Built the maze at Knossos that held a monster at its centre
Commissioned by Minos to hide his wife's bull-headed child
Myth · Greek
Daedalus
Greek mythology — craftsman, architect and inventor
The archetypal inventor: an Athenian exile who worked for King Minos of Crete, built the labyrinth, and then had to escape the maze and the island he had made inescapable. His solution — wings of feathers and wax — killed his son Icarus, who flew too near the sun. His name means "cunningly wrought", and he is myth's patron of clever making and its costs.
How to spot them
- ▸Adze, saw and plumb-line; the master craftsman of the heroic age
- ▸Quiz clue: 'Knossos', 'Minos', 'Pasiphaë', 'wax and feathers', 'Camicus'
- ▸An Athenian working in Crete who could not be allowed to leave
- ▸A father who told his son to fly neither too high nor too low
Stories & episodes
Made a hollow wooden cow so a queen could couple with a bull
Pasiphaë's passion, sent by Poseidon as a punishment on Minos
Escaped an island prison on wings of feathers and wax
Sea and land were watched, so he took the one road Minos did not control
His son ignored the warning, flew too near the sun and fell into the sea
The wax melted; the Icarian Sea and the island of Icaria are named from the fall
Threw his gifted nephew off the Acropolis out of professional jealousy
Perdix, inventor of the saw and the compasses, was turned into a partridge
Threaded a spiral shell with the help of an ant, and so gave himself away
Minos used the puzzle to flush him out at the court of Cocalus in Sicily
Told Ariadne to give a thread to the young man going into the maze
The advice that undid his own most famous commission
Quick-fire facts
- •The name means something like 'cunningly wrought'; Homer uses daidala for finely made objects
- •He was an Athenian, said to be of the royal line of Erechtheus, exiled for killing his nephew
- •His nephew is called Perdix, Talos or Calos; perdix is Greek for partridge, which flies low
- •Icarus fell into what was thereafter the Icarian Sea, near the island of Icaria
- •Ovid's Metamorphoses 8 is the best-known telling of the flight
- •He took refuge with King Cocalus at Camicus in Sicily, whose daughters killed Minos in his bath
- •Bruegel's Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, and Auden's poem Musée des Beaux Arts about it, turn on how the world ignores the disaster
- •James Joyce named his alter ego Stephen Dedalus after him
Drill it — 9 cards
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Sources
- Ovid — Metamorphoses Book 8: the labyrinth, the flight and the death of Icarus
- Apollodorus — The Library (Bibliotheca) Book 3 and Epitome 1 for the Cretan service and the escape to Sicily