Icarus Descending Poster

The Legend of Icarus Daedalus, the father of Icarus, was famed for his skill as an architect, sculptor, and inventor and he produced many famous works. Despite this, he was exiled to Crete for throwing his nephew Talus off the Acropolis in a fit of jealous rage and placed in the service of King Minos where he eventually had a son, Icarus, with the beautiful Naucrate, a mistress of the King. Minos also had a problem - The Minotaur. A monster with the head of a bull and the body of a man. He was the son of Pasiphae, the wife of Minos, and a bull that Poseidon had sent to Minos as a gift. Minos was so beside himself with shame at the birth of this horrible creature that he commissioned Daedalus to build the famous labyrinth to imprison the Minotaur, where it would feed on human sacrifices - seven young men and seven young women from Athens taken as "tribute" by Minos in memory of his fallen son Androgenos. Enter Theseus, son of King Aegeus of Athens. He convinced his father to let him be one of the sacrificial seven in the hopes of killing the beast and ending the "human tribute" that his city was forced to pay Minos. When Theseus arrived in Crete, Ariadne, Minos's daughter, fell in love with him and implored Daedalus to help him escape from the Labyrinth. She was given a ball of flaxen thread and was told Theseus must tie one end to the door and keep hold of the other end—that way he could find his way back. The plan succeeded, thus enabling Theseus to slay the Minotaur and escape from the Labyrinth. When Minos found out he was so enraged that he imprisoned Daedalus and Icarus in the Labyrinth themselves. But Daedalus had built the Labyrinth. He knew every inch of it, so to escape from it was not a problem. Escaping from Crete was. He knew Minos controlled all the seas around the island so the only way off it was to fly. He set about constructing wings from feathers and wax for himself and his son. When they were ready he warned Icarus not to fly too low lest his wings touch the waves and get sodden and drag him under; and not too high lest the sun melt the wax. Unfortunately, the young Icarus, intoxicated by the freedom of the sky soared upwards paying no heed to his father's warning, whereupon the sun melted the wax in his wings. They disintegrated and he fell into the sea below with such force it killed him. His body was carried ashore by the current to an island then without a name. Heracles came across the body and buried it, naming the island and the sea around it after the fallen Icarus. From a painting by Mijo B