Daedalus in the context of "Merope (mythology)"

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⭐ Core Definition: Daedalus

In Greek mythology, Daedalus (UK: /ˈddələs/, US: /ˈdɛdələs/ ; Greek: Δαίδαλος; Latin: Daedalus; Etruscan: Taitale) was a skillful architect and craftsman, seen as a symbol of wisdom, knowledge and power. He is the father of Icarus, the uncle of Perdix, and possibly also the father of Iapyx. Among his most famous creations are the wooden cow for Pasiphaë, the Labyrinth for King Minos of Crete which imprisoned the Minotaur, and wings that he and his son Icarus used to attempt to escape Crete. It was during this escape that Icarus did not heed his father's warnings and flew too close to the sun; the wax holding his wings together melted and Icarus fell to his death.

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Daedalus in the context of Lebynthos

Levitha (Greek: Λέβιθα), known in classical antiquity as Lebinthus or Lebinthos (Ancient Greek: Λέβινθος) is a small Greek island located in the east of the Aegean Sea, between Kinaros and Kalymnos, part of the Dodecanese islands. It is part of the municipality of Leros. The island is mentioned in two of Ovid's works Ars Amatoria and the Metamorphoses in connection with the saga of Daedalus and Icarus. While escaping from Crete, Daedalus and Icarus flew over Lebinthus. Besides Ovid, the island is noted by the ancient authors Pliny the Elder, Pomponius Mela, Strabo, and Stephanus of Byzantium. In addition, it is mentioned in the Stadiasmus Maris Magni.

As of 2009, the population of the island is five with a family of two children and their grandmother. The total area of the island is 9.2 square kilometres (4 sq mi) and its total coastline is 34 kilometres (21 miles).

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Daedalus in the context of Minotaur

In Greek mythology, the Minotaur (Ancient Greek: Μινώταυρος, Mīnṓtauros), also known as Asterion or Asterius, is a mythical creature portrayed during classical antiquity with the head and tail of a bull and the body of a man or, as described by Roman poet Ovid, a being "part man and part bull". He dwelt at the center of the Labyrinth, which was an elaborate maze-like construction designed by the architect Daedalus and his son Icarus, upon command of King Minos of Crete. According to tradition, every nine years the people of Athens were compelled by King Minos to choose fourteen young noble citizens (seven men and seven women) to be offered as sacrificial victims to the Minotaur in retribution for the death of Minos's son Androgeos. The Minotaur was eventually slain by the Athenian hero Theseus, who managed to navigate the labyrinth with the help of a thread offered to him by the King's daughter, Ariadne.

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Daedalus in the context of Minos

In Greek mythology, Minos (/ˈmaɪnɒs, -nəs/ ; Greek: Μίνως, [mǐːnɔːs]) was a king of Crete, son of Zeus and Europa. Every nine years, he made King Aegeus pick seven young boys and seven young girls to be sent to Daedalus's creation, the labyrinth, to be eaten by the Minotaur. After his death, King Minos became a judge of the dead in the underworld alongside Rhadamanthus and Aeacus.

Archeologist Sir Arthur Evans used King Minos as the namesake for the Minoan civilization of Crete. The Minoan palace at Knossos is sometimes referred to as the Palace of Minos though there is no evidence that Minos was a real person.

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Daedalus in the context of Xoanon

A xoanon (/ˈz.ənɒn/ , Greek: ξόανον; plural: Greek: ξόανα xoana, from the verb Greek: ξέειν, xeein, to carve or scrape [wood]) was a wooden cult image from Archaic Greece. Classical Greeks associated such cult objects, whether aniconic or effigy, with the legendary Daedalus. Many such cult images were preserved into historical times, though none are known to have survived to the modern day, except as copies in stone or marble. In the 2nd century CE, Pausanias described numerous xoana in his Description of Greece, notably the image of Hera in her temple at Samos. "The statue of the Samian Hera, as Aethilos [sic] says, was a wooden beam at first, but afterwards, when Prokles was ruler, it was humanized in form". In Pausanias' travels he never mentions seeing a xoanon of a "mortal man".

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Daedalus in the context of Metiadusa

In Greek mythology, Metiadusa (Ancient Greek: Μητιάδουσα) was a member of the Athenian royal family as the daughter of Prince Eupalamus and possibly Alcippe. She was probably the sister of Daedalus and Perdix. Metiadusa married King Cecrops II of Athens and became the mother of Pandion.

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Daedalus in the context of Eupalamus

In Greek mythology, Eupalamus (Ancient Greek: Εὐπαλάμου means "handy, skilful, ingenious") was an Athenian prince. There are two versions of his genealogy: Eupalamus was called (1) the son of Metion (son of King Erechtheus), and the father by Alcippe of Daedalus, Perdix and Metiadusa, wife of King Cecrops II or instead (2) the son of Erechtheus and possibly Praxithea, and became the father of Metion, father of Daedalus.

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Daedalus in the context of Icarus (mythology)

In Greek mythology, Icarus (/ˈɪkərəs/ ; Ancient Greek: Ἴκαρος, romanizedÍkaros, pronounced [ǐːkaros]) was the son of the master craftsman Daedalus, the architect of the labyrinth of Crete, and 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's 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.

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Daedalus in the context of Labyrinth

In Greek mythology, the Labyrinth (Ancient Greek: λαβύρινθος, romanizedLabúrinthos) is an elaborate, confusing structure designed and built by the legendary artificer Daedalus for King Minos of Crete at Knossos. Its function was to hold the Minotaur, the monster eventually killed by the hero Theseus. Daedalus had so cunningly made the Labyrinth that he could barely escape it after he built it.

Although early Cretan coins occasionally exhibit branching (multicursal) patterns, the single-path (unicursal) seven-course "Classical" design without branching or dead ends became associated with the Labyrinth on coins as early as 430 BC, and similar non-branching patterns became widely used as visual representations of the Labyrinth – even though both logic and literary descriptions make it clear that the Minotaur was trapped in a complex branching maze. Even as the designs became more elaborate, visual depictions of the mythological Labyrinth from the Roman era until the Renaissance are almost invariably unicursal. Branching mazes were reintroduced only when hedge mazes became popular during the Renaissance.

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