These lines;
The animated figures stand
Adorning every public street
And seem to breathe in stone, or
move their marble feet.
are claimed to be a translation from Pindar's 7th Olympic Ode. They
appear in the Wikipedia article on "automata" (
https://bit.ly/37o9SfE),
and on a myriad sites about the history of clockwork, robots, computers
etc. I got "About 3,820,000 results (1.07 seconds)" with Google.
The 7th Olympic Ode is in praise of a boxer from Rhodes, Diagoras, who
won Olympic medal in 464 B.C. It sings the high esteem of Rhodes and
includes this line (which is the source of the above translation);
ἔργα δὲ ζωοῖσιν ἑρπόντεσσί θ᾽ ὁμοῖα κέλευθοι φέρον:
(Literal translation: The streets bear works like living and moving beings)
Now, I ask you, what does that mean to you? Well, to me it means the
statues of classical Greece that depict the human form in motion;
throwing discus, javelin, riding chariots, women with flowing garments
striding out.
Beware the translation; a false one can build a house of cards.
Ed
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)