So runs the great story which links Minos and Crete with the favourite
hero of Athens. But other legends, not so famous nor so romantic, carry
on the story of the great Cretan King to a miserable close. Daedalus,
his famous artificer, was also an Athenian, and the most cunning of
all men. To him was ascribed the invention of the plumb-line and
the auger, the wedge and the level; and it was he who first set
masts in ships and bent sails upon them. But having slain, through
jealousy, his nephew Perdix, who promised to excel him in skill, he
was forced to flee from Athens, and so came to the Court of Minos.
For the Cretan King he wrought many wonderful works, rearing for him
the Labyrinth, and the Choros, or dancing-ground, which, as Homer
tells us, he 'wrought in broad Knossos for fair-haired Ariadne.'
But for his share in the great crime of Pasiphae Minos hated him,
and shut him up in the Labyrinth which he himself had made. Then
Daedalus made wings for himself and his son Icarus, and fastened
them with wax, and together the two flew from their prison-house
high above the pursuit of the King's warfleet. But Icarus flew too
near the sun, and the wax that fastened his wings melted, and he
fell into the sea. So Daedalus alone came safely to Sicily, and was
there hospitably received by King Kokalos of Kamikos, for whom, as
for Minos, he executed many marvellous works.
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