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Hephaestus. Indeed, the Athenians gave Daedalus a genealogy that made
him a descendant of Hephaestus, who was revered alongside the goddess
Athena in Athens. 12 A district of Athens came to be named for Daedalus,
populated by craftsmen who saw him as their patron and claimed to be
his descendants. Socrates, whose father was a stonemason, twice refers
to Daedalus as his ancestor.
Socrates also mentions Daedalus in some of his metaphors in Plato’s
philosophical dialogues. In two instances, for example, Socrates likens
vacillating arguments to Daedalus’s celebrated moving statues (Plato
Alcibiades 121a; Euthyphro 11c– e). In another passage, Plato’s Socrates
compares people’s fleeting opinions unmoored from reason to Daeda-
lus’s animated statues. If one’s thoughts or opinions are to be of any
value, maintains Socrates, then they— like Daedalus’s automata— must
Fig. 5.3. The sculptor Phidias making a nude statue, by Andrea Pisano, fourteenth century, Museo
dell’Opera del Duomo, Florence, Alfredo Dagli Orti / Art Resource, NY.