1 ‘Machine Made of Earth’: Lively Automata in Marlowe’s Hero and Leander Shannon Lambert Department of Literary Studies, English Literature, Ghent University Introduction In the seventh century BCE, the Greek writer Semonides of Amorgos wrote a poem which described the seven ‘types’ of women made by Zeus. While these types are predominantly inspired by animals, Semonides introduces an ‘earth woman’ into the menagerie: One type the gods of Mount Olympus crafted out of Earth—their gift to man! She’s lame and has no sense of either good or bad. She knows no useful skill, except to eat 25 and, when the gods make winter cold and hard to drag her chair up closer to the fire. Semonides’s earth woman is a creature of instinct who is focused only on basic bodily needs such as food and warmth. She is a ‘reactive’ creature with no sense of ‘either good or bad’ rather than a rationally responsive being capable of such distinctions (1994: 24). Her inability to ‘respond’ lies at the heart of early modern philosopher René Descartes’s conception of the bête machine – the ‘beast-machine’ or ‘animal automaton’ – which