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.
Historical LibraryUS_078-081_Daedalus-and-Icarus.indd 81 30/11/17 4:55 pm