Chapter 5 explores how technical ingenuity featured in the act of religious dedication in ancient Greek religion. Two epigrams (describing the Bes rhyton and the Lykon thēsauros) are taken alongside descriptions of pneumatic inventions in Philo of Byzantium and Hero of Alexandria’s technical manuals. Though not typically read together, Hellenistic epigram, and Philo and Hero’s texts all describe pneumatically enhanced dedications, and demonstrate, within the confines of their genres, how religious awe and technological capabilities were co-constructed and mutually reinforcing. The chapter then turns to the material record, examining traces of technically enhanced dedications in practice. Two examples are explored: wheeled tripods and articulated figurines. Both categories of votive objects show different ways in which the mechanical, human, and divine were configured. Both also stretch further back chronologically than the discussion of preceding chapters, allowing for discussion of texts including Iliad 18 on Hephaistos’ tripods, and Prometheus Bound, to think about the (mythic) prehistory of the phenomenon at hand.

This chapter analyses the concept of technological progress in Greek antiquity. It briefly surveys the historiography of technological progress, in particular Moses Finley’s view and its links with his view of the ancient economy, and more recent reactions to Finley. The chapter charts the idea that technology has helped humankind develop from a semi-brutish state to a more civilised condition in some classical Greek sources, including Greek tragedy, and focusses on the case-study of ancient accounts of catapults, which include a history of discovery and of cumulative improvement. The last section is devoted to the ambiguous morality of technological progress.