More Daedalus details for plot and colour - including a description of the Labyrinth
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/searchresults.jsp?q=daedalus actually contains all the search results for the name "Daedalus" in classical texts. If you are looking to add interesting details to the plot, script or visuals, here's a place to find them. I love reading the original sources because there is so much more there for the imagination.
In the first hit (Apollodorus) you find this interesting tidbit about Icarus' mother - potentially a subplot: "Minos shut up the guilty Daedalus in the labyrinth, along with his son Icarus, who had been borne to Daedalus by Naucrate, a female slave of Minos."
The Iliad (Hom. Il. 18.590) has a great description of a dancing-floor like the one created by Daedalus...
There is also a poignant description of our 'wicked' Theseus saving the life of Daedalus, Ariadne falling in love with him, and a battle at the gate of the labyrinth in Plutarch (Plut. Thes. 19) - moreover, we discover that Minos had a general in his army named Taurus (= Bull) who was accused of intimacy with Pasiphae.... hmmm
Plutarch's biography of Theseus is here:
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text.jsp?doc=Perseus:text:1999.03.0078:text=Thes.:chapter=19&highlight=daedalusHere too are some of the conflicting accounts of the story that are so interesting for the stage.
"Dædalus was the first person who worked in wood; it was he who invented the saw, the axe, the plummet, the gimlet, [fish-]glue, and isinglass [transparent sheets of mineral mica]."
In Pliny's Natural History (Plin. Nat. 36.19) is his section on labyrinths, telling about the labyrinth Daedalus used for his model... I'm only quoting the first bit here but afterwards he goes on to describe the Egyptian labyrinth much more fully so that you get the impression he's describing a city carved out of a single block of marble.
"We must speak also of the Labyrinths, the most stupendous works, perhaps, on which mankind has expended its labours; and not for chimerical purposes, merely, as might possibly be supposed.
"There is still in Egypt, in the Nome of Heracleopolites, a labyrinth, which was the first constructed, three thousand six hundred years ago, they say, by King Petesuchis or Tithöes: although, according to Herodotus, the entire work was the production of no less than twelve kings, the last of whom was Psammetichus. As to the purpose for which it was built, there are various opinions: Demoteles says that it was the palace of King Moteris, and Lyceas that it was the tomb of Mœris, while many others assert that it was a building consecrated to the Sun, an opinion which mostly prevails.
"That Dædalus took this for the model of the Labyrinth which he constructed in Crete, there can be no doubt; though he only reproduced the hundredth part of it, that portion, namely, which encloses circuitous passages, windings, and inextricable galleries which lead to and fro. We must not, comparing this last to what we see delineated on our mosaic pavements, or to the mazes formed in the fields for the amusement of children, suppose it to be a narrow promenade along which we may walk for many miles together; but we must picture to ourselves a building filled with numerous doors, and galleries which continually mislead the visitor, bringing him back, after all his wanderings, to the spot from which he first set out. This Labyrinth is the second, that of Egypt being the first. There is a third in the Isle of Lemnos, and a fourth in Italy.
"They are all of them covered with arched roofs of polished stone…"
"There is still in Egypt, in the Nome of Heracleopolites, a labyrinth, which was the first constructed, three thousand six hundred years ago, they say, by King Petesuchis or Tithöes: although, according to Herodotus, the entire work was the production of no less than twelve kings, the last of whom was Psammetichus. As to the purpose for which it was built, there are various opinions: Demoteles says that it was the palace of King Moteris, and Lyceas that it was the tomb of Mœris, while many others assert that it was a building consecrated to the Sun, an opinion which mostly prevails.
"That Dædalus took this for the model of the Labyrinth which he constructed in Crete, there can be no doubt; though he only reproduced the hundredth part of it, that portion, namely, which encloses circuitous passages, windings, and inextricable galleries which lead to and fro. We must not, comparing this last to what we see delineated on our mosaic pavements, or to the mazes formed in the fields for the amusement of children, suppose it to be a narrow promenade along which we may walk for many miles together; but we must picture to ourselves a building filled with numerous doors, and galleries which continually mislead the visitor, bringing him back, after all his wanderings, to the spot from which he first set out. This Labyrinth is the second, that of Egypt being the first. There is a third in the Isle of Lemnos, and a fourth in Italy.
"They are all of them covered with arched roofs of polished stone…"
You can read the rest here: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text.jsp?doc=Perseus:text:1999.02.0137:book=36:chapter=19&highlight=
