ICARUS

Below: Daedalus and Icarus, by Italian sculptor Antonio Canova (1757—1822), shows Daedalus securing wings onto his son.

Icarus was the son of the mythical inventor and craftsman Daedalus and Naukrate, a slave of King Minos of Crete. He is famous for flying too close to the sun, wearing a pair of wings built by his father. Some writers have seen Icarus’s fate as a warning for people to be aware of their limitations.

Daedalus was Minos’s chief artisan. He constructed many fabulous inventions for his employer, including a hollow wooden cow in which Minos’s wife, Pasiphae, hid in order to seduce a bull. Pasiphae’s union with the animal resulted in the birth of the Minotaur—a monster who was half man, half bull— and led to another of Daedalus’s creations, the labyrinth in which Minos concealed the creature, but the king became angry with Daedalus, either because of his role in the queen’s adultery with the bull or because he helped the hero Theseus kill the Minotaur. Consequently, Minos put his inventor in prison, along with Icarus, now a young man.

Walls could not hold Daedalus, however. He constructed wings of feathers and wax for himself and Icarus, and the two flew out of the prison and away from Crete. Before _ their departure, Daedalus warned his son

Not to fly too low, in case the sea spray should soak his wings, or too high, in case the rays of the sun should melt the wax, but once he was in the air, Icarus soared higher and higher, ignoring his father’s calls. Their route led north from Crete across the Aegean Sea, where, off the island of Samos, Icarus flew so close to the sun that his wings melted and came apart, and the youth plunged to his death. His body washed ashore on a nearby island, where it was found by the Greek hero Heracles, who buried the body and named the island Icaria and the sea around it Icarian in honor of Icarus. Other accounts, however, relate that Daedalus himself buried his son.