2/20/2024 0 Comments Icarus and apollo storyWe describe a challenging undertaking as a Herculean task, and speak of somebody who enjoys great success as having the Midas touch. So we describe somebody’s weakness as their Achilles heel, or we talk about the dangers of opening up Pandora’s box. The Greek myths are over two thousand years old – and perhaps, in their earliest forms, much older – and yet many stories from Greek mythology, and phrases derived from those stories, are part of our everyday speech. What this all means is that Narcissus’ greatest flaw was not really narcissism at all, but self-absorption – that is, being preoccupied with oneself or one’s own business to the exclusion of other people. Instead, Narcissus’ crime was his indifference to others rather than his love of his own beauty, which only came later, and then only because Nemesis tricked him into seeing his own reflection. If we apply the concept of hamartia to Narcissus, then self-love was definitely not his flaw, because his crimes – the ones which made Nemesis decide to punish him – preceded his own knowledge of how beautiful he was. The ancient Greeks talked of hamartia: the tragic flaw, if you will, that was the chink in a hero’s armour, the detail that would lead to his downfall. Note that this is not the same as saying that self-love in and of itself was his downfall. ![]() What’s the moral of the story of Narcissus? It’s summed up succinctly in the wonderfully informative The Wordsworth Dictionary of Mythology (Wordsworth Reference) : Narcissus died because he was unwilling to give himself to others. The editors point out that ‘Echo’ was used in ancient Greek literature long before the nymph of the Echo and Narcissus story came along – so, Echo was named after echoes rather than vice versa. Regarding the origins of Echo’s name, the Oxford English Dictionary tells us that the termination -ώ (found at the end of ‘Echo’ in the original Greek, ἠχώ) was common in Greek female names. Distraught at seeing her beloved destroyed like this, Echo pined away until, eventually, only her voice remained. He also warned the young boy not to fly too high as the warmth from the sun would melt the wax that held the feathers and cause him to fall to earth.Echo loved Narcissus, but she obviously found it hard to tell Narcissus how she felt about him, because she had already been cursed so that she could only repeat what others said, rather than speak for herself.Īccording to Ovid, after she was shunned by Narcissus she witnessed his demise after he saw his own reflection: in Ovid’s version, Narcissus fades away rather than drowns. Before they did so, Daedalus warned his son not to fly too low to the sea, as the mist would dampen his wings and cause him to fall. The story of Icarus originated in Greek antiquity, but its best-known written version comes from the Roman poet Ovid’s Metamorphoses (about 8 CE). When the wings were complete the father and son prepared to jump from the tower and fly to freedom. ![]() He then constructed wings for his son Icarus, who had been cast away in the tower as well. He constructed a set of wings that could be worn by a man by using candlewax and thread to hold the feathers in place. We’ll go thro’ air for sure the air is free.”ĭaedalus collected the feathers of the numerous birds that roosted in his tower prison. ![]() The original Roman poem describes this inspiration when Daedalus states: “Tho’ Earth and water in subjection laid, So the inventor decided that if he could not escape by sea, then he would escape the island of Crete by riding on the winds. ![]() All the ships leaving the island were carefully monitored by King Minos, who was determined to not let Daedalus escape. Daedalus and his son, Icarus, spent their days locked up in a tower, unable to escape by land or sea.
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