Daedalus is the master craftsman who escapes Crete with wings, while Icarus is the son who falls into the sea. The story is best known from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, with related material in other Greek and Roman authors. Its famous details are literary, not a record of ancient flight technology.
The Cretan prison
Daedalus builds the labyrinth for King Minos after Pasiphae gives birth to the Minotaur. He later helps Ariadne provide Theseus with a way through the maze. Minos then prevents the craftsman from leaving Crete. Depending on the source, Icarus is confined with him or shares the escape for other reasons.
Daedalus constructs wings from feathers joined with thread and wax. Before taking flight, he warns Icarus not to fly too low, where sea moisture will weigh the wings down, or too high, where the sun will soften the wax.
The failed flight
Icarus rises too close to the sun. The wax melts, the feathers scatter, and he falls into the sea that bears his name. Daedalus reaches safety and mourns him. The episode is often read as a warning against excess, but Ovid also gives it the immediate force of a parent’s failed instruction and grief.
Some ancient versions let Daedalus escape by ship rather than wings. The differences matter when discussing what any one author says. The wider Cretan setting appears in Minos’s legends, while Bellerophon supplies another mythic flight on Pegasus.