The labyrinth from which Theseus escaped by means of the clew of Ariadne was built by Daedalus, a most skilful artificer. It was an edifice with numberless winding passages and turnings opening into one another, and seeming to have neither beginning nor end, like the river Mæander, which returns on itself, and flows now onward, now backward, in its course to the sea.
Daedalus built the labyrinth for King Minos, but afterwards lost the favor of the king, and was shut 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 fitted feathers together beginning with the smallest and adding longer and longer, so that they might vary in length like the pipes of Pan. The larger ones he secured with thread and the smaller with wax, and when the whole were joined together, he padded them with a gentle curve, so as to resemble the wings of a bird.
Icarus stood and watched his father, sometimes running to gather up the feathers which the wind had blown away, and then handling the wax and working it between his fingers, taking part in his father’s work, but impeding it by his play.
When at last the work was done, the artist, waving his wings, found himself buoyed up in the air; he balanced himself, and resting on the suspended air, he hovered. Then he equipped his son in the same manner, and taught him how to fly, as a bird tempts her young ones from the lofty nest into the air.
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 for the last time. Then rising on his wings, he flew off, encouraging his son to follow, and looking back from time to time to see how he managed his wings.
As they flew, a plowman stopped his work to gaze, and the shepherd leaned on his staff and looked at them with amazement, thinking they were gods who could thus skim through the air.
They had passed Samos and Delos on the left and Lebynthos on the right, when the boy, exulting in his bold flight, began to leave his guide, and soaring upward as if to reach heaven, approached too near the sun. The hot rays 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. He cried to his father, but his voice was swallowed up in the blue sea, which from that day has been called by his name.
His father cried, “Icarus, Icarus, where are you?” At last he saw the feathers floating on the water, and bitterly lamenting his own arts, he buried the body, and called the island Icaria in memory of his child.
Daedalus arrived safe in Sicily, where he built a temple to Apollo, and hung up his wings, an offering to the god.