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.

The introduction argues that ancient Greek poetry exhibits a particularly acute awareness of change, decay, and ephemerality inherent in mortality. It stresses the fact that these poems have assumed at least two forms of materiality: one in relation to performing bodies and another as inscribed texts. After reviewing prior scholarship in these areas, it looks at definitions of the body and the word ephêmeros in Greek poetry, including Homer, Pindar, and other lyric poets, and in Ps.-Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound, before offering summaries of the chapters of the book.