Talos
Τάλως
A bronze giant who circled Crete three times a day, guarding it.
An artificial being made by Hephaestus and given to Minos. He drove off approaching ships by hurling boulders.
A single vein of ichor — the blood of the gods — ran through his body, stopped by one nail at his ankle.
Medea bewitched him into pulling out that nail, and when the blood ran out, he fell.
SourcesApollonius, Argonautica
Commonly confused
A made being doing its appointed task, undone by a single weak point — he is often cited as the ancestor of robot stories. But antiquity had no concept of a "machine"; he is portrayed as a living thing shaped by a god.