But because Icarus was governed by youth and audacity, and sought not the attainable but let his minde carry him into the zenith, he came short of truth and defected from reason and was precipitated into a sea of unfathomable perplexities. But the Greeks tell an idle myth of him and loosely call a golfe of their sea Icarian after his name.
Doubtless Pasiphae also, hearing from Daedalus
of the Bull that appeareth amongst the constellations
and of Astrology itself, fell in love with the doctrine ;
The reader will not fail to note how neatly this explanation of the Pasiphae myth puts a colophon upon Lucian’s masterly treatment of the flight-legends, which is entirely his own.