HUM / REL 493 - Continuation of Intermediate Latin
Course Notes - Week 10
The photo on page 198 is of a wall-painting from the triclinium in the House of the Priest Amandus, in Pompeii. The painting showed several episodes in the legend concurrently - Daudalus was in the center (only his wing-tips survive). Icarus is shown twice - top right, where he starts to fall near the chariot of the sun-god, and bottom center as a dead body at the edge of the sea.
The "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus" by Bruegel the Elder, ca. 1555, is in the Brussels Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Belgium. It is famous for showing that "life went on" for peasants and workmen, illustrating a German proverb of the time "No plough stops because a man dies". All that is seen of Icarus are his legs in the sea near the ship.
The mosaic illustrated on page 210 is in the Bardo Museum in Tunis, N. Africa.
Ovid's Metamorphoses is a collection of many stories, mostly involving transformations or changes in shape. The meter is dactylic hexameter.
The story of Daedalus and Icarus begins with Daedalus leaving his home in Athens to go to the island of Crete. In Athens he had been counted as the best craftsman of his time. However, he became so jealous of the growing skill of his sister's son Talus that he had killed him.
Daedalus and his son Icarus fled to the island of Crete, where they were employed by the king. The setting probably reflects the Bronze Age and the Minoan civilization on Crete as opposed to the Myceneans of mainland Greece.
The story was that the king's wife, Pasipahae, lusted after a bull, and bore a son who was half bull, half man - the Minotaur. Daedalus had helped the queen in her affair, and afterwards designed the Labyrinth where the Minotaur lived. As punishment, the king refused to let Daedalus and Icarus return home.
When they fled from Crete, Daedalus and Icarus planned to go East to Ionia (what is now western Turkey) rather than Athens - probably because Icarus was still on the "wanted" list in Athens.
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