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Daedalus, a hero of Greek mythology, was known for his inventions such as the axe, saw, and shipbuilding techniques. He built the Labyrinth to hide the Minotaur and invented wings to escape with his son Icarus. After Icarus’ death, Daedalus was received by King Cocalus in Sicily, where he outsmarted King Minos and killed him.
In Greek mythology, Daedalus is one of a group of heroes that also includes
Perseus, Theseus, Achilles, Jason, Ulysses, Hercules and Bellerophon. He was the son of an Athenian named Metion and a descendant of Hephaestus and, like his famous ancestor, was known for his art and his inventions.
Daedalus was credited with some of the most fundamental and far-reaching inventions ever made: the axe, the saw, the use of a plumb bob, and he added greatly to the understanding of shipbuilding with his insight into sails and masts, and most stories about him revolve around his prowess in these areas.
For example, one story has him apprenticing his nephew Talos, an intelligent boy who inspired Daedalus to jealousy to such an extent that Daedalus pushed him off the top of the Acropolis – the gods changed Talos into a partridge during his fall rather than allow him to die — and fled to Crete. And it is in relation to Crete and its king Minos that most of Daedalus’ best-known stories take place.
The queen of Crete, Pasiphae, was in love with a bull that was provided by the god Poseidon. Daedalus made a realistic cow for the queen to hide in to be in the fields with the rest of the herd and the bull. When, after this adventure, Pasiphae gave birth to the Minotaur, a half-bull, half-human creature, Daedalus built the Labyrinth to hide the creature from the public.
King Minos had Daedalus and Icarus, the son of the hero and one of the king’s slaves, imprisoned in the Labyrinth. And it was in this situation that Daedalus invented wings for himself and his son, to allow them to fly away from the prison he had built. The wings were made of feathers and wax, and when Icarus defied his father’s warning not to fly too close to the sun, his wings broke off and he fell into the sea and drowned. Several well-known works of art reflect on this moment, including the paintings Daedalus and Icarus by Charles Paul Landon and Landscape with the Fall of Icarus by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, and the poem Musée des Beaux-Arts by WH Auden.
After the death of Icarus, Daedalus flew to Sicily, where he was received at court by King Cocalus. But Minos, knowing where he was, followed him to Sicily, with the intention of finding and killing him. To do this, he organized a contest that he was sure only Daedalus could win. Minos challenged the general public to pass a thread of linen through a merman shell and waited for the hero to take the bait and reveal his location.
The king, without naming Daedalus, told the king that he knew a man who might be successful in the task, and brought the conch to Daedalus. The hero made a small hole in the tip of the shell, tied the thinnest and most delicate thread to an ant and placed the ant in the hole, placing honey bait at the end. The ant made its way through the spiral chamber to reach the treat, upon which Daedalus tied a linen thread to the end of the very fine thread and pulled it gently, so that the linen thread was also pulled through the shell.
Cocalus congratulated him and hastened to claim his reward, and was surprised to be met by a demand for surrender from Daedalus. His daughters were no less shocked and warned the hero, who made a cunning plan. By installing a duct in the ceiling of the palace bathroom, he ensured that when Minos bathed in it, he was suddenly flooded with boiling water, which killed him. The king’s body was sent back to Crete with an account of his accidental death, and Daedalus was set free.
