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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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