Daedalus- Greek FigureMortal"Master Craftsman"

The Master Craftsman

Daedalus was an Athenian, a descendant of the royal house through Erechtheus, who learned his arts from Athena herself. His name means "cunning worker," and the works matched the name. He invented the axe and the drill, and his statues were so lifelike that Plato records they had to be restrained lest they wander off. Before Daedalus, statues stood rigid, feet joined, arms pressed to their sides. He was the first to open the stance and free the limbs.

Murder and Exile

Daedalus's nephew Talus was his apprentice, a boy whose inventiveness alarmed his master. Walking on the beach, Talus found the spine of a fish and, inspired by its serrated edge, cut teeth into a strip of iron to create the first saw. He joined two iron bars at a hinge and made the first compass for drawing circles. Daedalus watched his apprentice surpass him. He could not bear it.

He led the boy to the edge of the Acropolis and pushed him off. Athena caught Talus as he fell and transformed him into a partridge, a bird that forever avoids heights and nests close to the ground. Daedalus was tried by the Areopagus, convicted of murder, and exiled. He fled to Crete, where King Minos welcomed him.

The Wooden Cow and the Minotaur

When Minos prayed to Poseidon for a bull as a sign of divine favor, promising to sacrifice it, the god sent a creature of supernatural beauty from the sea. Minos kept it and sacrificed an inferior animal instead. Poseidon's punishment was exact: he made Minos's wife Pasiphaë conceive an unnatural desire for the bull. She confided in Daedalus, who built a hollow wooden cow covered in real cowhide, so cunningly made that the bull was deceived. Pasiphaë concealed herself within, and from this union was born the Minotaur, a creature with a man's body and a bull's head. Minos commanded Daedalus to build something to contain it.

The Labyrinth

Daedalus built the Labyrinth, a vast underground maze of passages that doubled back and turns that led nowhere. Ovid compares it to the Maeander river in Phrygia, which folds upon itself so often that it seems to flow in every direction at once. Even Daedalus, upon completing it, barely found his way out. The Minotaur dwelt at its center, fed on a tribute of seven young men and seven young women sent from Athens every nine years as payment for the death of Minos's son Androgeus.

Homer alludes to an earlier creation at Knossos, a dancing floor Daedalus built for Ariadne, before the Labyrinth and its horrors.

The Thread and the Wings

When the Athenian hero Theseus came as part of the tribute, determined to slay the Minotaur, Minos's daughter Ariadne fell in love with him. She went to Daedalus for help, and the craftsman provided the solution that would undo his own masterwork: a ball of thread. Theseus tied one end at the entrance, unwound it as he went, and followed it back after killing the monster.

Minos discovered that Daedalus had made the escape possible. First the wooden cow, now this. He imprisoned the craftsman and his young son Icarus in a high tower. But Daedalus could not be contained by any prison he had not designed himself. He gathered feathers dropped by passing birds, arranged them from smallest to largest as in a real wing, fastened them with linen thread and sealed them with wax. He built two pairs of wings and taught Icarus to fly. Before they launched, he gave the boy careful instructions: fly neither too low, where the sea spray would soak the feathers, nor too high, where the sun's heat would melt the wax. He charted a middle course between Samos and Delos and told the boy to follow him exactly.

The Fall of Icarus

They launched from the tower and flew. They left Crete behind, soaring over the sea. Fishermen and shepherds who saw them pass overhead thought they were gods. But Icarus forgot his father's warnings. He climbed higher and higher, toward the sun. The wax softened. The feathers came loose and scattered on the wind. Icarus fell.

Daedalus circled back, calling his son's name, but found only feathers floating on the waves. He recovered the body and buried it on a nearby island, which took the name Icaria. The sea where the boy fell became the Icarian Sea. In Ovid's telling, as Daedalus buried his son, a partridge watched from a nearby branch and beat its wings. It was Perdix, the nephew Daedalus had thrown from the Acropolis.

Sicily and the Death of Minos

Daedalus flew on to Sicily, where King Cocalus of Camicus sheltered him. He built a steam bath that used the island's volcanic heat and a golden honeycomb for the temple of Aphrodite on Mount Eryx.

Minos pursued his escaped craftsman across the sea. He carried a spiral seashell and offered a reward to anyone who could thread it, knowing only Daedalus could solve such a puzzle. When Cocalus presented the threaded shell, Minos knew he had found his quarry. Daedalus had solved it by tying the thread to an ant and sending it through the spiral. Minos demanded his return. But Cocalus's daughters had grown fond of the craftsman. They killed Minos in his bath, pouring boiling water through the pipes Daedalus had installed.