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Dedalos was the "genius" of Greek mythology; this mythic architect, sculptor, was considered the inventor of statues able to move their eyes and tools for carpenters, like the ruler, the drill, the hatchet.

He was native of Athens and here one of his pupils was his nepew Talos, brother of his sister; Dedalos, jealous of Talo's ability (he had also invented the lathe, the compasses and the saw) throw him down from the Acropolis of Athens.

To escape from the sentence of the Aeropagus, the tribunal of Athens, he left his town and found shelter in Crete, at the court of MINOSSES.
For him, Dedalos built the famous Labyrinth, but then, he gave advices to Arianna, (Minosses' daughter) to help THESEOS to kill the MINOTAUROS and escape from the labyrinth by means of the famous rope coil.

When the trick was discovered, Dedalos was jailed on his turn in the labyrinth, together with his son ICAROS.

From there, they reached to evade making for himself and his son two pairs of wings that he made adhere to their bodies by means of some wax.
He recommended to Icaros to not fly too high and close to the sun for not causing the melting of the wax and the destruction of the wings, but Icaros, taken by the enthusiasm of the flight, didn't follow his father advice and falled down, losing his life.

Dedalos had to continue his escape alone, getting successfully until CUMA, the ancient Greek town near the actual Neaples.
Here, he offered his wings to Apollo and then, reached Camicos, in Sicily, by the court of the King COCALOS.

But Minosses was looking for Dedalus and he also reached Camicos, but Cocalos reached in hiding Dedalus.
So, Minosses, not very convinced, started to walk around the province with a rope and a shell in his hand promising a rich reward to whoever were able to make pass the rope along all the spirals of the shell.

Tempted by the difficulty of this problem, Cocalos asked the solution to Dedalos who, obviously, easily found the solution:
he attached one extremity of the rope to an ant and placed it at the beginning of the shell spiral, so that the ant walked along all the spirals.

Happy and proud for this result, Cocalos explained the solution to Minosses, although not revealing who had found it, but Minosses equally realized that Dedalos was in the zone and he made confess Cocalos, asking him to deliver Dedalos in his hands.
Neverthless, Cocalos's daughters found, with the skillful Dedalos, an "amusing" trick to get rid of that dangerous guest; they caused his death in the bathroom by suddenly pouring over him a huge of boiling water.

Dedalos kept on working for Cocalos, building many palaces for him and conquering definitively his admiration and friendship and that of his contemporaries.

Dedalos' story could have a core of truth; the historic period would be that between 1800 and 1500 B.C., during the last prosperity centuries of Crete, when this was the ruling mariner power of the Mediterranean Sea, maybe, together with the mythical Shardana, or "Peoples of the Sea" (see my article to the topic: "Assessing the reality of Atlantis") before the fatal destructions for the Tsunami caused by Santhorini volcano explosion (about 1450 B.C.).

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