THE DIARY OF
DAEDALUS
-the inventor
THE DIARY OF DAEDALUS
Written by:
Shashaank Abhinav Venkatesh
26th June 1969
Hi. My name is Daedalus. If you are reading for the first time, welcome to my diary! I am basically going to record all my thoughts in this thing so that, later on, people can really treasure it. If you are reading this thing, you might’ve also probably read The Diary of a Wimpy Kid or Percy Jackson. My diary is not at all like those ones.
Right. Now it’s time for my complete self-introduction. I am Metion Daedalus, the son of the king Metion and Athena (the ancient Greek goddess of wisdom and fine arts). My age is 20,000 and my occupation is: inventor, swordsman, architect, designer, mechanic and I also play basketball pretty well for a guy who didn’t start until he was 15,000! Pretty weird self-introduction, huh?
So, here I am weeping over the deaths that have occurred around me and have tortured me for decades. I should probably start with the Labyrinth, where Minos had died, and started torturing me again.
One fine day, I was just dreaming about myself and my inventions, thinking that there was no other greater artiste than I! At that time, my old enemy Minos was torturing me in ways that nobody else could imagine.
I was dodging Minos as much as possible until a great idea occurred to me. “Why should I be afraid of Minos? I am Daedalus, the great inventor! I shall use my sculpting skills to avoid him. I shall triumph against even the strongest enemy”! I know, it’s a strange battle cry. But, it was an effective one!
Having such confidence in mind, I set out to defeat my old enemy. I set out to build my masterpiece- The Labyrinth. ‘Labyrinth’ means ‘maze’ in Latin. And what a maze it was! I had allowed it to grow on its own too. Of course the Labyrinth doesn’t exist anymore. It was destroyed along with my life force which hopefully subdued the Titan Kronos’ army. We’ll leave that topic for now, though.
Anyway, the surroundings of the Labyrinth were built in such a way that they would adapt to whatever fad or trend was going on in the mortal world above the Labyrinth. For example, North was for the Graeco-Romans; North-East was for the Egyptians, South-West was for the Athenians and so on.
There was a Greek mark at the door of my workspace, which was delta, beta, omega, omega which indicates that this door needs the touch of a half-blood (child of mortal and god/goddess) like me. This is purely for my security and safety.
I, only I, Daedalus, had created such a wonder in the history of human beings and more. Anyway, once I had created the Labyrinth, I got a lot of requests from people for keeping their valuables in that place. I warned them that their valuables might end up in a different country, but they claimed they would use the Labyrinth to look for their valuables which might be on the other side of the Earth.
Now, this Labyrinth had an automatic locking feature that I had installed and only I knew the password. I believe that one of Minos’ spies eventually saw me and told the password to him, because he found out how to bypass all my security measures. He entered my workspace with his Minotaur on one, sad, fateful day for him.
The Minotaur was a half-man and half-bull with sharp and pointed horns. I pulled out my sword, a double-edged Stygian black sword. It had been crafted using water from the River Styx, a river in the Underworld on which the dead were rowed to the Decision Hall, where the judges of the dead decided where to keep your soul. It was deathly to the touch.
I eventually, being a swordsman, finished both the Minotaur and Minos with my scythe. But soon, the spirit of Minos began to torture me in my dreams. He promised he would hunt me down. I did the natural thing. I retreated into my Labyrinth with my loving son Icarus.
Now I shall narrate to you the myth of Daedalus and Icarus, one of the saddest tales that have ever been narrated.
I was shut up in a tower to prevent my knowledge of his Labyrinth from spreading to the public. I could not leave Crete by sea, as the king kept strict watch on all vessels, permitting none to sail without being carefully searched.
Since Minos controlled the land and sea routes, I set to work to fabricate wings for myself and my young son Icarus. I tied feathers together, from smallest to largest so as to form an increasing surface. Then I secured the feathers at their midpoints with string and at their bases with wax, and gave the whole a gentle curvature like the wings of a bird.
When the work was done, I, waving my wings, found myself buoyed upward and hung suspended, poising myself on the beaten air. I next equipped Icarus in the same manner, and taught him how to fly properly.
When the both of us were prepared for flight, I warned Icarus not to fly too high, because the heat of the sun would melt the wax, nor too low, because the sea foam would soak the feathers.
We had passed Samos, Delos and Lebynthos by the time Icarus, forgetting himself, began to soar upward toward the sun. The blazing sun softened the wax which held the feathers together and they came off which made Icarus terribly frightened for his own life. I warned him to keep his arms straight, but, he didn’t listen to me.
