In the Cretan tales incorporated into Greek mythology, Tálos or Tálon (Latin: Talus) was a giant man of bronze who guarded protected Europa in Crete from pirates and invaders by circling the island's shores three times a day.
In the Cretan dialect, talôs was the equivalent of the Greek hêlios, the sun: the lexicon of Hesychius of Alexandria notes simply "Talos is the sun". In Crete, Zeus was worshipped as Zeus Tallaios, "Solar Zeus", absorbing the earlier god as an epithet in the familiar sequence. The god was identified with the Tallaia, a spur of the Ida range in Crete. On the coin from Phaistos (illustration) he is winged; in Greek vase-paintings and Etruscan bronze mirrors he is not. The ideas of Talos vary widely, with one consistent detail: in Greek imagery outside Crete, Talos is always being vanquished: he seems to have been an enigmatic figure to the Greeks themselves.
Talos is described by Greeks as either a gift from Hephaestus to Minos, forged with the aid of the Cyclopes in the form of a bull or a gift from Zeus to Europa. Or he may have been the son of Kres, the personification of Crete; In Argonautica Talos threw rocks at any approaching ship. In the Byzantine encyclopia The Suda, when the Sardinians did not wish to release Talos to Minos, he heated himself red-hot by jumping into a fire and then clasped them in his embrace.
Talos had one vein, which went from his neck to his ankle, bound shut by only one bronze nail. The Argo, transporting Jason and the Argonauts, approached Crete after obtaining the Golden Fleece. As guardian of the island, Talos kept the Argo at bay by hurling great boulders at it. According to Apollodorus, Talos was slain either when Medea the sorceress drove him mad with drugs, or deceived him into believing that she would make him immortal by removing the nail. In Argonautica, Medea hypnotized him from the Argo, driving him mad with the keres she raised, so that he dislodged the nail, and "the ichor ran out of him like molten lead," exsanguinating and killing him. The story is somewhat reminiscent of the story regarding the heel of Achilles.