LP0018 - Minos and Daedalus - Ovid's Metamorphoses -

Legendary Passages #0018 - Minos and Daedalus - Ovid's Metamorphoses -

Last time Cephalus and the Myrmidons launched their warships, and Princess Scylla cut off her father's purple lock of hair that had made him invulnerable.

Scylla presented Minos with the purple lock as a token of her love. Minos realized that she has betrayed and murdered her father, and utterly rejects her.

He conquers the city and returns to Crete, leaving Scylla behind. Outraged, she leapt into the sea and clung to his flagship. Both her and her father are then changed into birds by the gods.

Victorious, King Minos returns home. To hide the Minotaur, he has Daedalus build the Labyrinth. But since Daedalus had revealed how to navigate its passages with string, Daedalus himself was made prisoner.

To escape, Daedalus constructed wings made of feather and wax. He warned his young son Icarus not too fly to high and thereby melt the wax. Icarus fell, and his father buried him.

Deadalus recalled his sister's son Perdix, whom he took as his apprentice. His nephew used the backbone of a fish and thereby invented the saw. Envious, Daedalus tossed his nephew off a cliff, but the gods changed the boy into a bird as well.

The passage ends with Daedalus going to King Cocalus in Sicily, where Minos was later to meet his end.

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Minos and Daedalus,
a Legendary Passage,
from Ovid's Metamorphoses,
tranlated by Brookes More.

Book 8 [81] - [262]

Concealing in her bosom the sad prize of crime degenerate, she at once went forth a gate unguarded, and with shameless haste sped through the hostile army to the tent of Minos, whom, astonished, she addressed:  "Only my love has led me to this deed. The daughter of King Nisus, I am called the maiden Scylla. Unto you I come and offer up a power that will prevail against my country, and I stipulate no recompense except yourself. Take then this purple hair, a token of my love. - Deem it not lightly as a lock of hair held idly forth to you; it is in truth my father's life."

And as she spoke she held out in her guilty hand the prize, and begged him to accept it with her love. Shocked at the thought of such a heinous crime, Minos refused, and said,  "O execrable thing! Despised abomination of our time! May all the Gods forever banish you from their wide universe, and may the earth and the deep ocean be denied to you! So great a monster shall not be allowed to desecrate the sacred Isle of Crete, where Jupiter was born."

So Minos spoke. Nevertheless he conquered Megara, (so aided by the damsel's wicked deed) and as a just and mighty king imposed his own conditions on the vanquished land.

He ordered his great fleet to tarry not; the hawsers were let loose, and the long oars quickly propelled his brazen-pointed ships. - When Scylla saw them launching forth, observed them sailing on the mighty deep, she called with vain entreaties; but at last, aware the prince ignored her and refused to recompense her wickedness, enraged, and raving, she held up her impious hands, her long hair streaming on the wind, - and said:

"Oh, wherefore have you flown, and left behind the author of your glory. Oh, wretch! wretch to whom I offered up my native land, and sacrificed my father! Where have you now flown, ungrateful man whose victory is both my crime and virtue? And the gift presented to you, and my passion, have these not moved you? All my love and hope in you alone! Forsaken by my prince, shall I return to my defeated land? If never ruined it would shut its walls against me. - Shall I seek my father's face whom I delivered to all-conquering arms? My fellow-citizens despise my name; my friends and neighbors hate me; I have shut the world against me, only in the hope that Crete would surely welcome me; - and now, he has forbidden me.

"And is it so I am requited by this thankless wretch! Europa could not be your mother! Spawn of cruel Syrtis! Savage cub of fierce Armenian tigress; - or Charybdis, tossed by the wild South-wind begot you! Can you be the son of Jupiter? Your mother was not ever tricked by the false semblance of a bull. All that story of your birth is false! You are the offspring of a bull as fierce as you are!

"Let your vengeance fall upon me, O my father Nisus, let the ruined city I betrayed rejoice at my misfortunes - richly merited - destroy me, you whom I have ruined; - I should perish for my crimes!

"But why should you, who conquered by my crime, abandon me? The treason to my father and my land becomes an act of kindness in your cause.

"That woman is a worthy mate for you who hid in wood deceived the raging bull, and bore to him the infamy of Crete. I do not wonder that Pasiphae preferred the bull to you, more savage than the wildest beast. Alas, alas for me! Do my complaints reach your unwilling ears? Or do the same winds waft away my words that blow upon your ships, ungrateful man?

"Ah, wretched that I am, he takes delight in hastening from me. The deep waves resound as smitten by the oars, his ship departs; and I am lost and even my native land is fading from his sight. Oh heart of flint! you shall not prosper in your cruelty, and you shall not forget my sacrifice; in spite of everything I follow you! I'll grasp the curving stern of your swift ship, and I will follow through unending seas."

And as she spoke, she leaped into the waves, and followed the receding ships - for strength from passion came to her. And soon she clung unwelcome, to the sailing Gnossian ship. Meanwhile, the Gods had changed her father's form and now he hovered over the salt deep, a hawk with tawny wings. So when he saw his daughter clinging to the hostile ship he would have torn her with his rending beak; - he darted towards her through the yielding air. In terror she let go, but as she fell the light air held her from the ocean spray; her feather-weight supported by the breeze; she spread her wings, and changed into a bird. They called her 'Ciris' when she cut the wind, and 'Ciris'  - cut-the-lock - remains her name.

King Minos, when he reached the land of Crete and left his ships, remembered he had made a vow to Jupiter, and offered up a hundred bulls. - The splendid spoils of war adorned his palace. - Now the infamous reproach of Crete had grown, till it exposed the double-natured shame. So, Minos, moved to cover his disgrace, resolved to hide the monster in a prison, and he built with intricate design, by Daedalus contrived, an architect of wonderful ability, and famous.

