Landscape with the Fall of Icarus using feathers secured with bees wax. Ignoring his father's warnings, Icarus chose to fly too close to the sun, melting the wax, and fell into the sea and drowned. His legs can be seen in the water just below the ship. The sun, already half-set on the horizon, is a long way away; the flight did not reach anywhere near it. Daedalus does not appear in this version of the painting, though he does, still flying, in the van Buuren one (see below). The ploughman, shepherd and angler are mentioned in Ovid's account of the legend; they are: "astonished and
Golden mean (philosophy) flew up and up until the sun melted the wax off his wings. For not heeding the middle course, he fell into the sea and drowned. Another early elaboration is the Doric saying carved on the front of the temple at Delphi: ""Nothing in Excess"" ("Meden Agan"). The first work on the golden mean is sometimes attributed to Theano, wife of Pythagoras. To Cleobulus is attributed the maxim: "Mέτρον ἄριστον" "Moderation is best" Socrates teaches that a man must know "how to choose the mean and avoid the extremes on either side, as far as possible." In education, Socrates asks