80 DAEDALUS AND ICARUS
Daedalus and Icarus, by the Genoese
master Domenico Piola (ca. 1670),
shows Daedalus strapping wings to his
son’s back as he points to the sky and
the hazardous journey ahead.enough lift to defy gravity and
keep Daedalus and Icarus airborne.
Daedalus covered the wings with
real feathers, but puzzled over how
to attach them. The answer, he
decided, was wax: strong and
yielding at the same time, it
held the feathers firmly while
still allowing flexibility. Daedalus
set to work. Row after row and layer
upon layer, every plume had to be
carefully placed and precisely
anchored to re-create the contours
of a real wing.Risky flight
Finally, the wings were completed.
The results were astounding: the
man-made wings perfectlyreplicated the movement of the
birds. Yet the inventor knew that
the wings were fragile, and he
gave his son strict instructions:
on no account should he fly too
low, because the waves could
splash his wings and the extra
weight of the water might then
drag him into the ocean. Nor should
he fly too high, to prevent the rays
of the sun from melting the wax
holding his wings together.
Daedalus urged Icarus to pursue
the middle way instead.
Wearing his father’s inventions,
the young boy stepped from the
tower and, instead of plunging to
his death, was borne aloft by the
slow sweep of the wings through
the air. Icarus was exhilarated; he
had never felt so powerful or free.
His father was more apprehensive
and cautiously led the way toward
the clouds, assessing his height at
every stage in the journey and
using landmarks on the ground to
steer a safe course.Icarus did not feel his father’s fear.
With every wingbeat, he grew more
masterful and more audacious,
swooping and soaring through the
air, oblivious to his father’s
repeated warnings. Well out over
the Aegean, he flew ever higher,
and laughed to see his father
flapping slowly below.The boy’s descent
Icarus rejoiced at the warmth of
the sun upon his face, but then
suddenly remembered his father’s
warnings. Seeing a feathered wing
tip loosen and fall away, he realized
the wax was softening in the heat.
Alarmed, he dipped into a
descent—but too late. The feathers
streamed away from his wings
as the wax melted, and he plunged
toward the sea.
Daedalus heard his son’s
despairing cry and looked back,
only to see the flurry of feathers and
foam where Icarus had hit the
surface of the water—the nearby
island of Icaria is named for that
spot. Devastated by the loss of his
son, Daedalus had no option but to
continue on alone. Although Icaria
lies northeast of Crete off the coast
of Turkey, sources say thatHubris
The myth of Daedalus and
Icarus warns against over-
confidence, or hubris. Mortals
who were considered guilty of
hubris were severely punished
in Greek myths and in the
poetry and plays those stories
inspired. The offense was
considered grave because
it threatened the order of the
cosmos and the limitations
placed on mortals by the gods.
Aristotle proclaimed the
desirability of the “golden
mean”—the middle waybetween two extremes. The
advisability of this ideal applied
to all aspects of life and was
considered an attribute of
beauty. In architecture, the
golden mean was expressed
in terms of ideal proportions
derived from mathematics. For
example, the Parthenon, built
in 447–432 bce in gratitude for
an Athenian victory over Persian
invaders, was the crowning
glory of a city at its political and
military zenith, but it was also a
stone-built hymn to symmetry
and balance—the embodiment
of moderation and beauty.Virtue both finds and
chooses that which
is intermediate.
Aristotle
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ANCIENT GREECE 81
Icarus falls from the sky as his
father looks on in this engraving by
Jean Matheus (ca.1610), from a
translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses
by Frenchman Nicholas Renouard.Daedalus eventually landed in
Sicily, far to the west. There, King
Cocalus of Kamikos took him in.Tested by a riddle
Meanwhile, King Minos was intent
on finding his ingenious inventor
and returning him to Crete. He
pursued Daedalus to Sicily, where
he combed the island with a riddle
he knew only Daedalus would be
able to solve—threading a spiral
seashell with a silken cord. When
King Cocalus returned the shell
neatly strung, Minos guessed that
Daedalus had assisted him. He
was correct: Daedalus had tied the
thread to an ant and let the tiny
creature draw it through the shell.
Minos demanded Daedalus’s
surrender, but Cocalus played for
time and asked his visitor to waitand enjoy his hospitality for a while.
Some say that his daughters
attacked and killed King Minos as
he took a bath, others that Daedalus
himself had a hand in killing him
by pouring boiling water into the
bath through secret pipes. Some
versions of the myth say that after
his death, the gods took Minos to
Olympus, where he worked with
Hephaestus, the god of
metalworking and blacksmiths. ■Phaëton and Helios
The myth of Icarus and
Daedalus is often compared to
that of Phaëton and Helios.
Helios, the Titan sun god,
drove westward across the
sky each day in a golden
chariot drawn by flaming
horses and plunged over the
western horizon by nightfall.
Every day, Helios’s son,
Phaëton (“Shining One”),
watched in awe and envy,
begging his father to let him
drive the chariot. Despite his
misgivings, Helios eventually
agreed and Phaëton took off,
laughing exultantly.
Soon, however, Phaëton
panicked; his horses pulled
him far off course, bucking,
diving, and swerving through
the sky. Flying low, they
scorched the earth; then
soaring into space, they left
the fields frozen and barren.
Finally, Zeus had seen enough:
he hurled a thunderbolt and
sent Phaëton falling to his
death, as a punishment for
trying to fly too high. While
the story of Icarus is most
often viewed as a warning
against hubris, Ovid’s
account of Phaëton’s downfall
can be read as a tale of
both the nobility of man’s
aspirations and their folly.Because of the ignorance
of youth, he made his
flight too far aloft and
fell into the sea.
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