Whose Work He Is

Greek tradition never settled what Talos was. Apollonius makes him a survivor of the bronze race that sprang from ash-trees, which makes him old rather than manufactured. Apollodorus offers that origin and, as an alternative, has Hephaestus make him for Minos — and adds, without elaborating, that he may have been a bull. Pausanias cites the poet Cinaethon for a third arrangement in which Talos is son of Cres and Hephaestus is his son, inverting the whole thing. The tradition kept every version and harmonised none of them.