Burrow, Edward John: The Elgin marbles: with an abridged historical and topographical account of Athens (Band 1): Illustrated with forty plates (London, 1817)

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Mercury, and was renowned as a skilful ar-
chitect, sculptor and mechanic. He is said
to have invented the wedge and other instru-
ments, to have substituted the use of sails in
vessels instead of oars, and to have formed au-
tomaton statues, moving by means of quick-
silver. He was the first Grecian sculptor who
detached the hands and feet from the trunk
of his figures, which in those days, when the
arts were only in their infancy, was no incon-
siderable improvement. The talents of Talus,
or Calus,his nephew, who invented a wheel for
potters, excited his jealousy, and he put an end
to his rival by throwing him from the house-
top. For this murder the Areopagus con-
demned him either to death, or perpetual ba-
nishment. He fled to Crete, to the court of
Minos, where he constructed the famous La-
byrinth, after the plan of the Egyptian one,
the vestiges of which are yet seen with won-
der, and denominated by the natives Charon's
palace. Having incurred the displeasure of
Minos, he and his son Icarus were shut up in
the Labyrinth, with the monster Minotaur,
for whom it had been built. From thence

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