When Theseus had slain the Minotaur, King Minos was exceedingly wrath with his architect for betraying the secret of the labyrinth—a secret that none but the king and its contriver knew. So Dædalus, and with him his young son Icarus, was cast into prison, and there they languished long. But Pasiphaë the queen, who loved not her sovereign lord and loved her favorite artist, contrived their escape and hid them in a sea-cave. Still the cave was little better than a prison. It was dark and dank, and they dared only venture out at night for fear their hiding-place should be discovered.
But though the artist's hands were idle, his busy brain was ever plotting and scheming. One day, as he sat at the cave's mouth watching the seagulls as they floated past on poised wings or mounted from the waves and with a stroke of their pinions were high in air, there flashed upon his brain the splendor of a sudden thought—With the wings of a bird I too could fly!
At once the father and the son set to work to make themselves wings. The osprey and the sea-eagle, whose aeries were on the rocky heights, the father trapped with cunning snares, and from the combs of the wild bees on the hillside the son collected wax. So with infinite pains, and after endless failures, at last a pair of pinions were made. The upper row of quills were bound together by strong threads of twine on a framework of bone, and to them the bottom feathers were joined by beeswax. Like all great inventors, Dædalus had conquered Nature by imitating her.
At first young Icarus had watched his father with eager curiosity, but like a boy, he had soon grown impatient, and, as Dædalus still persevered, he looked upon him as a harmless lunatic. What, then, were his delight and surprise when, one morning as he awoke, he beheld his father floating in mid-air before the cave's mouth.
"Father," he cried, embracing him as he alighted, "what rapture! Let me too try if I can fly. Make me a pair of wings, and together we will escape from this island prison."
"My boy," the grave sire replied, "thou shalt surely try, but flight is no easy matter, and thou must first learn thy lesson. Mark well my words. Steer always a middle flight; there only safety lies. If you fly low the sea spray will wet your flagging feathers, if high the sun will melt the wax. Keep me in sight, and swerve not to the north or south."
Icarus promised to obey, but so fired was he with the thought of flying that he listened with half an ear, and soon forgot his father's directions.
The second pair of wings were made and strapped with anxious care to the son's shoulder-blades. And, as the parent birds eye their callow nestlings when they essay their first flight, so Dædalus, as he mounted upwards, oft looked back on the boy and again repeated his warnings.
The people were stirring in the towns, the countrymen were out in the fields after their beasts, and all the folk stayed in their morning tasks to gaze at these two strange creatures that floated overhead. "It is Dædalus and his son," they cried. "They have become gods."
Minos in his palace was told of the strange spectacle. From his terrace he watched in impotent wrath the two dark specks far out to sea, that thus escaped him.