Icarus fell into the sea and drowned. I, his father, cried, bitterly lamenting my own arts, and called the land near the place where Icarus fell into the ocean Icaria in memory of my child.
Further to the west, I arrived safely in Sicily, in the care of King Cocalus of Kamikos on the island’s south coast; there I built a temple to Apollo, and hung up his wings, as an offering to the god.
Minos, meanwhile, searched for me by travelling from city to city asking a riddle. He presented a spiral seashell and asked for a string to be run through it.
When he reached Kamikos, King Cocalus, knowing I would be able to solve the riddle, privately fetched me to him. I tied the string to an ant which, lured by a drop of honey at one end, walked through the seashell stringing it all the way through. See my intelligence!
Minos then knew I was in the court of King Cocalus and demanded he be handed over. Cocalus managed to convince Minos to take a bath first, where Cocalus’ daughters killed Minos. Some people believe that I killed him by pouring boiling water on him. Either way, he was dead.
I was so proud of my achievements that I could not bear the idea of a rival. My sister had placed her son, named Perdix under my charge to be taught the mechanical arts.
He was an apt scholar and showed striking evidence of ingenuity. One day, walking on the seashore, he picked up the spine of a fish.
He took a piece of iron and notched it on the edge, and thus invented the saw. He put two pieces of iron together, connecting them at one end with a rivet, and sharpening the other ends, and made a pair of compasses.
I was so envious of my nephew’s accomplishments that I took an opportunity and caused him to fall from the Acropolis.
As he died, Athena turned him into a partridge and then branded the bird’s shape on my neck. This so-called murderer’s brand still remains on me today and is a painful reminder of the crimes that I have committed.
This bird does not build its nest in the trees, nor take lofty flights, but nestles in the hedges, and mindful of his fall, avoids high places. For this crime, I was tried and banished.
I was wandering around, feeling pretty sorry for myself when I landed on Icaria, the island I had named after my dead son.
I constructed another entrance to the Labyrinth there, and I was back in my old home and prison again, with Minos pursuing me. Since we are talking about Minos, let me relate to you the story which made us enemies in the first place.
After I was tried at the Areopagus and banished from the city, I fled to Crete, where I began to work at the court of King Minos and Queen Pasiphae, in the magnificent palace of Knossos.
There I constructed a wooden cow for the queen to hide in to satisfy her amorous longings for a white bull sent by Poseidon, the ancient Greek God of the sea and earthquakes, and by which she became pregnant with the Minotaur.
When the Minotaur was born, I built the Labyrinth to contain the monstrous half-man, half-bull. For years Minos demanded a tribute of youths from Athens to feed the creature. Eventually, the hero Theseus came to Crete to attempt to slay the Minotaur.
Ariadne, daughter of Minos and Pasiphae, fell in love with Theseus and asked Daedalus to help him. Daedalus gave her a flaxen thread for Theseus.
He could tie it to the door of the Labyrinth as he entered, and by which he could find his way out after killing the monster.
Theseus succeeded, and escaped Crete with Ariadne. Minos, enraged at the loss of his daughter, shut me and Icarus into the Labyrinth.
Now, I hope you have understood why Minos hates me. That is also because of another of my crimes. Now, you must be wondering what happened to Theseus, the Minotaur and Ariadne? I shall narrate this story to you too, a story of love and betrayal.
Androgeus, son of Minos, had been killed by the Athenians (people of the state Athens in Greece), who were jealous of the victories he had won at the Panathenaic festival.
Others say he was killed at Marathon by the Cretan bull, his mother’s former taurine lover, which Aegeus, king of Athens, had commanded him to slay.
Minos waged war to avenge the death of his son and won. Athens was “compelled by the cruel plague to pay penalties for the killing of Androgeus.” Aegeus must avert the plague caused by his crime by sending “young men at the same time as the best of unwed girls as a feast” to the Minotaur.
Minos required that seven Athenian youths and seven maidens drawn by lots, be sent every seventh or ninth year to be devoured by the Minotaur.
When the third sacrifice approached, Theseus volunteered to slay the monster. He promised to his father, Aegeus, that he would put up a white sail on his journey back home if he was successful and would have the crew put up black sails if he was killed.
In Crete, both Minos’ daughters, Ariadne and Phaedra fell madly in love with Theseus. Ariadne, the elder, helped him navigate the labyrinth. In most accounts she gave him a ball of thread, allowing him to retrace his path.
Theseus killed the Minotaur with the sword of Aegeus and led the other Athenians back out of the labyrinth. On the way home, Theseus abandoned Ariadne on the island of Naxos, and continued with Phaedra, his future wife.
