Cook, Arthur B.: Zeus: a study in ancient religion (Band 1): Zeus god of the bright sky (Cambridge, 1914)

724

Talos at Athens

carefully coated with wax, was worked over by the sculptor till it
satisfied him in every detail. The whole was next covered with
a thin slip of finely powdered pottery. This was followed by
other layers of increasing thickness and coarseness, which to-
gether formed the outer mould. The shapeless mass was then
exposed to a furnace or lowered into a pit with a fire at the
bottom. The wax, thus melted, ran out through triangular holes
left in the exterior. Bronze rods half an inch square in section
had been stuck through the wax into the core and allowed to
project like pins in a pin-cushion. These now held the outer and
inner moulds apart. Into the intervening space molten bronze
was poured through a hole in each foot of the statue, thereby
taking the place of the wax driven out by the heat. Ultimately,
when the figure had cooled, the outer mould was chipped away,
the ends of the bronze rods cut smooth, the core extracted
through the soles of the feet, and the whole surface touched up
with minute accuracy. In this technical process the hollow from
head to heel, pierced with its bronze pins, was—one may suspect—
the fact underlying the fiction of Talos' vein1. Perhaps, too, the
fiery pit into which the mould was lowered explains Simonides'
statement that Talos sprang into a fire2.

iv. Talos at Athens.

The Athenian myth of Talos likewise connected him with
various advances in the mechanical arts. It was he who invented
the compasses3 and the potter's wheel4. And we may note in

Uaremberg—Saglio Diet. Ant. i. 1019 n. 17, Forrer Reallex. p. 115, H. B. Walters in the
Bi'it. Mus. Cat. Bronzes p. xxxi ff.

1 For an example of nail-driving as an artistic, if not a mythological, motif cp. a
Graeco-Phoenician stdmnos from Tamassos {c. s. ix B.C.) in the British Museum {Brit.
Mus. Cat. Vases i. 2. i4of. no. C 736 pi. 5), which at the time of its discovery in 1885
showed more completely than it does now a scene that has been interpreted as Perseus
slaying the Gorgon (H. B. Walters in the Brit. Mus. Cat. Vases loc. cit. after
S. Reinach in the Rev. Arch. 1887 i. 76 ff. with figs., ii. 89 ff. = Chroniques (P Orient
i. 294 ff., 360 ff, cp. C. Clermont-Ganneau Recueil d'' Archdologie orientate Paris 1888
i. 172—175 ' Pegase et TTHrNYMl ') or less probably as Herakles and Iolaos killing
the Hydra (Ohnefalsch-Richter Kypros pp. 36 f, 62 ff., 445 figs. 37 f, 71, 75 pi. 137, 6).

2 Supra p. 721.

3 Diod. 4. 76, Ov. met. 8. 247 ff., Hyg. fab. 274, Serv. in Verg. georg. 1. 143, Serv.
in Verg. Aen. 6. 14, Sidon. epist. 4. 3. 5.

4 Diod. 4. 76. Kritias ap. Athen. 28 c states that Athens first discovered pottery,
' the offspring of wheel and earth and oven.' Others ascribed the invention of the wheel
to Hyperbios of Corinth (Plin. nat. hist. 7. 198, schol. Pind. 01. 13. 27) or Anacharsis
the Scythian (Plin. nat. hist. 7. 198, Diog. Laert. r. 105, Souid. s.v.' KvoLxapcrts). The
potter's wheel had reached Crete by the ' Early Minoan ii' period (see e.g. E. Reisinger
Kretische Vasenmalerei vom Kamares- bis zum Palast-stil Leipzig—Berlin 1912 p. 2 f.).
It is mentioned first in //. 18. 600 f.