Notebook

Notebook, 1993-

ANCIENT GREEK CULTURE

[From: Kyriazis, Constantine D. Eternal Greece. Translated by Harry T. Hionides. A Chat Publication.]

Demigods and Heros - Achilles - Aegisthus - Agamemnon - Ajax the Locrian - Ajax the Telamonian - Alcestis - Amphiaraos - Amphitrite - Antigone - Atalanta - Belerophon - Cadmus - Clytemnestra - Daedalus - Danae - Dioscuri - Electra - Europa - Eurydice - Ganymede - Hector - Hecuba - Helen - Heracles - Hippolytus - Icarus - Io - Iphigenia - Jason - Leda - Menelaus - Minos - Nestor - Niobe - Odysseus - Oedipus - Orestes - Medea - Orpheus - Paris - Pasiphae - Pelops - Penelope - Perseus - Phaedra - Phaethon - Phrixus - Priam - Telemachus - Theseus - Triptolemus

Daedalus





Architect, artist, sculptor, and inventor, he was the son of the Athenian Eupalamus. He was exiled from Athens for the murder of his nephew who he feared would outdo him in ingenuity, and fled to the court of the Cretan king Minos. There he was hospitably received by the king who commissioned him to build the labyrinth. But Daedalus soon fell out of grace with Minos because he showed the king's wife [p. 61] Pasiphae [see entry] how to satisfy her lust for a bull, and because he advised Ariadne how to help Theseus slay the Minotaur and escape from the maze of the labyrinth Minos therefore confined Daedalus to the maze but he succeeded in escaping with his son Icarus [see entry] with the use of wings. Icarus flew too near the sun, and the wax of his wings melted. Daedalus landed in Kyme where he built a temple to Apollo and dedicated his wings to the deity. Thereafter he went to Sicily where he resided at the court of the King Cocalus and worked as an architect. The Greeks accredited Daedalus with the invention of the saw, the axe, and the plumb line. As an artist he sculpted numerous wooden statues [Xoana] of the gods or heroes with one foot forward to convey movement. These statues of Daedalus were perhaps an advanced stage of development in the wooden images which had begun initially as staid figures of men and women with arms and legs attached to the bodies. In describing these wooden images Pausanias says that despite their crudeness they possessed something of the godlike in them. [p. 62]

[Kyriazis, Constantine D. Eternal Greece. Translated by Harry T. Hionides. A Chat Publication.]




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