He neglected, however, to put up the white sail. King Aegeus, from his lookout on Cape Sounion, saw the black-sailed ship approach and, presuming his son dead, committed suicide by throwing himself into the ocean nearby which was hence named for him. This act secured the throne for Theseus.
This myth reminds me of another few myths like this one. The first of them is ‘Perseus and Medusa’. Let me tell you this tale of horror.
Perseus was the son of Zeus and Danaë, who by her very name, was the archetype of all the Danaans.
Danaë was the daughter of Acrisius, King of Argos. Disappointed by his lack of luck in having a son, Acrisius consulted the oracle at Delphi, who warned him that he would one day be killed by his daughter’s intoxicating son with Zeus.
Danaë was childless and to keep her so, he imprisoned her in a bronze chamber open to the sky in the courtyard of his palace. Eventually Zeus came to her in shining form and impregnated her.
When Perseus was grown, Polydectes came to fall in love with the beautiful Danaë. Perseus believed Polydectes was less than honourable, and protected his mother from him; then Polydectes plotted to send Perseus away in disgrace. He held a large banquet where each guest was expected to bring a gift.
Polydectes requested that the guests bring horses, under the pretence that he was collecting contributions for the hand of Hippodamia, “Tamer of horses”.
Perseus had no horse to give, so he asked Polydectes to name the gift; he would not refuse it. Polydectes held Perseus to his rash promise and demanded the head of the only mortal Gorgon, Medusa, whose eyes turned people to stone.
An account of Medusa’s mortality tells that she had once been a woman, vain of her beautiful hair, who had lain with Poseidon in the Temple of Athena. In punishment for the desecration of her temple, Athena had changed Medusa’s hair into hideous snakes “that she may alarm her surprised foes with terror”.
Athena instructed Perseus to find the Hesperides, who were entrusted with weapons needed to defeat the Gorgon.
Following Athena’s guidance, Perseus sought out the Graeae, sisters of the Gorgons, to demand the whereabouts of the Hesperides, the nymphs tending Hera’s orchard.
The Graeae were three perpetually old women, who had to share a single eye.
As the women passed the eye from one to another, Perseus snatched it from them, holding it for ransom in return for the location of the nymphs. When the sisters led him to the Hesperides, he returned what he had taken.
From the Hesperides he received a knapsack to safely contain Medusa’s head. Zeus gave him an adamantine sword and Hades’ helm of darkness to hide. Hermes lent Perseus winged sandals to fly, while Athena gave him a polished shield. Perseus then proceeded to the Gorgons’ cave.
In the cave he came upon the sleeping Medusa. By viewing Medusa’s reflection in his polished shield, he safely approached and cut off her head.
From her neck sprang Pegasus (“he who sprang”) and Chrysaor (“bow of gold”), the result of Poseidon and Medusa’s meeting. The other two Gorgons pursued Perseus, but, wearing his helm of darkness, he escaped.
On the way back to Seriphos Island, Perseus stopped in the kingdom of Ethiopia. This mythical Ethiopia was ruled by King Cepheus and Queen Cassiopeia.
Cassiopeia, having boasted her daughter Andromeda equal in beauty to the Nereids, drew down the vengeance of Poseidon, who sent an inundation on the land and a sea serpent, Cetus, which destroyed man and beast.
The oracle of Ammon announced that no relief would be found until the king gave his daughter Andromeda to the monster, and so she was fastened to a rock on the shore. Perseus slew the monster and, setting her free, claimed her in marriage.
Perseus married Andromeda in spite of Phineus, to whom she had before been promised. At the wedding a quarrel took place between the rivals, and Phineus was turned to stone by the sight of Medusa’s head that Perseus had kept.
Andromeda (“queen of men”) followed her husband to Tiryns in Argos, and became the ancestress of the family of the Perseidae who ruled at Tiryns through her son with Perseus, Perses.
After her death she was placed by Athena amongst the constellations in the northern sky, near Perseus and Cassiopeia.
As Perseus was flying in his return above the sands of Libya, according to Apollonius of Rhodes, the falling drops of Medusa’s blood created a race of toxic serpents, one of whom was to kill the Argonaut Mopsus.
On returning to Seriphos and discovering that his mother had to take refuge from the violent advances of Polydectes, Perseus killed him with Medusa’s head, and made his brother Dictys, consort of Danaë, king.
A breathtaking story, isn’t it! Oh, my new plan is to make this diary like a collection of a few good ancient Greek myths! Now the most important Greek myth of all, the Greek myth of creation!