This he planned of mazey wanderings that deceived the eyes, and labyrinthic passages involved. so sports the clear Maeander, in the fields of Phrygia winding doubtful; back and forth it meets itself, until the wandering stream fatigued, impedes its wearied waters' flow; from source to sea, from sea to source involved. So Daedalus contrived innumerous paths, and windings vague, so intricate that he, the architect, hardly could retrace his steps.

In this the Minotaur was long concealed, and there devoured Athenian victims sent three seasons, nine years each, till Theseus, son of Aegeus, slew him and retraced his way, finding the path by Ariadne's thread. Without delay the victor fled from Crete, together with the loving maid, and sailed for Dia Isle of Naxos, where he left the maid forlorn, abandoned.

Her, in time, lamenting and deserted, Bacchus found and for his love immortalized her name. He set in the dark heavens the bright crown that rested on her brows. Through the soft air it whirled, while all the sparkling jewels changed to flashing fires, assuming in the sky between the Serpent-holder and the Kneeler the well-known shape of Ariadne's Crown.

But Daedalus abhorred the Isle of Crete - and his long exile on that sea-girt shore, increased the love of his own native place.  "Though Minos blocks escape by sea and land.” He said,  "The unconfined skies remain though Minos may be lord of all the world his sceptre is not regnant of the air, and by that untried way is our escape.”

This said, he turned his mind to arts unknown and nature unrevealed. He fashioned quills and feathers in due order - deftly formed from small to large, as any rustic pipe prom straws unequal slants. He bound with thread the middle feathers, and the lower fixed with pliant wax; till so, in gentle curves arranged, he bent them to the shape of birds.

While he was working, his son Icarus, with smiling countenance and unaware of danger to himself, perchance would chase the feathers, ruffled by the shifting breeze, or soften with his thumb the yellow wax, and by his playfulness retard the work his anxious father planned.

But when at last the father finished it, he poised himself, and lightly floating in the winnowed air waved his great feathered wings with bird-like ease. And, likewise he had fashioned for his son such wings; before they ventured in the air he said,  "My son, I caution you to keep the middle way, for if your pinions dip too low the waters may impede your flight; and if they soar too high the sun may scorch them. Fly midway. Gaze not at the boundless sky, far Ursa Major and Bootes next. Nor on Orion with his flashing brand, but follow my safe guidance.”

As he spoke he fitted on his son the plumed wings with trembling hands, while down his withered cheeks the tears were falling. Then he gave his son a last kiss, and upon his gliding wings assumed a careful lead solicitous. As when the bird leads forth her tender young, from high-swung nest to try the  yielding air; so he prevailed on willing Icarus; encouraged and instructed him in all the fatal art; and as he waved his wings looked backward on his son. Beneath their flight, the fisherman while casting his long rod, or the tired shepherd leaning on his crook, or the rough plowman as he raised his eyes, astonished might observe them on the wing, and worship them as Gods.

Upon the left they passed by Samos, Juno's sacred isle; Delos and Paros too, were left behind; and on  the right Lebinthus and Calymne, fruitful in honey. Proud of his success, the foolish Icarus forsook his guide, and, bold in vanity, began to soar, rising upon his wings to touch the skies; but as he neared the scorching sun, its heat softened the fragrant wax that held his plumes; and heat increasing melted the soft wax - he waved his naked arms instead of wings, with no more feathers to sustain his flight. And as he called upon his father's name his voice was smothered in the dark blue sea, now called Icarian from the dead boy's name.

The unlucky father, not a father, called,  "Where are you, Icarus?” and  "Where are you? In what place shall I seek you, Icarus?”

He called again; and then he saw the wings of his dear Icarus, floating on the waves; and he began to rail and curse his art. He found the body on an island shore, now called Icaria, and at once prepared to bury the unfortunate remains.

But while he labored a pert partridge near, observed him from the covert of an oak, and whistled his unnatural delight. Know you the cause? 'Twas then a single bird, the first one of its kind.

'Twas never seen before the sister of Daedalus had brought him Perdix, her dear son, to be his pupil. And as the years went by the gifted youth began to rival his instructor's art. He took the jagged backbone of a fish, and with it as a model made a saw, with sharp teeth fashioned from a strip of iron. And he was first to make two arms of iron, smooth hinged upon the center, so that one would make a pivot while the other, turned, described a circle.

Wherefore Daedalus enraged and envious, sought to slay the youth and cast him headlong from Minerva's fane, - then spread the rumor of an accident. But Pallas, goddess of ingenious men, saving the pupil changed him to a bird, and in the middle of the air he flew on feathered wings; and so his active mind - and vigor of his genius were absorbed into his wings and feet; although the name of Perdix was retained.

The Partridge hides, in shaded places by the leafy trees, its nested eggs among the bush's twigs; nor does it seek to rise in lofty flight, for it is mindful of its former fall.

Wearied with travel Daedalus arrived at Sicily, - where Cocalus was king; and when the wandering Daedalus implored the monarch's kind protection from his foe, he gathered a great army for his guest, and gained renown from an applauding world.

Now after Theseus had destroyed in Crete the dreadful monster, Athens then had ceased to pay her mournful tribute; and with wreaths her people decked the temples of the Gods; and they invoked Minerva, Jupiter, and many other Gods whom they adored, with sacrifice and precious offerings, and jars of Frankincense. Quick-flying Fame had spread reports of Theseus through the land; and all the peoples of Achaia, from that day, when danger threatened would entreat his aid.

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