Daedalus

Perdix (Talus) changed into a partridge when thrown from the Acropolis by an envious Daedalus (1602-1607)[25]

Daedalus was so proud of his achievements that he could not bear the idea of a rival. His sister had placed her son under his charge to be taught the mechanical arts as an apprentice. His nephew is named variously as Perdix, Talos, or Calos, although some sources say that Perdix was the name of Daedalus' sister.[26] The nephew showed striking evidence of ingenuity. Finding the spine of a fish on the seashore, he took a piece of iron and notched it on the edge, and thus invented the saw. He put two pieces of iron together, connecting them at one end with a rivet, and sharpening the other ends, and made a pair of compasses.[27] Daedalus was so envious of his nephew's accomplishments that he attempted to murder him by throwing him down from the Acropolis in Athens.[28] Athena saved his nephew and turned him into a partridge.[29] Tried and convicted for this murder attempt, Daedalus left Athens and fled to Crete.[30][31]

Daedalus created the Labyrinth on Crete, in which the Minotaur was kept.

Daedalus and Pasiphaë. Roman fresco in the House of the Vettii, Pompeii, first century AD

Poseidon had given a white bull to King Minos to use it as a sacrifice. Instead, the king kept the bull for himself and sacrificed another. As revenge, Poseidon, with the help of Aphrodite, made King Minos's wife, Pasiphaë, lust for the bull. Pasiphaë asked Daedalus to help her. Daedalus built a hollow, wooden cow, covered in real cow hide for Pasiphaë, so she could mate with the bull. As a result, Pasiphaë gave birth to the Minotaur, a creature with the body of a man, but the head and tail of a bull. King Minos ordered the Minotaur to be imprisoned and guarded in the Labyrinth built by Daedalus for that purpose.[32]

Daedalus escapes (iuvat evasisse) by Johann Christoph Sysang (1703-1757)

In the story of the Labyrinth as told by the Hellenes, the Athenian hero Theseus is challenged to kill the Minotaur, finding his way back out with the help of Ariadne's thread. It is Daedalus himself who gives Ariadne the clue as to how to escape the labyrinth.[33]

Ignoring Homer, later writers envisaged the Labyrinth as an edifice rather than a single dancing path to the center and out again, and gave it numerous winding passages and turns that opened into one another, seeming to have neither beginning nor end. Ovid, in his Metamorphoses, suggests that Daedalus constructed the Labyrinth so cunningly that he himself could barely escape it after he built it.[34]

Print of Icarus falling after his wings were broken.[35]

The most familiar literary telling explaining Daedalus' wings is a late one by Ovid in his Metamorphoses.[36]

Daedalus and Icarus, c. 1645, by Charles Le Brun (1619–1690)

After Theseus and Ariadne eloped together,[37] Daedalus and his son Icarus were imprisoned by King Minos in the labyrinth that he had built.[38] He could not leave Crete by sea, as King Minos kept a strict watch on all vessels, permitting none to sail without being carefully searched. Since Minos controlled the land routes as well, Daedalus set to work to make wings for himself and his son Icarus. Using bird feathers of various sizes, thread, and beeswax, he shaped them to resemble a bird's wings. When both were prepared for flight, Daedalus warned Icarus not to fly too high, because the heat of the sun would melt the beeswax (holding his feathers together) and the wings would break, nor too low, because the sea foam would soak the feathers and make them heavy and he would fall.[39] After Daedalus and Icarus had passed Samos, Delos, and Lebynthos, Icarus disobeyed his father and began to soar upward toward the sun. He flew too close to the sun. Without any warning, the sun melted the wax that held the feathers together and they fell off. Icarus kept flapping his "wings". But he realized that he had no feathers left. He was only flapping his featherless arms. The feathers (one by one) fell like snowflakes, and down, down, and down he went into the sea, where he sank to the bottom and drowned. Seeing Icarus' wings floating in the sea, Daedalus wept, cursed his art, and (after finding Icarus's dead body on an island shore) buried Icarus's body on the island shore. Then he named the island Icaria in the memory of his child.[40] The southeast end of the Aegean Sea where Icarus fell into the water was also called "Mare Icarium" or the Icarian Sea.[41]

The Lament for Icarus by H. J. Draper (1898)

In a twist of fate, a partridge, presumably the nephew Daedalus murdered, mocked Daedalus as he buried his son. The fall and death of Icarus is seemingly portrayed as punishment for Daedalus's murder of his nephew.[42]

After burying Icarus, Daedalus traveled to Camicus in Sicily, where he stayed as a guest under the protection of King Cocalus.[43] There Daedalus built a temple to Apollo, and hung up his wings as an offering to the god. In an invention of Virgil (Aeneid VI), Daedalus flies to Cumae and founds his temple there, rather than in Sicily.[44]

Minos, meanwhile, searched for Daedalus by traveling from city to city asking a riddle. He presented a spiral seashell and asked for a string to be run through it. When he reached Camicus, King Cocalus, knowing Daedalus would be able to solve the riddle, accepted the shell and gave it to Daedalus. Daedalus tied the string to an ant which, lured by a drop of honey at one end, walked through the seashell stringing it all the way through. With the riddle solved, Minos realized that Daedalus was in the court of King Cocalus and insisted he be handed over. Cocalus agreed to do so, but convinced Minos to take a bath first. In the bath, Cocalus' daughters killed Minos, possibly by pouring boiling water over his body.[45] In some versions, it is Cocalus that kills Minos in the bath.[46] Other variants say that Daedalus himself poured the boiling water, or that he had built the pipes that could supply hot water to the bath and this was used to instead pour boiling water on him.[47]

At least two locations are associated with the death of Daedalus. One version of the story says he retired to the Cretan colony of Telmessos, ruled by Minos's estranged brother Sarpedon, and while wandering outside the city, he was bitten by a snake and died. A town on this site, Daidala, is said to be named after him, and is mentioned in Roman sources.[48] Another version of the story places his death on a small island in the Nile river, where he was later worshipped.[49]

The anecdotes are literary and late. However, in the founding tales of the Greek colony of Gela, founded in the 680s BC on the southwest coast of Sicily, a tradition was preserved that the Greeks had seized cult images wrought by Daedalus from their local predecessors, the Sicani.[50]