![]() ![]() In The Metamorphoses (8 CE), Ovid takes great pains to describe Daedalus' fear before the flight, and his devastation afterward. Ovid's account of the story is much longer and, as usual, much more poetic. Virgil adds a little flare to the story, saying that Daedalus tried twice to make a golden statue of Icarus, but was so overcome with grief that he dropped it each time. When the story's main character, Aeneas, reaches Sicily, he stops to admire the beautiful temple that Daedalus built, scoping out all of the awesome sculptures that adorn its walls. Virgil mentions Daedalus briefly in the Aeneid(19 B.C.E.). Next up, the Roman poets Virgil and Ovid. Um, that changes things! But Icarus still met a tragic death when he tried to disembark from the boat in a "reckless manner." In his second account (which he calls a "tale of marvel"), Diodorus tells the more classic story-this version was probably so well known by then that Diodorus couldn't help but include it. In his first account, he says that Daedalus and Icarus escaped from Crete by boat, not by wings. Diodorus wrote between 60 and 30 B.C.E., and actually gives two versions of the myth. One of the first major accounts was written by a guy named Diodorus Siculus, who included the myth in The Library of History, a forty-book account of the history of Greece, Rome, India, and Egypt. Overall, the story has actually remained pretty consistent over the years. But once it was committed to paper, there were surprisingly few differences between the versions. Like most Greek myths, long before this tale was written down it was passed around by word of mouth. But on the other hand, it's an examination of mankind's need to explore, invent, and be creative, especially when it comes to achieving flight. On the one hand, it's a cautionary tale about what can happen when you disobey your parents and overstep your bounds. Depending on how you look at it, the story of Daedalus and Icarus is either completely depressing or completely inspirational. ![]()
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