He stands with his arms outstretched, and his palms are both open. The figurine is shown naked apart from four bracelets, one at the top of each arm just below the shoulder, and one on each wrist. The photograph shows a bronze figurine of a man, displayed against a black background. Aphrodite punished Helios for his exposure of her affair with Ares by decreeing that the female descendants of the sun would select and pursue inappropriate and disastrous partners. These strange sexual couplings (or attempts at them – Phaedra is scorned and takes her revenge) stem from a curse on the descendants of the sun god, Helios. Another connected myth is that of the Cretan princess Phaedra, who later married Theseus (even though he had abandoned her sister, Ariadne, his guide through the Labyrinth), and developed a destructive and tragic passion for her stepson Hippolytus. The Cretan labyrinth also featured in the exploits of the Athenian hero, Theseus, who slew the Minotaur, the half-man, half-bull offspring of queen Pasiphaë, with the help of Ariadne, daughter of King Minos. Daedalus was himself effectively imprisoned on the island (the king barred his exit by sea) and so was unable to return with his son, Icarus, to Athens or find sanctuary away from the harsh regime at Crete. Icarus’ story connects up with a number of narrative passageways centred on the island of Crete (where Daedalus, the legendary artificer and craftsman, constructed a maze, the Labyrinth, to conceal and control the Minotaur). Icarus has become the more familiar of the two characters as the ancient high-flyer who fell from the sky when the wax that secured his wings was melted by the sun. The myth of Daedalus and Icarus, the father and son who escaped from the island of Crete on wings, is told in Book 8 of Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
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