Icarus never flew - Alisa Efremova

Icarus (ɪkərəs) was the son of the Athenian craftsman Daedalus, the architect of the Labyrinth of Crete. Minos, King of Crete, son of Zeus and Europa, ordered Daedalus to build this labyrinth to imprison the Minotaur, a monster with the body of a man and the head of a bull, born to Queen Paisphaë of Crete. 

At the time, as part of punishment for losing the war to King Minos, Athens regularly sent groups of young men to Crete to be sacrificed to the Minotaur. The Athenian hero Theseus wanted to break this cycle, and succeeded by slaying the Minotaur and escaping the maze with the help of Princess Ariadne. King Minos held Daedalus responsible for Theseus’ escape, and imprisoned him with his son Icarus on the island of Crete. 

Determined to regain their freedom, Daedalus crafted two pairs of wings from feathers and wax, one for himself and one for his son Icarus. Before they took flight, he warned Icarus not to fly too close to the sun, where the heat would melt the wax and he would fall into the sea. 

But as they took off, Icarus became ambitious and gritty by the thrill of the flight. Ignoring his father’s warning, he rose higher and higher towards the sun. The heat melted the wax that held his wings together, and the feathers scattered into the wind. Icarus thought himself greater than Helios, the Sun himself, and the god punished him directly.