On Automata, or Self-Moving Machines

In self-moving machines, the internal principle of motion gives movement to the organic parts, iron, wood, and cords being in these, in a certain manner, as bones and nerves are in animals. Mention is likewise found of them in that little book entitled De Mundo to Alexander, concerning which there is doubt as to who its author was, it being already accepted as manifest among the learned, by the manner of treatment and the phrasing, that it is not by Aristotle. It is written (I say) in that little book that the gods, residing in heaven, move the parts of the universe just as the Master of these Automata does; who, having imparted the motion, withdraws, and as the machine moves, he himself does not move. That this art, then, as I was saying, proceeds apace with the Mathematical sciences is known from this: that Archimedes, Prince of all others in this profession, fashioned that marvelous sphere in which he united the motions of the Sun, the Moon, and of the other five wanderers; which sphere was said by Claudian to have been of glass, when he celebrated it with these verses:

Beholding the heavens enclosed in a small glass,
Jove laughed, and thus spoke to the celestials:
“Has mortal care then so much power?
Behold, my labor in fragile glass
Becomes a jest, and the Syracusan Elder
Transports the laws and the faith of men,
Of the Heavens, and of things.
An enclosed spirit serves the various stars,
And surely imparts motion to the living work.
A feigned year runs its oblique circle,
And a false Cynthia returns at the new month.
Now, revolving his world, bold industry
Rejoices, and with human genius
Governs the stars; why then should one admire
The false thunder of the innocent Salmoneus?”