Greek Mythology Stories | The Tragic Story of Icarus, the Son of Daedalus

In Greek Mythology there is an interesting story about a person named Icarus. His was a tragic story that ends his life in the Icarian sea.

Icarus was the son of a genius named Daedalus. He was a great creator and inventor. He built the labyrinth, for the king Minos of Crete, that was to hold and imprison the half bull and half man named Minotaur.

Daedalus instead was imprisoned within his own invention because he helped the enemy of king Minos. He gave Minos’ daughter a clew of string to help Theseus who finally survived the labyrinth and defeated the Minotaur.

Daedalus was a remarkable craftsman who created wings that stuck to a wooden frame with wax. He created two pairs of such wings and gave one to his son Icarus. He told his son not to go too much near the sun as it would cause wax to melt and wings to loosen.

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Icarus being imprisoned along with his father always desired to escape from the labyrinth. So he used those wings to fly and escape from it. As he was flying he was exhilarated and went higher and higher into the sky.

Soon his wings loosened as sun melted the wax in it. The boy Icarus fell into the water in the ocean and drowned. Daedalus could see feathers down in the water waves and understood that his son ignored his warning.

Daedalus buried his son Icarus’ body in an island which is called as Icaria. The nearby sea where Icarus fell into was now called as the Icarian Sea.

Icarus was a tragic character that sounds much like the character of Pravara in Telugu text book of 10th class in India. The story is almost same when it comes to tragedy.

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