Daedalus Icarus' wings, Daedalus is portrayed assisting in the creation of something that has subsequent negative consequences, in this case with his creation of the monstrous Minotaur's almost impenetrable Labyrinth, which made slaying the beast an endeavour of legendary difficulty. The most familiar literary telling explaining Daedalus' wings is a late one, that of Ovid: in his "Metamorphoses" (VIII:183–235) Daedalus was shut up in a tower to prevent the knowledge of his Labyrinth from spreading to the public. He could not leave Crete by sea, as the king kept a strict watch on all vessels, permitting none to sail without being
Labyrinth all the temples of Egypt, the so-called Labyrinth, of which, however, only the foundation stones have been preserved." Herodotus' description of the Egyptian Labyrinth inspired some central scenes in Bolesław Prus' 1895 historical novel, "Pharaoh". Pliny the Elder's "Natural History" (36.90) lists the legendary Smilis, reputed to be a contemporary of Daedalus, together with the historical mid-sixth-century BC architects and sculptors Rhoikos and Theodoros as two of the makers of the Lemnian labyrinth, which Andrew Stewart regards as "evidently a misunderstanding of the Samian temple's location "en limnais" ['in the marsh']." According to Pliny, the tomb of the great Etruscan