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Daedalus
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In Greek mythology, Daedalus (Latin, also Hellenized Latin Daedalos, Greek Daidalos (?a?da???) meaning "cunning worker", and Etruscan Taitle) was a most skillful artificer, or craftsman, so skillful that he was said to have invented images that seemed to move about.
alus had two sons: Icarus and Iapyx, along with a nephew, whose name varies. He is first mentioned by Homer as the creator of a wide dancing-ground for Ariadne .
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In Greek mythology, Daedalus (Latin, also Hellenized Latin Daedalos, Greek Daidalos (?a?da???) meaning "cunning worker", and Etruscan Taitle) was a most skillful artificer, or craftsman, so skillful that he was said to have invented images that seemed to move about.
Daedalus' family
Daedalus had two sons: Icarus and Iapyx, along with a nephew, whose name varies. 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" .
Athenians transferred Cretan Daedalus to make him Athenian-born, the grandson of the ancient king Erechtheus, who fled to Crete, having killed his nephew. 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).
Daedalus and his nephew
Daedalus was so proud of his achievements that he could not bear the idea of a rival. His sister had placed her son, named multiply as Perdix, Talos, or Calos, 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. It is also said that he invented a way to transfer the soul of a human being into a machine, therefore creating a machine with a soul and rendering the soul immortal.
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 Athena, who favors ingenuity, saw him falling and arrested his fate by changing him into a bird called after his name, the partridge. This bird does not 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.
Daedalus and Icarus
Among these anecdotes, one is told in Ovid's Metamorphoses (VIII:183-235) that Daedalus was shut up in a tower to prevent his knowledge of the labyrinth from spreading to the public. He could not 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 would 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, and 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 6 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. In some versions, Daedalus himself poured boiling water on Minos and killed him.
Builder of the Cretian Labyrinth
The Labyrinth on Crete in which the Minotaur (part man, part bull) 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.
The innovator
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 is 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 symbolized 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 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man envisages his future artist-self "a hawklike man flying above the waves”.
In popular culture
Daedalus is one of the main characters in the Percy Jackson & The Olympians-series novel called The Battle of the Labyrinth by Rick Riordan. The books credits Daedalus with the creation of bronze wings and the Labyrinth itself.
Thrice has a song entitled "Daedalus" on their album The Alchemy Index Vols. III & IV "III - Air", which tells the story of Icarus from Daedalus's perspective. Thrice also have a previously written a song titled, "The Melting Point of Wax" from their album The Artist in the Ambulance which also features the story of Daedalus, but from Icarus' point of view.
Death in June have a song entitled Daedalus Rising on their album But, What Ends When the Symbols Shatter?.
Michael Ayrton wrote the novel The Maze Maker about Deadalus and the myth was a theme of his work.
Daedalus is a character in the science fiction suspense anime Ergo Proxy. He creates a winged clone of the series main character, who then flies towards the sun and is incinerated.
In Stargate Atlantis and Stargate SG-1, the name of one of Earth's battleships is Daedalus.
Daedalus is the name chosen by a computer AI in the video game Deus Ex.
In the game Resistance 2, the final boss and main antagonist is called Daedalus.
In Paul Kelly's song All The Dumb Things one line states "I melted wax to fix my wings, I've done all the dumb things." Which is a reference to Daedalus and his son Icarus' escape from Crete.
See also
the 1980's band KANSAS, produced the song "CARRY ON MY WAYWARD SON" also about the sage of Icarus and Daedalus.
Sources
- Thomas Bulfinch's Mythology
- . Begins with Daedalus.
- Essay on Brueghel's visualisation of Ovid.
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