Talos

The son of Perdix, sister of Daedalus. When he was twelve, his mother sent him to Daedalus to be his apprentice. The boy learned quickly and invented many things, among which the first drawing compass as well as the first saw. The inspiration for the saw came when he studied the spine of a fish and cut continuous teeth out of sharp metal. His skills soon rivaled Daedalus' and in a fit of jealously, Daedalus hurled his nephew from the rock of the Acropolis at Athens. The Athenians worshiped Talos as a hero.

Pausanias calls him Calos, and states that he was buried on the road leading from the theater to the Acropolis.1 Hyginus2 and Ovid3 call him Perdix, which, according to the common tradition, was the name of his father. According to some, Taurus is another name for Talos.4

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References

Notes

  1. Pausanias. Description of Greece i, 21.6, 26.5; vii, 4.5.
  2. Hyginus. Fabulae, 39, 274.
  3. Ovid. Metamorphoses viii, 255.
  4. The Library i, 9.26.

Sources

  • Diodorus Siculus. Historical Library iv, 76.
  • Lucian. Piscator, 42.
  • Pseudo-Apollodorus. The Library iii, 15.9.
  • Scholiast on Euripides' Orestes, 1643.
  • Smith, William. (1870). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. London: Taylor, Walton, and Maberly.