In the beginning there was only chaos. Then out of the void appeared Erebus, the unknowable place where death dwells, and Night.
All else was empty, silent, endless, darkness. Then somehow Love was born bringing a start of order. From Love came Light and Day. Once there was Light and Day, Gaia, the earth appeared.
Then Erebus slept with Night, who gave birth to Ether, the heavenly light, and to Day the earthly light. Then Night alone produced Doom, Fate, Death, Sleep, Dreams, Nemesis, and others that come to man out of darkness.
Meanwhile Gaea alone gave birth to Uranus, the heavens. Uranus became Gaea’s mate covering her on all sides. Together they produced the three Cyclopes, the three Hecatonkheires or hundred-handed ones, and twelve Titans.
However, Uranus was a bad father and husband. He hated the Hecatonkheires.
He imprisoned them by pushing them into the hidden places of the earth, Gaea’s womb. This angered Gaea and she plotted against Uranus.
She made a flint sickle and tried to get her children to attack Uranus. All were too afraid except, the youngest Titan, Cronus.
Gaea and Cronus set up an ambush of Uranus as he lay with Gaea at night. Cronus grabbed his father and struck him, with the stone sickle, throwing the blood drops into the ocean.
The fate of Uranus is not clear. He died, withdrew from the earth, or exiled himself to Italy. As he departed he promised that Cronus and the Titans would be punished.
From his spilt blood came the Giants, the Ash Tree Nymphs, and the Erinnyes. From the sea foam where his blood drops fell came Aphrodite.
Cronus became the next ruler. He imprisoned the Cyclopes and the Hecatonkheires in Tartarus. He married his sister Rhea; under his rule the Titans had many offspring.
He ruled for many ages. However, Gaea and Uranus both had prophesied that he would be overthrown by a son.
To avoid this Cronus swallowed each of his children as they were born. Rhea was angry at the treatment of the children and plotted against Cronus. When it came time to give birth to her sixth child, Rhea hid herself, then she left the child to be raised by nymphs.
To conceal her act she wrapped a stone in swaddling clothes and passed it off as the baby to Cronus, who swallowed it.
This child was Zeus. He grew into a handsome youth on Crete. He consulted Metis on how to defeat Cronus. She prepared a drink for Cronus design to make him vomit up the other children.
Rhea convinced Cronus to accept his son and Zeus was allowed to return to Mount Olympus as Cronus’s cupbearer. This gave Zeus the opportunity to slip Cronus the specially prepared drink.
This worked as planned and the other five children were vomited up. Being gods they were unharmed. They were thankful to Zeus and made him their leader.
Cronus was yet to be defeated. He and the Titans, except Prometheus, Epimetheus, and Oceanus, fought to retain their power.
Atlas became their leader in battle and it looked for some time as though they would win and put the young gods down.
However, Zeus was cunning. He went down to Tartarus and freed the Cyclopes and the Hecatonkheires. Prometheus joined Zeus as well. He returned to battle with his new allies.
The Cyclopes provided Zeus with lightning bolts for weapons. The Hecatonkheires he set in ambush armed with boulders. With the time right, Zeus retreated drawing the Titans into the Hecatonkheires’s ambush.
The Hecatonkheires rained down hundreds of boulders with such a fury the Titans thought the mountains were falling on them. They broke and ran giving Zeus victory.
Zeus exiled the Titans who had fought against him into Tartarus. Except for Atlas, who was singled out for the special punishment of holding the world on his shoulders.
However, even after this victory Zeus was not safe. Gaea angry that her children had been imprisoned gave birth to a last offspring, Typhus.
Typhus was so fearsome that most of the gods fled.
However, Zeus faced the monster and flinging his lightning bolts was able to kill it. Typhus was buried under Mount Etna in Sicily.
Much later a final challenge to Zeus rule was made by the Giants. They went so far as to attempt to invade Mount Olympus, piling mountain upon mountain in an effort to reach the top.
But, the gods had grown strong and with the help of Heracles the Giants were subdued or killed.
Now I shall narrate to you the story of Zeus, Hades and the King of Corinth.
One day, the king of Corinth was busy trying to come up with an idea to solve Corinth’s fresh water problem. He saw Zeus fly by, carrying a lovely river spirit in his arms.
“That Zeus,” sighed the king. “What a trouble maker!”
Soon after, the river-god Asopus flew by. “Have you seen my daughter?” he bellowed at the king.
“If you’ll give my city a source of fresh water, I’ll tell you what I saw,” King Sisyphus shouted back. Immediately, a crystal clear stream of fresh water bubbled up.
“Zeus took her that way,” the king pointed.
