Fairies, witches, and magicians ride the wind in the legends and
folklore of all peoples. The Greeks had gods and goddesses many;
and one of these Greek art represents as moving earthward on
great spreading pinions. Victory came by the air. When Demetrius,
King of Macedonia, set up the Winged Victory of Samothrace to
commemorate the naval triumph of the Greeks over the ships of
Egypt, Greek art poetically foreshadowed the relation of the air
service to the fleet in our own day.
Man has always dreamed of flight; but when did men first actually
fly? We smile at the story of Daedalus, the Greek architect, and
his son, Icarus, who made themselves wings and flew from the
realm of their foes; and the tale of Simon, the magician, who
pestered the early Christian Church by exhibitions of flight into
the air amid smoke and flame in mockery of the ascension. But do
the many tales of sorcerers in the Middle Ages, who rose from the
ground with their cloaks apparently filled with wind, to awe the
rabble, suggest that they had deduced the principle of the
aerostat from watching the action of smoke as did the
Montgolfiers hundreds of years later? At all events one of these
alleged exhibitions about the year 800 inspired the good Bishop
Agobard of Lyons to write a book against superstition, in which
he proved conclusively that it was impossible for human beings to
rise through the air.
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