Daedalus was "a most skillful artificer" who had befriended the King, but later fell out of favor and was locked up in a tower. He contrived to make his escape from his prison, but could not leave the island by sea, as the king kept strict watch on all the vessels, and permitted none to sail without being carefully searched. "Minos may control the land and sea," said Daedalus, "but not the regions of the air. I will try that way." So he set to work to fabricate wings for himself and his young son Icarus. He wrought feathers together, beginning with the smallest and adding larger, so as to form an increasing surface. The larger ones he secured with thread and the smaller ones with wax, and he gave the whole a gentle curvature like the wings of a bird.

Daedalus equipped both himself and his son with a pair of these bird-like wings and taught his son how to use them to fly. When all was prepared for flight he said, "Icarus, my son, I charge you to keep at a moderate height, for if you fly too low the damp will clog your wings, and if too high the heat will melt them. Keep near me and you will be safe." While he gave him these instructions and fitted the wings to his shoulders, the face of the father was wet with tears, and his hands trembled. He kissed the boy, not knowing that it was the last time. Then rising on his wings, he flew off, encouraging him to follow, and looked back from his own flight to see how his son managed his wings. . . . They passed Samos and Delos on the left and Lebynthos on the right, when the boy, exulting in his career, began to leave the guidance of his companion and soar upward as if to reach heaven. The nearness of the blazing sun softened the wax which held the feathers together, and they came off. He fluttered with his arms, but no feathers remained to hold the air. While his mouth uttered cries to his father it was submerged in the blue waters of the sea, which thenceforth was called by his name.

"Daedalus," in Doris Gates, Zeus: Lord of the Sky 98-103 (New York: Puffin Books, 1982):

Daedalus was a clever man. He was also a prudent one. On the evening that Ariadne visited him on the starlit terrace of the great palace of King Minos, he had already made plans to leave that island. They were secret plans, for well he knew that Minos would never willingly let his inventor go. Moreover, circumstances had made Daedalus a somewhat willing captive and a debtor to the king.

Daedalus's original home had been Athens, where he had earned his fame. A young nephew, Perdix, had been apprenticed to him there. The boy had proved himself to be as inventive as his master, a fact which pleased Daedalus not at all.

One day while walking along the seashore, Perdix had come upon the skeleton of a large fish. He picked it up, studied the backbone carefully, then carried it to his uncle's workshop. Once there, Perdix sought out a straight piece of iron. Next he proceeded to cut alternating rows of teeth along one edge of the iron. He attached a handle to one end and held up mankind's first saw to his proud gaze. The news of this invention spread rapidly, and people began to sing the praise of the young apprentice.

His next accomplishment was equally remarkable. Taking two pieces of iron, he fastened them in such a way that one remained fixed and standing, while the other could be moved around it. Thus did the first compass come into the world.

Now people began to say that the apprentice was greater than the master, and jealous rage seized the heart of Daedalus. He decided to rid himself of his nephew, who was too clever for his own good.

One afternoon as the two were sauntering about the city, Daedalus led Perdix to the top of a high tower. The boy went all unsuspecting, eagerly anticipating the fine view of the countryside which the height would grant them. Daedalus waited until Perdix's eyes were happily absorbing the beauties below them. Then, moving suddenly, he seized the lad and hurled him from the tower.

As he felt himself falling, Perdix screamed, and at once something marvelous happened. Where a moment before a frightened boy had been plummeting toward his death, suddenly a bird of bright plumage appeared and flew off on strong wings. Perdix had been changed into a partridge, a bird which has forever after shunned high places, making its nests in hedgerows and staying always close to the ground.

It was not long before Perdix was missed and Daedalus was questioned. He claimed to know nothing of the boy's whereabouts.

But doubt of Daedalus's innocence began to grow. Though he had tried to hide his jealousy, there were some who had suspected that he was resentful of his clever nephew. Ugly rumors began to spread about the marketplace, and Daedalus decided to flee Athens. He chose to go to Crete, taking his young son Icarus with him. Much to his relief, King Minos made them welcome.

At first Daedalus had enjoyed his exile. There had been the Labyrinth to build and the satisfaction of knowing what a high place he held in the king's esteem. But the years passed, and he grew bored with the limitations of life on an island. He grew tired of the same faces at court day after day. He wearied of hearing the same stories repeated night after night. More than anything else, there was nothing here to challenge his inventiveness. And he began to feel a prisoner, subject to the king's whims. He knew that Minos would never let him leave. He had to depart secretly, but land and sea were well guarded.

"Minos does not control the air," Daedalus told himself. "Therefore, I must find a way to fly from here."

