In the Greek, Latin, and Armenian traditions, there are dispersed references to a chronicle by Epiphanius of Salamis (fourth century). This is certainly a sixth-century work that probably was created in the late sixth-century controversy about the date of Christmas. It defended, like Annianus, a start of the Christian era in AM 5500.

Chapter 6 turns to ritual processions or parades (pompai) which formed part of ancient Greek religious festivals. On the evidence of the Great Dionysia of 309/308 BCE organised by Demetrius of Phalerum, Ptolemy II’s ‘Grand Procession’ shortly thereafter, and Herodes Atticus’ Panathenaea of 143 CE, large, self-animated machines, known as automata, became a feature of Hellenistic processions. Automata were effective as processional equipment because they enhanced existing features of religious procession: narrative, synaesthesia, and the call–response relation between worshippers and the deity. Automata in procession attest to the new technological capabilities of the Hellenistic period and are harnessed within new religious and political realities including the development of ruler cult, but their effective deployment was based on existing theological structures. The chapter also looks in detail at the only extant technical text dedicated to the construction of automata: Hero of Alexandria’s On Automata.

Isidore the deacon is a probably sixth- or seventh-century chronographer, of whose work a single fragment is preserved. It records an episode from the life of John Chrysostom.

Inspired by his Old Testament exegesis, Diodore of Tarsus composed a chronicle, which corrected the chronology proposed by Eusebius.

This book shows that the development of Greek chronicle writing from the fourth to the seventh century was not linear. Whilst the impact of the chronicle of Eusebius of Caesarea was great, subsequent writers corrected his errors and incorporated the third-century chronographies by Hippolytus and Julius Africanus into the framework shaped by Eusebius. As a consequence, chronographies and not chronicles dominate in Greek literature. One innovation of the fourth century was to link computus (the calculation of the Easter date) and chronography, first visible in the work of Andreas, brother of Magnus (352), and later in that of Annianus (412). The direct impact of Annianus has been overestimated: unique in some of its core ideas, his work resurfaced only in the 560s, in the context of Justinian’s attempt to impose the Christmas date of 25 December on the church of Jerusalem. This controversy caused a flurry of works of chronography and computus to be written in the early seventh century. Besides this tradition, the book also uncovers a tradition of chronicles with a local focus, which shaped the chronicle of John Malalas. We argue that the source indications of Malalas deserve more credit than they are usually granted.

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.

A single entry in the Syriac chronicle of Elias of Nisibis (975–1046) mentions consularia as source for the year 412. This is probably a reference copied from the fifth-century Greek church historian Socrates.

Many types of divination in the Graeco-Roman world relied on interventions of human technical knowledge. This chapter explores astragalomancy (knuckle bone divination) and catoptromancy (mirror divination) as two ‘technical’ modes of ancient divination which, through catoptric and mathematical knowledge respectively, reflected and shaped theological assumptions about how the gods intervened in the human realm, and how this connected to human knowledge. The chapter also considers how religious architecture was technologically enhanced for particular theological purposes. The oracle to Trophonios in Lebadeia is analysed through this lens where human technē was essential to achieving a connection with the divine in this artificially manufactured divinatory setting.

Humans have historically devised, and continue to devise, various strategies to make their gods present in the mortal realm. The introduction explains how technologies should be understood as one such strategy employed in ancient Greek religion to solve the ‘problem of divine presence’. Key terms including technology, mechanics, art, and technē are explained, and the relationship between these terms is discussed. Various themes important to the book are also introduced: theoretical frameworks to access the agency of technological objects which conditioned ancient religious experience (including a reassessment of Alfred Gell’s theory of art objects); what we should make of apparently conflicting epistemologies in a topic such as this which combines ‘rational’ scientific knowledge and sacred experience; and how concepts of play and the playful were crucial both to religion and to technology in Classical antiquity.

The chronogaphy of Panodorus, composed early in the 5th c. in Alexandia, is only attested in the early ninth century. chronicle of Georgius Syncellus, who cites fragments concerning two issues: the long antediluvial chronologies found in Babylonian and Egyptian writings and the start of the Christian era in AM 5493. Panodorus’ chronography relied heavily on astronomical scholarship in Alexandria and is very similar to that of Annianus. We argue that Annianus based himself on Panodorus and not the other way round. Although older scholarship attributed an immense impact of Panodorus on late antique chronicle writing, his work only resurfaced in the ninth century.

The chronography of Annianus, composed in 412, stands out by closely mapping the chronology of the world onto the Alexandrian 532-year Easter cycle, of which he may be the originator. He also defended that Christ was born in AM 5500, which had its roots in Christian exegesis. This generated a set of chronological anomalies, especially the fact that he situated birth and death of Christ about 10 years later than usual in Christian chronography. As a consequence, there is hardly any trace of Annianus before the second half of the sixth century, when Justinian’s attempt to impose the Christmas date of 25 December on the church of Jerusalem sparked a controversy. Annianus’ chronology, which supported the date of 25 December, was put forward by the defenders of that date (especially Heron), whilst those defending 6 January drew on Andreas. Due to this controversy, Annianus’ chronography travelled from Alexandria to Constantinople and was transmitted to Syriac and hence into Arabic.