Daedalus the Athenian craftsman, who built the Cretan labyrinth and helped Theseus escape it, was imprisoned by Minos with his son Icarus — and fashioned wings of feather and wax; the boy soared too near the sun, the wax melted, and he fell into the sea that bears his name while the father flew on to Sicily in grief.1
Flight from Athens
Daedalus son of Metion, architect of the labyrinth and the wooden cow for Pasiphae, had fled Athens after killing his nephew Talos in jealousy of the boy's invention. In Crete he served Minos until Ariadne's thread betrayed the maze — and the king shut both craftsman and son within the very walls Daedalus had designed.2
The wings
Knowing Minos held land and sea, Daedalus turned to the air. He bound feathers with thread and soft wax into curving wings for himself and Icarus, and warned the boy to fly the middle way — neither so low that the sea spray clog the plumes, nor so high that the sun melt the wax. Hyginus repeats the counsel: keep to the path between sky and water.3
The fall
Icarus exulted in flight and climbed toward heaven; the heat loosened the wax, the feathers scattered, and the boy plunged into the blue sea. Daedalus, crying his son's name, found only feathers on the waves. Ovid names the waters where Hercules' pillars stand; Apollodorus calls the sea Icarian and the island Icaria where the body washed ashore.4
Sicily
The father flew on to Sicily and the court of Cocalus, while Minos pursued him across the seas with ships and thread — a chase Ovid resumes later when the king dies in the bath Daedalus built. On the flight Ovid names the islands they passed: Juno's sacred Samos on the left, Delos and Paros left behind, Lebinthos and honey-rich Calymne on the right — before Icarus climbed too high and fell into the sea that bears his name.5
· EXEUNT ·
How the centuries saw it
Daedalus and Icarus
Anthony van Dyck, 1615–1625
Van Dyck shows the father fastening wax and feathers — the warning spoken before the boy climbed too close to the sun.