He began to examine the wing structure of sea birds. He noted how they were curved, and how the smaller feathers fit over the larger ones. He decided to make two pairs of wings, one for Icarus and one for himself. To this end he began to gather feathers. He encouraged Icarus and his friends to gather feathers, too. People smiled at this sudden interest of the inventor and wondered what he might be up to. They felt sure that all in good time he would reveal to them some new wonder.

On the fateful night when Ariadne had sought his help, the two pairs of wings were ready, and Daedalus had determined to leave Crete on the morrow. Thus he would risk nothing by giving the princess the advice she sought. He knew that by the time Minos learned of the Athenians' escape (if they did escape) he, Daedalus, would be gone, as well.

Soon after sunrise next morning, while Theseus was sailing toward Naxos, Daedalus and Icarus, each carrying his pair of wings, stole from the palace and made their way toward a deserted stretch of shoreline. They walked for several miles, and the sun was high in the heavens before Daedalus said, "We have come far enough. Give me your wings that I may fit them to your arms."

With an excited, eager look, Icarus handed the wings to his father, then held his arms straight out from his shoulders. Carefully Daedalus fastened the wings. Next he put on his own, Icarus helping him with great patience.

The wing structures were beautifully fashioned. Taking the birds for his models, Daedalus had designed each wing with a slight curve. By means of wax and string, he had fitted smaller feathers over larger ones, keeping the whole as smooth and perfect as a swan's wing.

Smiling, he looked down at his son who stood on tiptoes, his great white wings extended, impatient to be off.

"Icarus, listen carefully. We will go to the edge of this cliff and there leap straight out into the air. I will go first and you will see how the air holds me up like a mighty hand beneath me." He paused and looked deep into his son's eyes.

Icarus returned the gaze steadily. "I'm not afraid, Father," he said. "I want to fly. I have been waiting for this day and moment."

"That is good," said Daedalus. "But remember, no tricks! Don't try to experiment. And above all, don't fly too high. If you do, the sun's fierce rays will melt the wax that holds one feather to another. I shall fly neither high nor low, but shall keep to the middle way; it is the easiest. And so must you."

Suddenly, there were tears in Daedalus's eyes and he stooped quickly and kissed his son. Then he was striding across the headland, the boy at his heels. He hesitated not a moment at the cliff's edge, but leaped forward, flinging his feathered arms wide. Icarus followed, and soon the soaring mortals were out over the sea, the island of Crete out of sight behind them.

For a while all went well. But as he became accustomed to the novelty of flight, a great daring seized Icarus. It crowded from his mind all memory of his father's warnings, and he began to fly toward the sun. Up and ever up he went, exulting in his power. But then it happened as Daedalus had foretold it would. Under the sun's scorching rays, the wax of his wings softened and the feathers began to fall away. In a moment his arms were bare and he began plummeting toward the waters below him. For a few desperate moments, he beat the air with his naked arms. With a last cry, "Father," he struck the surface of the sea, and the waters closed above him.

Daedalus who had been looking back now and then to check the boy's flight, heard the cry. But when he turned his head the sky was empty behind him.

Suddenly Daedalus, swooping low, saw only a few feathers floating on the surface of the water. They told all. What Daedalus had feared had come to pass, and Icarus was drowned.

And that is why, since that time, those waters have been called the Icarian Sea.

Greatly sorrowing, Daedalus flew on until he came to Sicily, where the king made him welcome.

During these hours Minos had learned of Theseus's escape with the beloved Ariadne and his comrades. He knew there was only one person who could be responsible, and he sent at once for Daedalus. The messenger returned trembling in fear of the king's wrath and informed Minos that Daedalus and his son were both gone. But the king wasted no time in futile rage. Instead, he put his wits to work and they served him well. At day's end he had thought of a way to discover the whereabouts of the inventor. Soon it was being announced in all the kingdoms of the known world that Minos, king of Crete, would give a prize of much gold to whoever was able to pass a fine thread through the many and intricate windings of a certain kind of spiral shell.

When the news reached Sicily, Daedalus secured such a shell, opened the closed end, and, tying a thread to an ant, put the insect into the shell. He then reclosed the end he had opened. Of course the ant had no choice but to search the shell for an opening by which it could escape. This it did, dragging the thread along with it as it explored each of the shell's spiral windings. When he decided it had reached the end of the shell, Daedalus freed it, showed the threaded shell, and claimed the prize.

When Minos learned that a man in Sicily had succeeded at the impossible task, he knew at once that Daedalus was that man. He immediately demanded that Daedalus be returned to Crete. But the king of Sicily refused to give him up. So, as he had so long ago against Athens, Minos declared war against Sicily.

This time, though, the gods deserted him. In the struggle that followed Minos was killed.

Daedalus lived on into old age, grieving for his son and repenting of the jealousy that had cost Perdix his humanity--and for which the gods had made him pay with the life of Icarus.

