So runs the great story which links Minos and Crete with the favourite hero of Athens. But other legends, not so famous nor so romantic, carry on the story of the great Cretan King to a miserable close. Daedalus, his famous artificer, was also an Athenian, and the most cunning of all men. To him was ascribed the invention of the plumb-line and the auger, the wedge and the level; and it was he who first set masts in ships and bent sails upon them. But having slain, through jealousy, his nephew Perdix, who promised to excel him in skill, he was forced to flee from Athens, and so came to the Court of Minos. For the Cretan King he wrought many wonderful works, rearing for him the Labyrinth, and the Choros, or dancing-ground, which, as Homer tells us, he 'wrought in broad Knossos for fair-haired Ariadne.' But for his share in the great crime of Pasiphae Minos hated him, and shut him up in the Labyrinth which he himself had made. Then Daedalus made wings for himself and his son Icarus, and fastened them with wax, and together the two flew from their prison-house high above the pursuit of the King's warfleet. But Icarus flew too near the sun, and the wax that fastened his wings melted, and he fell into the sea. So Daedalus alone came safely to Sicily, and was there hospitably received by King Kokalos of Kamikos, for whom, as for Minos, he executed many marvellous works. Then Minos, still thirsting for revenge, sailed with his fleet for Kamikos, to demand the surrender of Daedalus; and Kokalos, affecting willingness to give up the fugitive, received Minos with seeming friendship, and ordered the bath to be prepared for his royal guest. But the three daughters of the Sicilian King, eager to protect Daedalus, drowned the Cretan in the bath, and so he perished miserably. And many of the men who had sailed with him remained in Sicily, and founded there a town which they named Minoa, in memory of their murdered King. [Illustration II: (1) THE RAMP, TROY, SECOND CITY (_p_. 38) (2) THE CIRCLE GRAVES, MYCENAE (_p_. 43)]