Icarus

thumb|Jacob Peter Gowy's The Fall of Icarus (1635–1637) In Greek mythology, Icarus (; , ) was the son of the master craftsman Daedalus, the architect of the labyrinth of Crete, and his wife Naucrate. After Theseus, king of Athens and enemy of King Minos, escaped from the labyrinth, Minos suspected that Icarus and Daedalus had revealed the labyrinth's secrets and thus imprisoned them—either in a large tower overlooking the ocean or in the labyrinth itself, depending upon the account. Icarus and Daedalus escaped using wings Daedalus constructed from birds' molted feathers, threads from blankets, the leather straps from their sandals, and beeswax. Before escaping, Daedalus warned Icarus not to fly too low or the water would soak the feathers and not to fly too close to the Sun or the heat would melt the wax. Icarus ignored Daedalus' instructions not to fly too close to the Sun, causing the beeswax in his wings to melt. Icarus fell from the sky, plunged into the sea, and drowned. The myth gave rise to the idiom, "fly too close to the Sun". In some versions of the tale, Daedalus and Icarus escape by ship.

== The legend == thumb|left|Daedalus, Icarus, Queen [[Pasiphaë, and two of her attendants in a Roman mosaic from Zeugma, Commagene]] thumb|left|Ícaro Salvado (Icarus Saved), work of Julio Nieto. La Matanza de Acentejo. [[Tenerife, Spain]] thumb|The Fall of Icarus. Antique fresco from Pompeii, 40–79 AD|279x279px Icarus's father Daedalus, a very talented Athenian craftsman, built a labyrinth for King Minos of Crete near his palace at Knossos to imprison the Minotaur, a half-man, half-bull monster born of his wife and the Cretan bull. Minos imprisoned Daedalus himself in the labyrinth because he believed Daedalus gave Minos's daughter, Ariadne, a clew (or ball of string) in order to help Theseus escape the labyrinth and defeat the Minotaur. thumb|A fresco in Pompeii depicting Daedalus and Icarus, 1st century|264x264px