The goddess Minerva (Greek name, Athena) changed Talos into the partridge (Latin perdix) so he was saved from a fatal fall. Daedalus had tried to murder his nephew, Talos, who had been entrusted to him as a second son to learn the craftsman’s trade, but whose remarkable talents inspired jealous rage in his teacher. Ovid’s educated readership would probably be familiar with the background story but the modern reader may be finding out for the first time that Daedalus was fleeing justice and retribution when he left Athens and took refuge in Crete. The partridge is Perdix, Daedalus’ nephew and one-time apprentice.

The custom at Roman funerals was to call upon the corpse thrice by name (possibly to ‘waken’ the dead, in case they were actually in a catatonic trance) so the passing over of Icarus is ritually marked by Ovid before the burial even takes place. In this way Melville keeps the literary artifice intact, but a cultural context has been lost because the repetition of the name in Raeburn’s translation evokes features of a formal lament. However, he does repeat ‘where’ three times, so has intentionally retained the emphasis and rhythm of the repetition. Melville, for instance, renders the two lines as: ‘His wretched father, now no father, cried/“Oh, Icarus, where are you? Icarus/Where shall I look, where find you?”’ (1986, p. The translation you have been reading captures this threefold lament, but not all translators follow the Latin so closely. The name ‘Icarus’ appears three times in the final lines, uttered by the desperate father as he looks down for his lost son. Angler, shepherd and ploughman have gazed up in wonder at them, but the glory is short-lived. The heedlessness of the boy is a fatal characteristic he will ignore his father’s advice and soar towards the sun.īefore Icarus plummets to his death with his horrified father wailing his name, ‘now no longer a father’ (Ovid twists the emotional knife deeper here), he and Daedalus have enjoyed a brief but god-like view of the world. Ovid’s readers (who would not need reminding about the myth) knew that the successful completion of the wings would mean the fall and death of Icarus. The first mention of Icarus creates the image of a meddling child, a familiar scene with tragic resonances. Icarus is depicted as a boy rather than an adolescent he gets in his father’s way in the workshop and has no real inkling of the danger he is about to face. He invests all his legendary skills as a craftsman in the design of wings for himself and Icarus. Devising drastic measures to escape, Daedalus knows he is taking a huge risk in attempting flight.

Ovid renders Daedalus’ dilemma all the more poignant because he is trying to escape with his young son, Icarus. We might argue that this invites us as readers into Daedalus’ mind and sets up a sympathetic resonance, as well as making the manufacture of the wings a tense dramatic moment. You may have been struck by how Daedalus speaks for himself almost immediately in the text, outlining his dilemma succinctly and appraising the reader of his action plan.

Story of daedalus and icarus