedalus, one might picture the inventor weaving tensile spiderwebs to make a lightweight sail-wing apparatus, a kind of ancient glider.

  Early modern versions of modern hang gliders were hindered by low lift-to-drag ratios, but now, thanks to aluminum alloy and composite frames covered with ultralight laminated polyester films, hang-glider pilots can soar for hours on thermal updrafts at altitudes of thousands of feet, simply by shifting their body weight, with little exertion, imitating the dynamic soaring ability of albatrosses and shearwaters. With a modern hang glider and the help of the winds, a Daedalus could island-hop from Crete to Sicily.

  In 1988, inspired to replicate Daedalus’s flight pattern in the Aegean, the Greek Oly
mpic cycling champion Kanellos Kanellopoulos skimmed over the Aegean Sea from the island of Crete to the island of Santorini in an ultralight craft, Daedalus 88, propelled by pedals. His record-setting flight of 72 miles, at an altitude of 15–30 feet, took about 4 hours of intense pedaling. The experiment was sponsored by the MIT Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. In 2012, the Icarus Cup was established by the Royal Aeronautical Society in England, to promote the sport of human-powered flight. How amazed Daedalus would be, if only he could witness the continuing legacies of his epic flight to freedom.38

  CHAPTER 5

  DAEDALUS AND THE

  LIVING STATUES

  AFTER HIS SAFE arrival in King Cocalus’s court, Daedalus’s mythic biography continued as he resumed his role as an architect, artist, and engineer in Sicily. According to ancient local traditions, Daedalus designed an impregnable acropolis for Cocalus at Acragas (founded in about 582 BC, now Agrigento). The summit could be reached only by a narrow, circuitous passageway, an echo of the Labyrinth in Crete. So ingenious was the plan that the fortress could be defended by just three or four men. Temples to Apollo at Cumae and Capua were also ascribed to Daedalus, among numerous other architectural works scattered across the Mediterranean from Egypt to Libya.