The Greek myth of Icarus goes as follows. In ancient Greece, there was a brilliant inventor named Daedalus. This man had a son named Icarus. They both lived on the island of Crete, which was ruled by a tyrant named King Minos. Wanting to escape from the island with his son to avoid King Mino’s wrath, Daedalus invented wings to fly across the sea with. As the only means of escape, Daedalus warned his son to neither fly too high to the sun and too low to the sea. As the two made their escape, Icarus had forgotten his father’s warning. He enjoyed the feeling of flying too much and soared higher and higher towards the sun. Eventually, he came too close to the sun and his wings melted. He plummeted towards the earth, where he fell to the sea and drowned. Stricken with grief at the loss of his son, Daedalus built a temple to the god Apollo and offered the wings he made as a tribute.

In the historical context of this story, I believe that the message of the story was that over ambition eventually leads to the disobedience towards the gods. While Daedalus was a genius, his invention invaded a domain that belonged solely to the gods. In Greek mythology, only the Gods were allowed to fly. I believe it was also a lesson in humility. The warning Daedalus gave Icarus about flying too high could be analogous with knowing your limits or not wanting too much. However, in a painting done by Bruegel on the subject of Icarus, he paints the whole ordeal rather as insignificant. A religious man that lived in the 16th century, Bruegel’s painting downplays the Greek gods in that they are only myths and that the punishment Icarus receives was neither important nor divine. I think this illustrates that while myths may just be fantasy stories to amuse ourselves with, at one point they were someone else’s religion. It’s not a stretch of the imagination to think that no religion is immune from this.

“According to Brueghel, when Icarus fell, it was spring. A farmer was ploughing his field. The whole pageantry of the year was awake, tingling near the edge of the sea, concerned with itself, sweating in the sun, that melted the wings' wax. Unsignificantly, off the coast, there was a splash, quite unnoticed. This was Icarus drowning.” – Poem by William Carlos Williams (1960)