page_title: Daedalus
section_title: Daedalus and Icarus
hierarchical_section_title: Daedalus / Mythology / Daedalus and Icarus
context_page_description: In Greek mythology, Daedalus was a skillful architect, craftsman and artist, and was seen as a symbol of wisdom, knowledge, and power. He is the father of Icarus, the uncle of Perdix, and possibly also the father of Iapyx, although this is unclear. He invented and built the Labyrinth for King Minos of Crete, but shortly after finishing it King Minos had Daedalus imprisoned within the labyrinth. He and his son Icarus devised a plan to escape by using wings made of wax that Daedalus had invented. They escaped, but Icarus did not heed his father's warnings and flew too close to the sun. The wax melted and Icarus fell to his death. This left Daedalus heartbroken, but instead of giving up he flew to the island of Sicily.
context_section_description: The most familiar literary telling explaining Daedalus' wings is a late one, that of Ovid: in his Metamorphoses (VIII:183–235) Daedalus was shut up in a tower to prevent the knowledge of his Labyrinth from spreading to the public. He could not leave Crete by sea, as the king kept a strict watch on all vessels, permitting none to sail without being carefully searched. Since Minos controlled the land and sea routes, Daedalus set to work to fabricate wings for himself and his young son Icarus. He tied feathers together, from smallest to largest so as to form an increasing surface. He secured the feathers at their midpoints with string and at their bases with wax, and gave the whole a gentle curvature like the wings of a bird. When the work was done, the artist, waving his wings, found himself buoyed upward and hung suspended, poising himself on the beaten air. He next equipped his son in the same manner, and taught him how to fly. When both were prepared for flight, Daedalus warned Icarus not to fly too high, because the heat of the sun would melt the wax, nor too low, because the sea foam would soak the feathers.
  They had passed Samos, Delos and Lebynthos by the time the boy, forgetting himself, began to soar upward toward the sun. The blazing sun melted and softened the wax that held the feathers together and they came off. Icarus's feathers fell one by one, and they were falling like snowflakes. Icarus quickly fell in the sea and drowned. Daedalus wept (lamenting his own arts), took Icarus's body and buried it, and called the island near the place (where Icarus fell into the ocean) Icaria in the memory of his child. Some time later, the goddess Athena visited Daedalus and gave him wings, telling him to fly like a god.
  An early image of winged Daedalus appears on an Etruscan jug of ca 630 BC found at Cerveteri, where a winged figure captioned Taitale appears on one side of the vessel, paired on the other side, uniquely, with Metaia, Medea: "its linking of these two mythical figures is unparalleled," Robin Lane Fox observes: "The link was probably based on their wondrous, miraculous art. Magically, Daedalus could fly, and magically Medea was able to rejuvenate the old (the scene on the jug seems to show her doing just this)". The image of Daedalus demonstrates that he was already well known in the West.
caption: Daedalus and Icarus, c. 1645, by Charles Le Brun (1619–1690)
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