daedalus and icarus story edith hamilton

Narcissus was a beautiful youth – so beautiful, in fact, that he fell in love with his own reflection, which he saw while gazing down at the surface of the water while drinking one day. He was ordered to carry out his famous ‘Twelve Labours’ as penance for the murder of his own wife and children, while he was in the service of the king Eurystheus.Ī few of them are quite famous – Heracles killing the Nemean lion, or stealing the golden apples of the Hesperides – but others, such as slaying the Stymphalian birds, are more obscure. Orpheus couldn’t resist one quick glance … and Eurydice was lost to him forever.īetter-known as Hercules (the Latin version of his Greek name), Heracles was the all-round action hero of Greek mythology. His wish was granted – but on the condition that he mustn’t look back at Eurydice as she followed him out of Hades, until they were both safely back in the land of the living. The lyrist Orpheus fell in love with the beautiful Eurydice, only for her to die shortly after Orpheus made the journey into Hades, the Underworld, to try to bring his beloved back. But as with the tale of Echo and Narcissus (see below), this is a doomed love story made more famous through Roman writers (Ovid, Virgil) than Greek originals. One of the great tragic love stories from Greek mythology, the tale of the musician Orpheus and his lover Eurydice features the Underworld. Famously, to look upon snake-haired Medusa (the snakes were her punishment for being vain and proud of her hair) was enough to turn the viewer to stone, so Perseus cunningly used a mirrored shield to approach Medusa in her cave so that he could cut her head off without looking directly at her.

Perseus’ defeat of Medusa, one of the Gorgons, is well-known.

Daedalus and icarus story edith hamilton