Daedalus

(European mythology)

Legendary Greek craftsman. At the command of Minos, King of Crete, he designed and built the Labyrinth, in which was hidden the Minotaur, a monstrous creature born of the strange love of Pasiphae, the Cretan queen, for a sea-born bull. Minos had asked Poseidon for a sign when he was contending with his brothers for the throne, and it happened that the splendid bull that god sent from the waves inspired in Pasiphae an ungovernable passion, which was gratified by means of a bronze cow into which she slipped so as to deceive the beast. Again this was the handiwork of ‘cunning’ Daedalus.

According to legend, Daedalus was imprisoned by Minos for revealing the secret of the Labyrinth, but escaped by constructing wings for himself and his son Icarus. Despite his father's warning the boy flew too close to the sun, the wax holding together his wings melted, and he fell into the sea and was drowned. Daedalus himself managed to touch down safely on Sicily.

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The ‘cunning artificer’ of Greek mythology, he was an inventor, artist, and architect, responsible for creating the labyrinth at Knossos, Crete. Medieval architects identified with Daedalus as his heirs, and his legends are associated with those of Freemasonry.

Bibliography

• J.Curl (2002)
• Hamilton and Spawforth (1996)

The full bibliography for this book is available to download as a pdf file.
Download the bibliography for A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (PDF: 1.2MB)

Daedalus (‘cunning worker’), legendary Athenian craftsman and inventor, thought of as living in the age of Minos, in whom the Greeks personified the development of sculpture and architecture through mechanical inventions; his impossibly ingenious devices provided the plot of many exciting stories. It was said that his statues could move themselves. Being afraid that his nephew and pupil Talōs would outdo him (for the latter invented the saw and the potter's wheel), Daedalus threw him down from the Acropolis (Pausanias (2) saw his reputed grave at Athens in the second century AD) or into the sea (when Athena changed him into a partridge, perdix, by which name Talōs was also known). Daedalus was condemned for his crime by the Areopagus and fled to Crete, where he constructed the labyrinth for king Minos. Afterwards, Minos would not let him go; Daedalus then made wings for himself and his son Icarus out of wax and feathers, and they flew away. But Icarus flew too near the sun; the wax of his wings melted and he fell into the sea and was drowned. Daedalus landed on the island in the Sporades now called Ikaria and buried his son's body. He then escaped to king Cocalus in Sicily, whither Minos pursued him; enticed into Cocalus' palace Minos was scalded to death in a bath of Daedalus' invention. Virgil at the beginning of book 6 of the Aeneid describes Daedalus arriving at Cumae in his flight from Minos and dedicating a temple there. Pausanias saw several statues said to have been sculpted by Daedalus, and accepted that he really existed.