[16] A mythical craftsman named Daedalus is first mentioned in roughly 1400 BC on the Knossian Linear B tablets.

He is later mentioned by Homer as the creator of a dancing floor for Ariadne, similar to that which Hephaestus placed on the Shield of Achilles.

[18] Daedalus is not mentioned again in literature until the fifth century BC, but he is widely praised as an inventor, artist, and architect, though classical sources disagree on which inventions exactly are attributable to him.

[20] Pausanias, in traveling around Greece, attributed to Daedalus numerous archaic wooden cult figures (see xoana) that impressed him.

[21] In his Socratic dialogue with Meno, Plato cites Daedalus's handiwork as a metaphor for genuine understanding of truth, as opposed to belief that coincidentally happens to be true.

Socrates argues that while truth, like one of Daedalus's "moving" statues, is inherently valuable, their animacy would mean they are worthless if the owner cannot shackle them in place to stop them from wandering off.

[23] In Boeotia there was a festival, the Daedala, in which a temporary wooden altar was fashioned and an effigy was made from an oak-tree and dressed in bridal attire.

As a result, Pasiphaë gave birth to the Minotaur, a creature with the body of a man, but the head and tail of a bull.

King Minos ordered the Minotaur to be imprisoned and guarded in the Labyrinth built by Daedalus for that purpose.

[33] In the story of the Labyrinth as told by the Hellenes, the Athenian hero Theseus is challenged to kill the Minotaur, finding his way back out with the help of Ariadne's thread.

[34] Ignoring Homer, later writers envisaged the Labyrinth as an edifice rather than a single dancing path to the center and out again, and gave it numerous winding passages and turns that opened into one another, seeming to have neither beginning nor end.

Ovid, in his Metamorphoses, suggests that Daedalus constructed the Labyrinth so cunningly that he himself could barely escape it after he built it.

[37]After Theseus and Ariadne eloped together,[38] Daedalus and his son Icarus were imprisoned by King Minos in the labyrinth that he had built.

[39] He could not leave Crete by sea, as King Minos kept a strict watch on all vessels, permitting none to sail without being carefully searched.

Since Minos controlled the land routes as well, Daedalus set to work to make wings for himself and his son Icarus.

[43] After burying Icarus, Daedalus traveled to Camicus in Sicily, where he stayed as a guest under the protection of King Cocalus.

In an invention of Virgil (Aeneid VI), Daedalus flies to Cumae and founds his temple there, rather than in Sicily.

One version of the story says he retired to the Cretan colony of Telmessos, ruled by Minos's estranged brother Sarpedon, and while wandering outside the city, he was bitten by a snake and died.