In this is assumed the bald story, from which might grow the legend of a
wise king who ruled a peaceful people--'judged, sitting in the sun,' as
Browning has it, and fashioned for himself wings with which he flew over
the sea and where he would, until the prince, Icarus, desired to emulate
him. Icarus, fastening the wings to his shoulders with wax, was so
imprudent as to fly too near the sun, when the wax melted and he fell,
to lie mourned of water-nymphs on the shores of waters thenceforth
Icarian. Between what we have assumed to be the base of fact, and the
legend which has been invested with such poetic grace in Greek story,
there is no more than a century or so of re-telling might give to any
event among a people so simple and yet so given to imagery.

We may set aside as pure fable the stories of the winged horse of
Perseus, and the flights of Hermes as messenger of the gods. With them
may be placed the story of Empedocles, who failed to take Etna seriously
enough, and found himself caught by an eruption while within the crater,
so that, flying to safety in some hurry, he left behind but one sandal
to attest that he had sought refuge in space--in all probability, if
he escaped at all, he flew, but not in the sense that the aeronaut
understands it. But, bearing in mind the many men who tried to fly
in historic times, the legend of Icarus and Daedalus, in spite of the
impossible form in which it is presented, may rank with the story of the
Saracen of Constantinople, or with that of Simon the Magician. A simple
folk would naturally idealise the man and magnify his exploit, as they
magnified the deeds of some strong man to make the legends of Hercules,
and there, full-grown from a mere legend, is the first record of a
pioneer of flying. Such a theory is not nearly so fantastic as that
which makes the Capnobates, on the strength of their name, the inventors
of hot-air balloons. However it may be, both in story and in picture,
Icarus and his less conspicuous father have inspired the Caucasian mind,
and the world is the richer for them.

Of the unsupported myths--unsupported, that is, by even a shadow of
probability--there is no end. Although Latin legend approaches nearer
to fact than the Greek in some cases, in others it shows a disregard
for possibilities which renders it of far less account. Thus Diodorus of
Sicily relates that one Abaris travelled round the world on an arrow of
gold, and Cassiodorus and Glycas and th