between myth and history 181
As Ovid (Metamorphoses 8.189) envisioned the myth, Daedalus created
his human enhancement of flight by imitating the power of birds. He
made rows of real feathers, assorted by size in a curve, and arched the
structures to imitate real bird wings. Then, attaching them to his back
and arms, he “balanced his body between the wings and hung poised,
beating the air.” Unlike the supernatural, effortless flight of the gods that
defied time, physics, and space, however, his artificial wings required the
physical effort of pumping one’s arms to soar like a bird.
For a human being to attempt to fly by flapping man- made wings is of
course aeronautically unsound, sure to end badly. That brute fact figured
in a sadistic punishment using imitation bird wings meted out annually in
ancient Leucadia (modern Lefkada), an Ionian island famed for its sheer
sea cliffs. There, the ancient Greeks had “one regular opportunity to ex-
periment with such flying devices without keen regard to safety.” 4 Strabo
(10.2.9) described the ancient custom on Leucadia known as Criminal’s
Leap. Each year, as a sacrifice to Apollo, the Leucadians would force a
condemned man to “fly” from the island’s white limestone cliff (the cliff
was later known as Sappho’s Leap, after the poetess’s fabled suicide, and
is now called “Lovers’ Leap”). 5 Like Icarus of myth, the man was fitted
with a pair of artificial wings. And for good measure, all sorts of live birds
were fastened to him as well, to add to the spectacle. Spectators on the
cliff and in small boats below watched the hapless victim flapping with
all his might while surrounded by helplessly fluttering birds.
During the Roman Empire, it was a popular sport to demean, tor-
ture, or execute people in amusing scenarios that re- created tragic Greek
myths. The emperor Nero was a master of such perverse public entertain-
ments in the Circus and at his banquets (AD 54– 68). Two such perfor-
mances were related by the imperial historian Suetonius (Life of Nero).
For the play called The Minotaur, the individual forced to play Pasiphae
was made to crouch “inside the hindquarters of a hollow wooden heifer”
while an actor disguised as a bull mounted her. For a ballet reenacting the
myth of Daedalus and Icarus, Nero commanded the man cast in the role
of Icarus to fly with his artificial wings from a high scaffold. Suetonius
records that the man fell “beside Nero’s couch, splattering the emperor
with blood.”