Statues that Walk

Daedalus is a legendary craftsman who is said to have built the Labyrinth for Minos and to have invented wings to fly.

The story in Palaephatus actually does reflect the history of Greek sculpture, however. Statues of young men, called kouroi (from the Greek word for a young man), evolved from a relatively stiff style to a more graceful one.

This statue, from about 530 BC, shows the Archaic pose.

Although this fragmentary kouros is a bit earlier (560-550 BC), its left leg is ahead of its right leg. Weight is still evenly distributed across the two legs, however, so the statue does not appear to move.

A rather crude bronze statuette, in Boston's MFA, shows a more typically classical pose. The statue was made around 440 BC, contemporary with Sophocles' Antigone.

By the Classical period, body positions were much freer. This "Narcissus" dates from about 400 BC, when Plato was young and Aristophanes was growing old.

This bronze satyr, in the MFA, is also from the last third of the fifth century.

Some literary references to Daedalus:

• Plato (Meno 97d) has Socrates allude to the legend that Daedalus's statues could walk.
• Euthyphro 11b-d and 15d are similar.
• Apollodorus 3.1.4 mentions Minos and the Labyrinth, with a bit more detail at 3.15.8
• The Epitome of Apollodorus E1.12-13 summarizes the story of Daedalus and Icarus. (The most familiar versions of this story, however, are in Ovid, Metamorphoses 8.183-259 and Ars Amatoria 2.21-98, in Latin.)
• Homer (Il. 18.590-592) compares the dancing floor on Achilles' shield to one built by Daedalos.