Icarus is a mythological figure rooted in Ancient Greece. He lived during the reign
of King Minos of Crete. His father Daedalus was a brilliant inventor
and Minos, a corrupt ruler, forced him to design and build a labyrinth
to house his Minotaur—a bloodthirsty beast that had a body of a bull and the head of a man.
Every nine years Minos would sacrifice fourteen Greek youths, seven young noblemen
and seven maidens, to the Minotaur. This was a tribute Minos demanded from the Athenians
as payment to avenge his eldest son's death who was slain at their hands.
The fourteen youths were coerced into a contest to hunt and slay the creature within its
labyrinth lair. No one who entered the labyrinth ever returned.

Theseus, son of Aegeus and Aethra stepped forward, determined to kill the Minotaur and thus
end the slaughter of innocent youths. He was in love with Minos' daughter Ariadne.
Daedalus decided to help Ariadne and gave her a ball of thread that she gave
to Theseus in secret in order that he may find his way out from the labyrinth. Theseus was
victorious, the Minotaur was slain, and he returned to the arms of his love, Ariadne.

Minos was enraged when he discovered that Daedalus had given aid to Theseus
and imprisoned he and his son Icarus within the labyrinth. In order to prevent
their escape by sea, Minos sealed off the Cretan coastline with
his Royal fleet. Once free from the labyrinth, Daedalus devised a clever means of escape from
the island. He fashioned wings for himself and his son, creating them from a wooden
framework and attached feathers to the ribbed structure with beeswax.

In his final warnings to his son before they fled Crete he cautioned Icarus not too fly too low
or the mist from the sea would weigh down his wings, or too high
for the Sun would melt the wax that held his wings together.

Airborne and spellbound by his newfound freedom, Icarus abandoned his father's warnings
and flew higher still, enamoured by the radiance of the Sun. He flew too high,
the Sun melted the wax in his wings and he plunged to his death into the Aegean Sea
off the southern shore of an island North-East of Naxos.

The island was renamed Ikaría in his memory and the sea surrounding the island
has since been known as the Sea of Icarus.