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Daedalus and Icarus
When King Minos of Crete decided to keep alive a magnificent bull
that
Poseidon had given him
for sacrifice, the sea god punished him by having Minos's wife
Pasiphae (seated at left in the mosaic) fall in love with the bull.
To satisfy her desire, the architect Daedalus and his son Icarus
(second from right and far right, respectively) built her a hollow
cow in which she could hide and mate with the bull. Their coupling
produced the half-man, half-bull Minotaur, which was shut away in
the maze-like Labyrinth (upper right). Later, when Minos had
Daedalus and Icarus shut up in the Labyrinth, they escaped using
wings fixed to their bodies with wax. Daedalus safely reached
Sicily, but Icarus, exulting in his new-found abilities, flew too
close to the sun; the wax melted and he fell to his death in the
sea.
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