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Icarus' flight was often alluded to by Greek poets in passing and was told briefly in Pseudo-Apollodorus. Hellenistic writers give euhemerising variants in which the escape from Crete was actually by boat, provided by Pasiphaë, for which Daedalus invented the first sails, to outstrip Minos' pursuing galleys, that Icarus fell overboard en route to Sicily and drowned, and that Heracles erected a tomb for him. Afterwards, it was Helios who named the Icarian Sea after Icarus.Ī fresco in Pompeii depicting Daedalus and Icarus, 1st century According to scholia on Euripides, Icarus fashioned himself greater than Helios, the Sun himself, and the god punished him by directing his powerful rays at him, melting the beeswax. With much grief, Daedalus went to the temple of Apollo in Sicily, and hung up his own wings as an offering to never attempt to fly again. Today, the supposed site of his burial on the island bears his name, and the sea near Icaria in which he drowned is called the Icarian Sea. Daedalus wept for his son and called the nearest land Icaria (an island southwest of Samos) in memory of him. But he realized that he had no feathers left and that he was flapping his bare arms. One by one, Icarus's feathers fell like snowflakes. He came too close to the sun, and the heat melted the beeswax holding his feathers together. Overcome by giddiness while flying, Icarus disobeyed his father and soared into the sky. Before trying to escape the island, he warned his son not to fly too close to the sun, nor too close to the sea, but to follow his path of flight. In some versions of the tale, Daedalus and Icarus escape by ship.ĭaedalus fashioned two pairs of wings out of beeswax and feathers for himself and his son. The myth gave rise to the idiom, " fly too close to the sun." Icarus fell from the sky, plunged into the sea, and drowned. Icarus ignored Daedalus’ instructions not to fly too close to the sun, causing the beeswax in his wings to melt. Daedalus warned Icarus first of complacency and then of hubris, instructing him to fly neither too low nor too high, lest the sea's dampness clog his wings or the sun's heat melt them. Icarus and Daedalus escaped using wings Daedalus constructed from feathers, threads from blankets, clothes, and beeswax. After Theseus, king of Athens and enemy of Minos, escaped from the labyrinth, King Minos suspected that Icarus and Daedalus had revealed the labyrinth's secrets and imprisoned them-either in a large tower overlooking the ocean or the labyrinth itself, depending upon the account. In Greek mythology, Icarus ( Ancient Greek: Ἴκαρος Error: : text has italic markup ( help)) was the son of the master craftsman Daedalus, the architect of the labyrinth of Crete.