Read The Pillars of Hercules Online
Authors: David Constantine
Tags: #Fantasy, #Alternative History, #Historical, #Fiction
The Pillars of Hercules (61 page)
On the Technology
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I’ve always felt that steampunk was way too cool to be left to the stodgy old Victorians, but the really intriguing thing about the ancient world is just how much steampunk was in it already. Most people have no idea that the steam engine itself was invented in the first century A.D. by Heron of Alexandria; the problem was it was never put to any practical use. The question of the conditions sufficient and/or necessary for the “take-off” phase of industrialization is far too complex an issue to be dealt with here, and it may well be that the slave-based economies of the ancient world lacked the prerequisites for such industrialization by definition (who needs labor-saving devices when one has all the slaves one needs?).
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But one sure can have a lot of fun with what they came up with. With the exception of the really crazy stuff (like golems capable of combat), virtually every piece of technology in the book had its roots in some ancient prototype. If you want to get your mind blown (and who doesn’t), check out Michael Lahanas’ excellent website
http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/Greeks.htm
for a comprehensive list of ancient Greek technology, along with lots of cool references and pictures. To be sure, much of the tech on that list (Archimedes’ steam-gun notwithstanding) is more gearpunk
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than steampunk… but the sheer extent of that capability is something that we’re only just now waking up to. When the Antikyhera wreck was first discovered, historians initially scoffed at the idea that the device contained within—which essentially functioned as an analog computer, mirroring the heavens with more than thirty distinct gears—was in fact from the ancient world. Had the device not been uncovered in that wreck, we would have had no way of suspecting it had ever been invented. And when we consider that more than ninety percent of classical learning was lost in the Dark Ages, we can only wonder at what we’ll never find. As always, time has the last word.
1 Jeanne Reames, “Beyond Renault”, downloaded from http://myweb.unomaha.edu/~mreames/Beyond_Renault/renault.html
2 A tendency examined by Nicholas Nicastro in the introduction to his novel Empire of Ashes.
3 Badian, Ernst, “The Death of Parmenio”, Transactions and Proceedings of the American Association, Vol. 91 (1960), pp. 324-338.
4 See, for example, Nicastro’s Empire of Ashes and Annabel Lyon’s The Golden Mean.
Interestingly, Thucydides himself never says the Syracusan Expedition was a mistake per se; he just takes issue with how it was carried out. Given it became one of the biggest military blunders of all time, this nuance on his part is worth noting.
6 Let’s not forget that Periclean Athens had more than a passing interest in relieving Persia of Egypt, launching an expedition against that province only a few years before the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War.
7 Readers interested in exploring the question further ought to once again consult Peter Green, specifically chapter 27 of his From Alexander to Actium, chapter 27, “Technological Developments”, which speculates at length on factors that straitjacketed the classical economies.
8 Or clockpunk. Whatever.
With special thanks to:
Kristen Dawson
Mark Williams
Brian De Groodt
Erin Sheley
Marc Haimes
Peter Watts
Howard Morhaim
Tom Doyle
Gail Carriger
Mike Brotherton
Nicola Griffith
Kelley Eskridge
Aiden Thompson
Erin Cashier
Ilona Gordon
Jeremy Lassen
Jason Williams
Ross Lockhart
Jenny Rappaport
Simran Khalsa
The Beasts
About The Author
David Constantine resides in Los Angeles with his not-so-loyal army of cats. Learn more about the War of Athens and Macedonia at www.thepillarsofhercules.com.
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