Talos (also Talus or Talon) is the bronze man who guarded Crete from pirates and invaders, circling the island thrice daily. Ancient sources do not call him a giant. Most famous in Apollonius's Argonautica, he is invulnerable save for a single ankle vein; Medea's magic drains his ichor as the Argo returns from Colchis. Pseudo-Apollodorus collects rival origins — bronze race or Hephaestus's gift to Minos — and deaths by Medea or by Poeas's arrow.
Adapted from Wikipedia, "Talos" · CC BY-SA 4.0
I.The Argonautica
In Apollonius of Rhodes, Talos belongs to the bronze race sprung from ash-trees. Zeus gave him to Europa to protect Crete; he runs the island three times a day and is invulnerable except for a vein at the ankle covered by thin skin. When the Argo approaches, he keeps the ship off with great rocks until Medea summons the keres from the deck, causing him to graze the ankle so that the ichor drains and he falls like a felled pine.
II.Apollodorus and other deaths
Pseudo-Apollodorus offers two origins — he is of the Race of Bronze, or Hephaestus gave him to Minos — and two forms, bull or bronze man. A single vein runs from neck to ankles, stopped by a bronze nail. Medea either drives him mad with drugs or, promising immortality, pulls the nail so the ichor flows out; alternately the Argonaut Poeas shoots an arrow into the ankle.
III.Art and other variants
Red-figure kraters of about 400 BC show his death among the Argonauts — notably the name-vase of the Talos Painter, where he falls white-bodied into the arms of the Dioskouroi while Medea holds a bowl. Phaistos coins depict a winged stone-throwing Talos, the wings perhaps signalling the speed needed to circuit Crete.
Simonides and fragments of Sophocles' lost Daidalos associate him with burning victims — a Sardinian episode that yields the "sardonic laugh." A separate Cretan lineage in Pausanias (citing Cinaethon) makes Talos son of Cres, father of Hephaestus, and grandfather of Rhadamanthus — a mortal genealogy distinct from the bronze automaton of the Argonaut saga.