Icarus

Icarus was a figure of Greek myth who escapes Crete on wings made by his father Daedalus. Ignoring warnings, he flies too close to the sun, the wax melts and he falls into the sea.

The story of Icarus is best known from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, where Daedalus warns his son not to fly either too low or too high. Icarus rises toward the sun, the wax holding his wings melts, and he falls into the sea. The myth became an enduring image of youthful overconfidence, technological ambition and the danger of ignoring limits, repeatedly reinterpreted in art and literature.

In Ovid’s The Fall of Icarus, this short classical selection centres on the mythic fall of Icarus and related ancient stories of ambition, flight and divine or natural limits. Icarus is treated fictionally in Ovid’s Metamorphoses.