Donna Rosenberg & Sorelle Baker, Mythology and You: Classical Mythology and Its Relevance to Today's World 153 (Lincolnwood, Illinois: National Textbook, 1984):

Everyone must undergo in his or her own experience Icarus's fall from the heights to Daedalus's experience of mastery. Sometimes this mastery can only occur after we have learned to heed the advice of Daedalus to Icarus. His admonishing of the lad not to fly too high or too low. . . . It means that one must temper emotion with reason and do everything, not in excess, but in moderation.

However, in order to reach Daedalus's maturity, like Icarus, we too must want to soar. For this, we need some ideas, dreams, or wishes. We must want to find a way to escape the tedium of the known, in order to find the creative inspiration to convert the givens of our lives into gifts, achievements, or innovations.

Paul Diel, Symbolism in Greek Mythology: Human Desire and Its Transformations 32, 35 (Boulder, Colorado: Shambhala, 1980):

Icarus' adventure is common to all those who have spiritual pretensions, but for those individuals, elevation alternates with downfall in a repeating pattern. Incessantly they fall from their spiritual exaltations into exalted physical desires (they are prisoners of the subconscious depths of life). Each time, they try to rise again, to begin afresh the flight towards the idea, symbolized by the sun, only to fall yet again, often permanently like Icarus, into the depths of the subconscious (the ocean), that is, into psychic illness.

* * * *

Every man who is comparable to Icarus by his elevation and downfall becomes powerless to satisfy either the exaltation of his spiritual desire or that of his physical desires. In vainly exalted spiritual effort he finds not the satisfaction he had imagined, but disappointment, and in bodily perversions not the satisfaction he had imagined, but disgust. Able to gratify neither the spirit nor the body he remains obsessed by the desire to direct his ineffectual effort alternately towards the allurements of the spirit and towards bodily temptations. Incorrigible through obsession, he starts another vain and artificial elevation after each downfall. And, as the idea of elevation recurs obsessively after every downfall, he convinces himself that his falls are the requisite condition for his elevations.

Robert Graves, The Greek Myths 144-145 (New York: Penguin Books, 1955)(vol.1):

One day, when a dispute took place at Sicyon, as to which portions of a sacrificial bull should be offered to the gods, and which should be reserved for men, Prometheus was invited to act as arbiter. He therefore flayed and jointed a bull, and sewed its hide to form two open-mouthed bags, filling these with what he had cut up. One bag contained all the flesh, but this he concealed beneath the stomach, which is the least tempting part of any animal; and the other contained the bones, hidden beneath a rich layer of fat. When he offered Zeus the choice of either, Zeus, easily deceived, chose the bag containing the bones . . . but punished Prometheus, who was laughing at him behind his back, by withholding fire from mankind. "Let them eat their flesh raw!" he cried.

Prometheus at once went to Athene [from whom he had learned architecture, astronomy, mathematics, navigation, medicine, metallurgy, and other arts, which he passed on to mortals], with a plea for a backstairs admittance to Olympus, and this she granted. On his arrival, he lighted a torch at the fiery chariot of the Sun and presently broke from it a fragment of glowing charcoal, which he thrust into the pithy hollow of a giant fennel-stalk. Then, extinguishing his torch, he stole away undiscovered, an gave fire to mankind.

Zeus swore revenge. He ordered Hephaestus to make a clay woman, and the four Winds to breathe life into her, and all the goddesses of Olympus to adorn her. This woman, Pandora, the most beautiful ever created, Zeus sent as a gift to Epimetheus, under Hermes's escort. But Epimetheus, having been warned by his brother to accept no gift from Zeus, respectfully excused himself. Now angrier even than before, Zeus had Prometheus chained naked to a pillar in the Caucasian mountains, where a greedy vulture tore at his liver all day, year in, year out; and there was no end to the pain, because every night (during which Prometheus was exposed to cruel frost and cold) his liver grew whole again.

But Zeus, loth to confess that he had been vindictive, excused his savagery by circulating a falsehood: Athene, he said, had invited Prometheus to Olympus for a secret love affair.

Epimetheus, alarmed by his brother's fate, hastened to marry Pandora, whom Zeus had made as foolish, mischievous, and idle as she was beautiful. . . .

Presently she opened a box, which Prometheus had warned Epimetheus to keep closed, and in which he had been at pains to imprison all the Spites that might plague mankind: such as Old Age, Labour, Sickness, Insanity, Vice, and Passion. Out these flew in a cloud, stung Epimetheus and Pandora in every part of their bodies, and then attacked the race of mortals. Delusive Hope, however, whom Prometheus had also shut in the box, discouraged them by her lies from a general suicide.

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