Look, I don't know why they called him Radius. Marius and Sulla were named after the Roman generals, and Helena is obvious - but Primus confuses me. He's not the first created, nor is he the first of that new breed of robot Fabry was convinced into making by the human Helena. He is the "Adam" - the first of the final robots - but it's not a name he chose himself, so why name him Primus? And Radius? I guess...it means like, a staff, or a ray of light, so if whoever named the factory robots was feeling exceptionally poetic that day and happened to be an oracle, they could have foreseen his revolution and that he would lead it - that he would be the beckoning staff, the rod to punish humanity, the nimbus light bringing revelation upon all robotkind-
But no one in the play is exceptionally prophetic, besides Primus and Helena - and them robots. So in-universe I cannot help but wonder...and the obvious answer is lack of knowledge and an overabundance of "huh, sounds cool". Harry named Marius and Sulla after the generals because he, an optimistic romantic with high hopes for a robot work force (he wants a Solaria - such a hopeful man, he has no business being a CEO - oh, he really is quite wonderful. Certainly he took Helena by surprise), has had no instruction in Roman history and thought they were lovers (they were, but they were also both men). If Harry names all the robots, or if those who do follow his example, it's likely someone just grabbed a random Latin text and chose all the simple words that sounded cool.
That's so fuัking good. God I love that
Speaking of dear Helena and Primus...R.U.R. is one of those plays that takes you by surprise with its gentle eloquence.
The first threeish acts are a lot of very pleasant superficial 1920s exposition, with some VERY interesting concepts that I think are unfortunately doomed to be glossed over in any production of the play, though I read the script first and thus had all time to extrapolate in awed reflection. There's a mounting unrest - we the audience are in Helena's understanding, and because it's Czech and from 1920, the men hide the extent of things from her (which is a great revelation in terms of plot - oh so good), so we're first introduced to these rogue robots and to Radius as one of them as only a strange and unknown issue. Then the robots make their attack on the factory...and the standoff is more tense but no less efficient, ending with that cold and brutal execution of almost all humans by Radius and his robots
But then, the epilogue - suddenly all is still and in slant decay, and Helena speaks of love she cannot help but feel, and Primus of the troubled beauty of the sunset, and Radius having given himself to research long ago - so it is Alquist who is left; Alquist the builder; the man who works with his hands; the last man on Earth because the robots deemed him a laborer like them and Radius's wrath had begun to fade behind logic by that final attack, alive only because he did not try to fight back.
And in the stillness and the silence of a world with no further need for industry; a world of dying robots who cannot procreate and to whom the secret of their own existence is lost; in this tranquility Primus and Helena are robots strange and unusual. Primus, the scientist, feels passion for the pursuit of knowledge - he wants to know what makes the leaves change color, what lets the fish know where to swim, what allows the world to be so unbearably grand. And Helena, the delicate, is useless for work - overcome by reverence and the love she cannot qualify which she feels for all things, she takes to wandering, spending entire days watching the way a litter of puppies plays and grows, even going so far in curiosity as to let them crawl over her on their stumpy legs, newborn eyes quivering in the gentle sunlight through the faded glass of a building long abandoned in a field much the same in a world all desolate with nature.
And they are robots, but so much more than robots - the others have given up on them and left them to their own devices, continuing on with their regular labor as any average robot would. Primus and Helena, bewildered and in such perfect fresh awe at the world - as Alquist labels them, Adam and Eve.
But like they still can't reproduce. Robotkind is still doomed. All remnants of human civilization will still become a derelict ruin.
But it's about the life they do have. It's about the possibility and the potential of such anomalous creatures - built in apathetic form by greed-obsessed humanity (though headed by such an open heart) and yet so simple, so wise to what truly matters, so aware of the fact that it all means nothing, so let it mean everything...it's about the robots more human than humanity. Even dear Radius was only human.
