Airing the Ludic: On the Playful and Embodied Qualities of Ancient Pneumatics

This chapter explores how elements of play and the playful intersected with the ancient science of pneumatics, focusing explicitly on how this manifested materially. To do so, I first demonstrate how ancient pneumatic epistemology is best understood as ‘embodied’ and proceed to show that this embodied quality contributed both to the ludic value of many pneumatic objects, as well as to the ‘serious’ work that consisted of demonstrating and distributing pneumatic knowledge. Refiguring the modern scholarly discourse on ancient pneumatics from either frivolous gadgetry or abstract theorems, I pair ancient pneumatic texts with objects from material culture to illuminate how two categories of objects functioned as cultural objects of play: trick vessels and pneumatically animated scenes. The former were sophisticated jugs which poured wine and water in surprising ways, presumably to the delight and surprise of gathered guests at a symposium. In the case of the latter, pneumatic properties are encased into scenes or figurines which playfully bring the small objects to life: birds sing, animals drink, worshippers revel, Heracles shoots a serpent which hisses. By exploring the dynamic interactions between the culture of the playful and the culture of the scientific in Graeco-Roman antiquity, I hope to offer new reflections on categories of objects—scientific instruments and/as toys—as well as on categories of epistemology—the scientific informing, and being informed by, the make-believe.