Daedalus was a highly respected and talented Athenian
artisan descendent from the royal family of Cecrops, the mythical
first king of Athens. He was known for his skill as an architect,
sculpture, and inventor, and he produced many famous works. Despite
his self-confidence, Daedalus once committed a crime of envy against
Talus, his nephew and apprentice. Talus, who seemed destined to become
as great an artisan as his uncle Daedalus, was inspired one day to
invent the saw after having seen the way a snake used its
jaws. Daedalus, momentarily stricken with jealousy, threw Talus off of
the Acropolis. For this crime, Daedalus was exiled to Crete and placed
in the service of King Minos, where he eventually had a son, Icarus,
with the beautiful Naucrate, a mistress-slave of the King.
Minos called on Daedalus to build the famous
Labyrinth in order to imprison the dreaded Minotaur. The Minotaur was
a monster with the head of a bull and the body of a man. He was the
son of Pasiphae, the wife of Minos, and a bull that Poseidon had sent
to Minos as a gift. Minos was shamed by the birth of this horrible
creature and resolved to imprison the Minotaur in the Labyrinth where
it fed on humans, which were taken as "tribute" by Minos and
sacrificed to the Minotaur in memory of his fallen son Androgenos.
Theseus, the heroic King of Athens, volunteered himself to be sent to
the Minotaur in the hopes of killing the beast and ending the "human
tribute" that his city was forced to pay Minos. When Theseus arrived
to Crete, Ariadne, Minos's daughter, fell in love with him and wished
to help him survive the Minotaur. Daedalus revealed the mystery of
the Labyrinth to Ariadne who in turn advised Theseus, thus enabling
him to slay the Minotaur and escape from the Labyrinth. When Minos
found out what Daedalus had done he was so enraged that he imprisoned
Daedalus & Icarus in the Labyrinth themselves.
Daedalus conceived to escape from the Labyrinth with Icarus from Crete
by constructing wings and then flying to safety. He built the wings
from feathers and wax, and before the two set off he warned Icarus not
to fly too low lest his wings touch the waves and get wet, and not too
high lest the sun melt the wax. But the young Icarus, overwhelmed by
the thrill of flying, did not heed his father's warning, and flew too
close to the sun whereupon the wax in his wings melted and he fell
into the sea. Daedalus escaped to Sicily and Icarus' body was carried
ashore by the current to an island then without a name. Heracles came
across the body and recognized it, giving it burial where today there
still stands a small rock promontory jutting out into the Aegean Sea,
and naming the island and the sea around it after the fallen
Icarus.
Credits: From:
"http://www.island-ikaria.com/culture/myth.asp".