Perdix.
      Perdix, whose name is the Greek noun πέρδιξ (= partridge), was a grandson of Pandion and nephew of Daedalus. By tradition his given name was Talos or Kalos, though Ovid says his name was Perdix from birth.

      Perdix showed remarkable engineering acumen as a young boy apprenticing in the workshop of his clever uncle, Daedalus. Young Perdix invented the saw and the compass, also the potter's wheel, and threatened to eclipse the skills of his teacher. Perdix' brilliant career was cut short in a tragic fall from the Acropolis, for which Daedalus was accused and exiled. Athena pittied the prodigious young inventor and transformed him instantly, even during his fall, into the low-flying partridge (Linnaean perdix perdix), which name is likely derived from πέρδεσθαι (= "to take flight noisily" Walde-Hofmann; but "to break wind" LSJ).

In Ovid's sequencing of the tales (Met. 8.183-235 then 236-59), the garrulous Partridge chirps with schadenfreude over Daedalus' grieving his own son's fatal fall. Ovid collocates Perdix's fall and Icarus' in overtly karmic pairing — "mètis-précipitation-métamorphose en oiseau / mètis-transformation ratée en oiseau-précipitation" (Frontisi-Ducroux, 158) is a folkloric "phantasie".

Sophocles Kamikoi (TrGF 4 frg. 323) seems to be the earliest source for the Perdix myth; Ovid, though, seems to originate the avian metamorphosis. — RTM


Further Treatments:

LIMC, s.v. "Perdix" [Iphigeneia Leventi] 7.1.317-18.

Bömer, F. 1969-2011. Metamorphosen: Kommentar. ad loc, 8.236-259.