Prevod

Minos paid his vows to Jupiter with the bodies of a hundred bulls when, stepping from his ships, he reached the land of the Curetes; his palace was adorned with captured spoils. The disgrace of his house had grown, and his mother's foul adultery stood revealed in the strange monster's double form. Minos resolved to hide this shame away from his marriage chamber and imprison it within a winding house of bewildering passages.

Daedalus, renowned above all others for his inventive craftsmanship, built the work, confusing landmarks and misleading the eye with the twists and turns of its many branching paths. Just as the Phrygian Maeander plays with its flowing waters, running this way and that along its uncertain course, meeting itself and watching its own waters coming towards it, turning now towards its source, now towards the open sea, and keeping its wavering waters in motion, so Daedalus filled countless passages with bewilderment. He himself could scarcely find his way back to the entrance: so deceptive was the building.

Here Minos imprisoned the creature, half bull and half young man; and after the monster had twice fed on Athenian blood, the third tribute, exacted every nine years, brought its downfall. With a maiden's help, the difficult entrance, which none before had ever reached again, was found by retracing a thread; then the son of Aegeus carried off Minos's daughter and set sail for Dia, where he cruelly abandoned his companion upon the shore. As she lay deserted, lamenting bitterly, Liber brought her his embrace and aid; and to give her lasting glory among the stars, he took the crown from her brow and hurled it into heaven. It flew through the thin air, and as it flew its jewels turned to gleaming fires

and settled, still retaining the shape of a crown, between the Kneeling Man and the Serpent-Bearer. Meanwhile Daedalus, weary of Crete and his long exile, and stirred by longing for his native land, was hemmed in by the sea. “Though he bars the land,” he said, “and the waters, surely the sky lies open: we shall go that way. Minos may possess everything, but he does not possess the air.”

So he spoke, and turned his mind to unknown arts, reshaping nature. He laid feathers in a row, beginning with the smallest, shorter beside longer, so that they seemed to rise along a slope. Just so a rustic pipe rises by degrees through reeds of unequal length. Then he bound the feathers midway with thread and at their bases with wax, and bent the finished structure into a gentle curve, to imitate real birds. The boy Icarus stood beside him and, unaware that he was handling his own peril, with a beaming face would sometimes catch at feathers stirred by the wandering breeze, and sometimes soften the yellow wax beneath his thumb, hindering through his play

his father's marvellous work. When the finishing touches had been given, the craftsman balanced his own body on the twin wings and hung aloft in the air he stirred. He instructed his son as well. “I warn you, Icarus,” he said, “to keep a middle course: if you fly too low, the waves may weigh your feathers down; too high, the fire may scorch them. Fly between the two. Do not, I tell you, watch Boötes, or Helice, or Orion's drawn sword: take me as your guide and follow.” As he taught him the rules of flight, he fitted the unfamiliar wings to his shoulders.

Amid his work and warnings, the old man's cheeks grew wet, and his fatherly hands trembled. He gave his son kisses he would never give again, then rose upon his wings and flew ahead, anxious for his companion, like a bird that has led its tender young into the air from a lofty nest. He urged him to follow and taught him the fatal art, beating his own wings and looking back at his son's.

Someone fishing with a quivering rod, or a shepherd leaning on his staff, or a ploughman on his plough, saw them and stood astonished, believing that those who could travel through the heavens must be gods. Already Juno's Samos lay on their left—Delos and Paros had been left behind— and on their right lay Lebinthos and Calymne, rich in honey, when the boy began to delight in his daring flight.

He abandoned his guide and, drawn by a longing for the sky, soared higher. The nearness of the blazing sun softened the fragrant wax that bound his feathers. The wax melted away: he flailed his bare arms, but without his oar-like wings he could gain no hold upon the air; and his mouth, crying out his father's name, was swallowed by the blue water, which took its name from him.

But his unhappy father, now a father no longer, cried, “Icarus! Icarus, where are you? Where am I to look for you?” “Icarus!” he kept calling; then he saw feathers on the waves and cursed his own invention. He laid the body in a tomb, and the land took its name from the boy buried there. As he laid his ill-fated son's body in the grave, a chattering partridge watched him from a muddy ditch, clapped its wings, and proclaimed its joy in song: then the only bird of its kind, unknown in earlier years, and only lately made a bird—a lasting reproach to you, Daedalus.

For his sister, ignorant of what fate held in store, had entrusted her son to him to be taught: a boy of twelve, with a mind quick to learn. Having observed the spines along a fish's backbone, he took them as his model and cut a continuous row of teeth in sharp iron, thus inventing the saw. He was also the first to join two iron arms at a single pivot, so that, with their tips a fixed distance apart, one stood still while the other traced a circle.

Daedalus grew envious and hurled him headlong from Minerva's sacred citadel, pretending he had fallen. But Pallas, who favours ingenuity, caught him and made him a bird, clothing him with feathers in mid-air. The vigour of his once quick mind passed into his wings and feet; the name he had before remained. Yet this bird never lifts its body high, nor builds its nest in branches or on lofty treetops: it flutters near the ground and lays its eggs in hedges, and, remembering its ancient fall, is afraid of heights.