ICARUS AND DAEDALUS (Continued)

Unfortunately for Daedalus, the king had imprisoned him and his young son Icarus in a high tower so that they couldn’t reveal the secret of the labyrinth to anyone.  Daedalus realized that their only escape route was by air. 

 

For a large period of time he was gathering all the feathers he could find and joined them together with wax and fashioned a pair of wings one for himself and the one for his son Icarus.

 

The day arrived when they would execute their escape but Daedalus had given a grave warning to his son and forbade him to fly too near the sun because the wax would melt or fly too near the sea for that would dampen the feathers.

 

Father and son perched of a parapet and leaped off, flapping their wings furiously and in no time they were flying over the sea, putting a great distance between them and Crete.

 

Unfortunately, Icarus soon forgot his father’s warning and he flew too close to the sun.  The intense heat melted the wax and the feathers of the wings came loose.  Moments later poor Icarus fell into the sea and drowned.  Daedalus was struck with horror but there was nothing he could do to save his son.

 

Aggrieved by his loss he named the sea spot where his son had drowned after his name, so the sea was called the Icarian sea and the island was called Ikaria.

 

Berating himself for his tragic loss, he continued to fly towards Sicily, where he sought refuge at the palace of King Cocculus of Camicus.  With the king’s help he constructed a temple dedicated to Apollo as an offering to the god and hung up his wings for good.

 

At Crete, King Minos fumed over the escape of Daedalus The only thought on  his mind, was to recapture the skilled artificer and bring him back to Knossos.

 

Minos set out from Crete in search of Daedalus snd whereover he went he offered a handsome reward to anyone who run  a thread through a spiral seashell.   He knew that this was a very complex puzzle and Daedalus would be challenged to solve it. Minos reached Camicus and  announced the same reward and task and many people tried to solve it but to no avail.

 

The news reached King Cocalus and he immediately asked for Daedalus because if anyone could solve the puzzle it would be him.   His old age hadn’t affected the brilliant mind  of Daedalus and when he saw the puzzle he knew exactly what to do.   At the end on the seashell, he placed a drop of honey,  and tying string to an ant, let the insect in from the other end to wander through the myriads of spirals of the shell. 

 

Drawn by the honey, the ant emerged at the other end stringing the shell through and through.

 

Minos knew that  he had found his man.  Immediately he demanded that Daedalus should be handed over but Cocalus had other plans.  He coxed King Minos to stay for a while in Camicus to rest from his long trip.  Seeing no harm in it, Minos consented and waited while the chambermaids were getting his bath ready.

 

At the same time, Coculus’s daughters who for years had been charmed by Daedalus’ inventions could not bear to see him taken away, conspired to kill Minos.  When it was time to take his bath, they poured scalding water over him. In his soul this could have been the revenge of Daedalus, he saw the death of a man who led at some point, to the death of his son.

 

Knowing well that his disguise had been seen through Daedalus decided to leave Comicus, much to the disappointment of the King and his daughters. He was seen in Sardinia in the company of Iolaus who was the nephew of Hercules.  Since then, no one knows what happened to this great engineer, what places he lived in, and what miracles bore his mind.

 

Today Daedalus represents for us a brilliant person, who has been cursed to suffer because of his special talents. The peak of his misfortune was the remembrance of the tragic death of his son.

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