The legent of Daidalus

Daedalus is a figure from Greek mythology famous for his clever inventions and as the architect of the Minotaur’s labyrinth on Crete. He is also the father of Icarus who flew too close to the sun on his artificial wings and so drowned in the Mediterranean. By the Roman period, Daedalus had acquired a long string of accomplishments and he came to represent, in general, the supreme master craftsman. The myths of Daedalus appear in the works of such noted writers as Homer, Herodotus, Ovid, and Virgil.

Daedalus and Icarus

Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle

But such a life would be too high for man; for it is not in so far as he is man that he will live so, but in so far as something divine is present in him; and by so much as this is superior to our composite nature is its activity superior to that which is the exercise of the other kind of virtue. If reason is divine, then, in comparison with man, the life according to it is divine in comparison with human life. But we must not follow those who advise us, being men, to think of human things, and, being mortal, of mortal things, but must, so far as we can, make ourselves immortal, and strain every nerve to live in accordance with the best thing in us; for even if it be small in bulk, much more does it in power and worth surpass everything. This would seem, too, to be each man himself,since it is the authoritative and better part of him. It would be strange, then, if he were to choose not the life of his self but that of something else. And what we said before' will apply now; that which is proper to each thing is by nature best and most pleasant for each thing; for man, therefore, the life according to reason is best and pleasantest, since reason more than anything else is man. This life therefore is also the happiest. 

Book X

Plato-Phaedo Socrates True earth

The true earth, viewed from above, is a sight to behold. It is marked by bright colors, some different from any colors we know. The plants are also pure and beautiful, and the mountains are smooth and made entirely out of rubies, emeralds, and other precious stones, as well as stones more precious than any of which we know.

Socrates, the earth from above 

Great Alexander diving bell

Alexander the Great's diving bell. 15th-century manuscript illustration of the 4th-century BC ruler Alexander the Great (356 BC-323 BC) being lowered into the sea in a glass barrel, an early form of diving bell. Alexander, from Macedon, become emperor of most of the known world. He was a student of the Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle who mentions diving bells, and Alexander is said to have used them in the siege of Tyre in 332 BC. Such stories were re-told in the Middle Ages in a tradition called the Alexander romances. This illustration is from a French translation known as the Shrewsbury Talbot Book of Romances, produced in Rouen prior to 1445.

Time line underwater exploration