What you need to know about the myth of Icarus:
Like most Greek myths, the tragedy of Daedalus and Icarus appears in several sources, and the sources don't always agree on the details. Here are some of the elements of the myth you will encounter in tonight's performance.
Daedalus, the father of Icarus, worked as an inventor at the court of King Minos in Crete. In a time of need, the god Poseidon granted King Minos a great white bull from the sea. After this, Minos was supposed to sacrifice the bull in honor of Poseidon. When Minos refused to sacrifice the bull, the god Poseidon took his revenge by cursing King Minos' wife Pasiphae with a lust for the bull. Queen Pasiphae then called on the inventor Daedalus to help her satisfy her longings. Daedalus obliged the queen with a hollow wooden cow covered in hides for her to crawl inside of so that she could seduce the bull. As a result of Daedalus' invention, Pasiphae gave birth to the Minotaur, a half-man, half-bull beast who was confined under the palace in a great labyrinth which Daedalus designed.
Minos demanded that the Athenians (who he had conquered in battle) send seven virginal men and seven virginal women every nine years to be fed to the Minotaur. Later, Daedalus helped Ariadne, King Minos' daughter, give the Athenian hero Theseus a way to solve the Labyrinth and kill the Minotaur. This caused Minos to punish Daedalus and his son Icarus by imprisoning them in the labyrinth. To escape his punishment, Daedalus fashioned wings of beeswax and feathers so he and Icarus could fly out of Crete. As they flew off of the island, a shepard and a ploughman stopped in their work to comment that they must be seeing the flight of two gods. Daedalus had warned Icarus that flying too close to the sun would melt the wax holding his wings together, but in his delight at flying Icarus did not heed his father and fell to his death in the sea.
After his learning of Daedalus' escape, King Minos pursued the inventor by holding a contest to thread a piece of string through a spiral seashell, knowing only Daedalus could accomplish such a task. Indeed, Daedalus did thread the shell by attaching the string to an ant. Before Minos could have Daedalus killed, however, King Minos was boiled to death during a bath by the daughters of King Cocalus, who enjoyed the toys Daedalus made for them.
Another famous version of the Icarus myth comes from the Roman poet Ovid. He begins his telling of this myth with the story of princess Scylla who betrayed her father and homeland for the love of King Minos only to be scorned by him for her treason. When Scylla's father Nisus attacks her in the form of a falcon she is transformed into the mythical bird Ciris the Shearer. Ovid's version of the tale also tells of a partridge that comes to taunt Daedalus after the death of Icarus. The Partridge tells the story of Perdix, Daedalus' nephew who showed so much potential as his apprentice that in his jealousy Daedalus threw him off Athena's tower. Athena took pity on Perdix and turned him into a partridge, saving his life. Yet another source states that Daedalus had two sons named Iapyx and Icarus, but Iapyx's whereabouts during the tragedy of Icarus are unknown.
