The Fall of Icarus

After helping Theseus escape the Labyrinth he himself had built, the master craftsman Daedalus and his young son Icarus were imprisoned by the furious King Minos, some accounts say in the Labyrinth itself, others say in a tower on Crete. With every sea route watched and every ship searched, Daedalus realized the only escape was through the sky. He gathered feathers dropped by birds, arranged them from smallest to largest, and fastened them together with thread and wax to create two pairs of wings, testing them himself first the way a craftsman tests any device before trusting it to someone else. Before they took flight, Daedalus warned his son carefully: fly too low and the sea spray would dampen the feathers and drag them down; fly too high and the sun's heat would melt the wax holding them together. They must follow a middle course, neither hugging the water nor climbing toward the heavens. Father and son leaped from the tower and soared out over the sea. Fishermen, shepherds, and plowmen looked up in amazement, thinking them gods rather than men who had built their own way out. But Icarus, thrilled by the sensation of flight and the freedom of open sky after imprisonment, forgot his father's warning. He climbed higher and higher, drawn irresistibly toward the blazing sun, until the wax softened, then melted outright. Feathers came loose and scattered in the wind behind him. Icarus beat his bare arms but found no purchase in the empty air, and fell, calling out his father's name, into the sea below. Daedalus circled in anguish, calling for his son, until he saw nothing but feathers floating on the waves where the boy had been. He retrieved the body and buried it on the nearest island, which he named Icaria in his son's memory; the surrounding waters became known as the Icarian Sea, a name Ovid says still marked the spot in his own day, centuries later.