Everything about Daedalus totally explained
» This article is about the mythological character. For other uses see Daedalus (disambiguation) and List of things named Daedalus
In
Greek mythology,
Daedalus (Latin, also Hellenized Latin
Daedalos, Greek
Daidalos (
Δαίδαλος) meaning "cunning worker", and Etruscan
Taitle) was a most skillful artificer, or craftsman, so skillful that he was said to have invented images. Daedalus had two sons:
Icarus and
Iapyx. He is first mentioned by
Homer as the creator of a wide dancing-ground for
Ariadne . Homer refers to Ariadne by her Cretan title, the "Lady of the
Labyrinth" . The Labyrinth on
Crete in which the
Minotaur was kept was also created by the artificer Daedalus. The story of the labyrinth is told where
Theseus is challenged to kill the Minotaur, finding his way with the help of
Ariadne's thread.
Ignoring Homer, later writers envisaged the
labyrinth as an edifice rather than a single path to the center and out again, and gave it numberless winding passages and turns that opened into one another, seeming to have neither beginning nor end (see
labyrinth as opposed to
maze).
Ovid, in his
Metamorphoses, suggests that Daedalus constructed the
Labyrinth so cunningly that he himself could barely escape it after he built it. Daedalus built the labyrinth for King
Minos, who needed it to imprison his wife's son the
Minotaur. The story is told that
Poseidon had given a white bull to
Minos so that he might use it as a sacrifice. Instead, Minos kept it for himself; and in revenge, Poseidon made his wife lust for the bull. For Minos' wife,
Pasiphaë, Daedalus also built the wooden cow so she could mate with the bull, for the Greeks imagined the Minoan
bull of the sun to be an actual, earthly bull.
Athenians transferred Cretan Daedalus as Athenian-born, the grandson of the ancient king
Erechtheus, who fled to Crete, having killed his nephew, Perdix. Over time, other stories were told of Daedalus. In the nineteenth century,
Thomas Bulfinch combined these into a single synoptic view of material which Andrew Stewart calls a "historically-intractable farrago of "evidence", heavily tinged with Athenian cultural chauvinism" (Stewart). Among these anecdotes, one told that Daedalus was shut up in a tower to prevent his knowledge of the labyrinth from spreading to the public. He couldn't leave Crete by sea, as the king kept strict watch on all vessels, permitting none to sail without being carefully searched.
Since Minos controlled the land and sea routes, Daedalus set to work to fabricate wings for himself and his young son
Icarus. He tied feathers together, from smallest to largest so as to form an increasing surface. The larger ones he secured with thread and the smaller with wax, and gave the whole a gentle curvature like the wings of a bird. When the work was finally done, the artist, waving his wings, found himself buoyed upward and hung suspended, poising himself on the beaten air. He next equipped his son in the same manner, and taught him how to fly. When both were prepared for flight, Daedalus warned Icarus not to fly too high, because the heat of the sun would melt the wax, nor too low because the sea foam would make the wings wet and they'd no longer fly. Thus the father and son flew away.
They had passed
Samos,
Delos and
Lebynthos when the boy began to soar upward as if to reach heaven. The blazing sun softened the wax which held the feathers together and they came off. Icarus fell into the sea. His father cried, bitterly lamenting his own arts, called the land near the place where Icarus fell into the ocean
Icaria in memory of his child. Eventually Daedalus arrived safely in
Sicily, in the care of King
Cocalus, where he built a temple to
Apollo, and hung up his wings, an offering to the god. In an alternative version given by
Virgil in Book 10 of the
Aeneid, Daedalus flies to
Cumae, and founds his temple there, rather than in Sicily.
Minos, meanwhile, searched for Daedalus by travelling 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, privately fetched the old man to him. He 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. Minos then knew Daedalus was in the court of King Cocalus and demanded he be handed over. Cocalus managed to convince Minos to take a bath first, where Cocalus' daughters killed Minos.
Daedalus was so proud of his achievements that he couldn't bear the idea of a rival. His sister had placed her son Perdix under his charge to be taught the mechanical arts. He was an apt scholar and showed striking evidence of ingenuity. Walking on the seashore, he picked up the spine of a fish. Imitating it, 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. Daedalus was so envious of his nephew's accomplishments that he took an opportunity, when they were together one day on the top of a high tower, to push him off. But
Minerva, who favors ingenuity, saw him falling and arrested his fate by changing him into a bird called after his name, the
partridge. This bird doesn't build his nest in the trees, nor take lofty flights, but nestles in the hedges, and mindful of his fall, avoids high places. For this crime, Daedalus was tried and banished.
Such anecdotal details as these were embroideries upon the reputation of Daedalus as an innovator in many arts. In
Pliny's Natural History (7.198) he's credited with inventing carpentry "and with it the saw, axe, plumb-line, drill, glue, and
isinglass".
Pausanias, in travelling around Greece, attributed to Daedalus numerous archaic wooden
cult figures (see
xoana) that impressed him: "All the works of this artist, though somewhat uncouth to look at, nevertheless have a touch of the divine in them." .
Daedalus gave his name,
eponymously, to any Greek artificer and to many Greek contraptions that represented dextrous skill. At
Plataea there was a festival, the
Daedala, in which a temporary wooden altar was fashioned, an effigy was made from an oak-tree and dressed in bridal attire. It was carried in a cart with a woman who acted as bridesmaid. The image was called
Daedale and the archaic ritual given an explanation through a myth to the purpose.
In the period of
Romanticism, Daedalus came to denote the classic artist, a skilled mature craftsman, while Icarus symbolizes the romantic artist, an undisputed prototype of the classic artist, whose impetuous, passionate and rebellious nature, as well as his defiance of formal aesthetic and social conventions, may ultimately prove to be self-destructive.
Stephen Dedalus, in Joyce's
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man envisages his future artist-self "a hawklike man. flying above the waves”.
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