Apollodorus (the Bibliotheca)

The Bibliotheca, or Library, is a prose handbook that summarizes Greek mythology, from the origin of the gods through the heroes to the aftermath of the Trojan War. It survives under the name of Apollodorus of Athens, a respected scholar who died after 120 BCE and wrote a Chronicle and a work On the Gods. Modern scholars agree the Library is not his: it was composed in the 1st or 2nd century CE by an unknown writer, often called Pseudo-Apollodorus.

Because it collects variant versions side by side and often names its sources, it is one of the most useful references for Greek myth.

On Talos, the bronze guardian of Crete, it gives more versions than the poets. Talos was either a bronze man of the bronze race or a gift from Hephaestus to Minos. He had one vein from neck to ankles, closed with a bronze nail. Medea either drugged him or promised to make him immortal and pulled the nail, and he bled to death. Other accounts say he was shot in the ankle by the Argonaut Poeas.