Daedalus and Icarus is the second story in Book VII of the Metamorphoses. Leading into it is the story of Nisus and Scylla, the king and princess of Megara, a city on the Greek isthmus. The story begins with the city under siege by king Minos of Crete. Minos eventually succeeds with the help of Scylla, who falls in love with him mid-siege. However, he shares no feelings for her and leaves her in her defeated city. As he is leaving her harbor, Scylla yells insults at him about his wife, Pasiphae, who had committed adultery with a bull and given birth to a half-bull, half-human child. This makes Minos shift his thinking back to home because the Minotaur his wife gave birth to has been growing and now poses a threat to his kingdom. In an effort to conceal his secret, Minos hires Daedalus, an expert craftsman, to build an unnavigable labyrinth to house the Minotaur. Daedalus had already been exiled to Crete for killing his nephew who was more talented than he, and with the labyrinth now built, Minos also confines him to Crete lest he reveal the secrets of the labyrinth and Minotaur. This is the segue to my story, which begins with Daedalus trying to escape from Crete with his son, Icarus. At the end of Daedalus’ story, Ovid circles back to the end of the myth of the Minotaur, Theseus having already killed it and returned to Greece. His fame as a hero has spread wide now and another hero Meleager calls on him from afar to help kill the Calydonian Boar, thus beginning the next story. Without actually making it one of his stories, Ovid uses the well-known myth of the Minotaur as the structure for connecting his stories in this book. By utilizing a popular tale as the foundation, he makes it more compelling to read about supporting characters’ sides of the story.