The first example of mechanical epiphany that the book sets forth is that of the well-known ‘god on the machine’ (deus ex machina) employed in the ancient Greek theatre. Moving beyond interpreting the theatrical crane as a plot device, this chapter forefronts the mēchanē’s material qualities to explore the theological potential of the object as a mode of visual epiphany. Vital to the success of this mode of epiphany was the challenge to the viewer to recognise divine intervention as well as the mechanics that constructed and enabled it. The evidence of Old Comedy, both fragmentary and the fuller plays of Aristophanes, help demonstrate how uses of the comic crane (kradē) undercut the interpretative symbiosis between man, machine, and divine agency on which tragedy was predicated. The chapter closes by exploring how the theatre as a form of mass media made it fertile ground for development and exploration of theological ideas, not just a reflection of literary norms.

This chapter offers in-depth case studies to display how playwrights both used and innovated with mechanical epiphany. Six ancient tragedies are discussed, grouped in thematic pairs. Euripides’ Helen and Bacchae, are taken together as plays that use the deus ex machina to comment on divine form. While the mēchanē in the Helen confirms divine form in a play otherwise full of illusion; the mēchanē in the Bacchae is presented as yet another epiphanic mode of the mimetically inclined patron god of theatre, Dionysus. Sophocles’ Philoctetes and Euripides’ Heracles use the mēchanē to explore issues of space, movement, and the connectedness of divine and mortal. Finally, Euripides’ Orestes and Medea both make use of the mēchanē to question divine epiphany by bringing to the fore issues of ontological boundaries between human and divine.