Daedalls, a mythical personage, generally represented as an Athenian of the royal house of Erechtheus, though, from his long sojourn in Crete, he is also called a Cretan. Having become a great sculptor, he instructed in his art Calos, Talus, or Perdix, his sister's son, but afterward killed him through envy when he saw the skill of his disciple surpassing his own. Condemned to death by the areopagus, he fled to Crete, where he gained the friendship of Minos; but having constructed the wooden cow for Pasiphae, and the labyrinth of Cnossus, in which was kept the Minotaur, the monster to which she gave birth, he was imprisoned. Released by Pasiphae, and finding no vessel to escape from the island, as Minos had seized all on the coast, he contrived wings for himself and his son Icarus, which were fastened on with wax. He took his flight over the AEgean, and arrived safely in Sicily; but Icarus flew too near the sun, the wax melted, and he dropped and perished in that part of the sea which is hence called the Icarian. According to some writers, Daedalus alighted at Cumse in Italy, where he erected a temple to Apollo, dedicating to that divinity the wings which had saved him.

When Minos learned his place of refuge, he sailed with a fleet to Sicily, where he was treacherously murdered by Cocalus, king of the Sicani, who protected the fugitive. According toothers, Dfedalus was protected by the daughters of that king. Several works of art in Greece, Italy, Libya, and the Grecian islands were attributed to him, as well as the invention of several tools belonging to his art. The Greeks gave the name of dadala to certain ornamented wooden images of their gods.