In classical Greek mythology the figure of Icarus is linked to the story of the wings and the flight that cost him his life. But let's start from the origins. Icarus was the son of Daedalus and of one of the slaves of King Minos, Naucrates. Daedalus, who lived in Crete, was a skilled blacksmith and for this reason Minos, who ruled the island, had designated him as his "official inventor".
It was he, in fact, who had designed the labyrinth in which Minos had locked up the terrible Minotaur. But the monster was killed by Theseus with the help of Minos's daughter, Ariadne, who had fallen in love with the hero. The king of Crete accused Daedalus of intervening to help Theseus in his enterprise and put him in prison with his son Icarus, who was ten years old. The two were locked up in the highest part of the palace of Knossos, without bread and water, and after a few days of terrible hunger they devised a plan to escape from the tower.
Daedalus told his son to climb up to the ceiling and collect the honeycombs of a bees' nest, and then pluck out the feathers of the sleeping birds on the beams. Daedalus' idea was brilliant: after sucking the honey from the honeycombs from the hive he melted the wax by directing the sun's rays onto a magnifying glass: with the same wax he drew the silhouettes of four wings. When the wax was still soft and malleable he passed on to insert the feathers of the pigeons that Icarus had collected from the ceiling, finally completed the wings with leather harnesses using the belt and sandals.
Daedalus and Icarus climbed onto the windowsill after tying their wings on their backs. They launched themselves into the void as the sky was full of stars. The joy of the two was uncontainable when they began to spin, Icarus kept shouting: "Look daddy, I'm flying!".
Daedalus, however, advised his son not to go too high and to keep the direction to the west. “If you get too close to the Sun the wax could melt and therefore you risk falling!”, He warned. But Icarus was too busy with the thrill of the flight and hadn't even listened to his father's warning.
Arriving towards the Big Dipper, Icarus did not notice that the Sun was rising over the eastern part. Elios sent the fiery rays to the sky and struck one of Icarus' wings. The wax began to melt and the feathers broke off, so that Icarus tumbled to the ground. The father Daedalus saw his son falling down without being able to do anything. Crying in despair at having lost his son, he continued to fly to Sicily.
Every tear of him that fell into the sea was collected by the Nereids who made them pearls of wisdom. Even today it is said that the spirit of Icarus rises every night from the sea and reaches the sky to play with the stars.
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