The king knew Zeus would be angry when he heard what the king had done. But Corinth desperately needed a source of fresh water. And now they had one.
Sure enough, Zeus was furious. He told his brother Hades to take King Sisyphus down to the Underworld immediately!
The Greeks had a tradition of keeping a gold coin under a person’s tongue after they died, to pay the ferryman Charon for a boat ride across the River Styx.
“When they tell you I am dead, do not put a gold coin under my tongue,” King Sisyphus whispered quickly to his wife. Being a good wife, she did exactly as the king had asked her.
As the king was a very important person, Hades met the king at the River Styx, the entrance to the Underworld. And, because no gold coin was placed under his tongue, the king arrived at the entrance to the underworld as a poor beggar.
“Where is your gold coin?” Hades demanded in shock. “How can you pay for a trip across the River Styx and arrive in the underworld?”
The king hung his head in shame. “My wife was too cheap to pay for the passage.”
Hades mouth fell open. “You go right back there and teach that women some manners.” Hades sent the king back to earth immediately, where he was magically alive and well again.
The king and his beloved wife laughed when he told her about it. But he never told anyone else as he was scared the gods might hear him!
Now the final story, the story of Achilles.
Achilles was the son of the mortal Peleus and the Nereid Thetis. He was the mightiest of the Greeks who fought in the Trojan War, and was the hero of Homer’s Iliad.
Thetis attempted unsuccessfully to make her son immortal. There are two versions of the story. In the earlier version, Thetis anointed the infant with ambrosia and then placed him upon a fire to burn away his mortal portions; she was interrupted by Peleus, whereupon she abandoned both father and son in a rage.
Peleus placed the child in the care of the Centaur Chiron, who raised and educated the boy. In the later version, Thetis held the young Achilles by the heel and dipped him in the river Styx; everything the sacred waters touched became invulnerable, but while she was dipping him in the water she had to hold him by the heel so the heel remained dry and therefore unprotected.
When Achilles was a boy, the seer Calchas prophesied that the city of Troy could not be taken without his help. Thetis knew that, if her son went to Troy, he would die an early death, so she sent him to the court of Lycomedes, in Scyros; there he was hidden, disguised as a young girl.
Achilles’ disguise was finally penetrated by Odysseus, who placed arms and armour amidst a display of women’s finery and seized upon Achilles when he was the only “maiden” to be fascinated by the swords and shields.
Achilles then went willingly with Odysseus to Troy, leading a host of his father’s Myrmidons and accompanied by his tutor Phoenix and his close friend Patroclus.
At Troy, Achilles distinguished himself as an undefeatable warrior. Among his other exploits, he captured twenty-three towns in Trojan territory, including the town of Lyrnessos, where he took the woman Briseis as a war-prize.
Later on Agamemnon, the leader of the Greeks, was forced by an oracle of Apollo to give up his own war-prize, the woman Chrysies, and took Briseis away from Achilles as compensation for his loss. This action sparked the central plot of the Iliad, for Achilles became enraged and refused to fight for the Greeks any further.
The war went badly, and the Greeks offered handsome reparations to their greatest warrior; Achilles still refused to fight in person, but he agreed to allow his friend Patroclus to fight in his place, wearing his armour.
The next day Patroclus was killed and stripped of the armour by the Trojan hero Hector, who mistook him for Achilles.
Achilles was overwhelmed with grief for his friend and rage at Hector. His mother obtained magnificent new armour for him from Hephaestus, and he returned to the fighting and killed Hector.
He desecrated the body, dragging it behind his chariot before the walls of Troy, and refused to allow it to receive funeral rites.
When Priam, the king of Troy and Hector’s father, came secretly into the Greek camp to plead for the body, Achilles finally relented; in one of the most moving scenes of the Iliad, he received Priam graciously and allowed him to take the body away.
After the death of Hector, Achilles’ days were numbered. He continued fighting heroically, killing many of the Trojans and their allies, including Memnon and the Amazon warrior Penthesilia.
Finally Priam’s son Paris, aided by Apollo, wounded Achilles in the heel with an arrow; Achilles died of the wound.
After his death, it was decided to award Achilles’ divinely-wrought armour to the bravest of the Greeks.
These myths contribute to the greatness of Greek mythology and continue to warm hearts even today.
I am saying that I may be a murderer and criminal, but I have received the due punishment for my crimes.
Yes, you guessed it. I died along with the Labyrinth. I am sitting in the Isles of the Blest, writing this valuable piece of information and hoping that I can see Icarus and Perdix soon.
This is Daedalus signing off for now.
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