Our common saw, which needs only to be guided by the hand of the workman, however simple it may be, was not known to the inhabitants of America when they were subdued by the Europeans[640]. The inventor of this instrument has by the Greeks been inserted in their mythology, with a place in which, among their gods, they honoured the greatest benefactors of the earliest ages. By some he is called Talus, and by others Perdix. Pliny[641] alone ascribes the invention to Dædalus; but Hardouin, in the passage where he does so, chooses to read Talus rather than Dædalus. In my opinion, Pliny may have committed an error as well as any of the moderns; and as one writer at present misleads another, Seneca[642], who gives the same inventor, may have fallen into a mistake by copying Pliny. Diodorus Siculus[643], Apollodorus[644], and others name the inventor Talus. He was the son of Dædalus’s sister; and was by his mother placed under the tuition of her brother, to be instructed in his art. Having once found the jaw-bone of a snake, he employed it to cut through a small piece of wood; and by these means was induced to form a like instrument of iron, that is, to make a saw. This invention, which greatly facilitates labour, excited the envy of his master, and instigated him to put Talus to death privately. We are told, that being asked by some one, when he was burying the body, what he was depositing in the earth, he replied, a serpent. This suspicious answer discovered the murder; and thus, adds the historian, a snake was the cause of the invention, of the murder, and of its being found out[645]. Hyginus[646], Servius[647], Fulgentius[648], Lactantius Placidus[649], Isidorus[650], and others call the inventor Perdix. That he was the son of a sister of Dædalus they all agree; but they differ respecting the name of his parents. The mother, by Fulgentius, is called Polycastes, but without any proof; and Lactantius gives to the father the name of Calaus. In Apollodorus, however, the mother of Talus is called Perdix; and the same name is given by Tzetzes to the mother of the inventor, whose name Talus he changes into Attalus[651]. Perdix, we are told, did not employ for a saw the jaw-bone of a snake, like Talus, but the back-bone of a fish; and this is confirmed by Ovid[652], who nevertheless is silent respecting the name of the inventor.