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I heard a myth when I was a child and I think it was about how a father had a prophecy that his son would die. He took it seriously and attempted to protect his son but in doing so his son died. Sort of like you cannot escape fate kind of direction. Does anyone know if this is an actual myth and what the people involved were?

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The most famous myth corresponding with your query would be the tale of Daedalus & Ikarus.

In the period of Romanticism, Daedalus came to denote the classic artist, a skilled mature craftsman, while Icarus symbolized the romantic artist, whose impetuous, passionate and rebellious nature, as well as his defiance of formal aesthetic and social conventions, may ultimately prove to be self-destructive.

Stephen Dedalus, in Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man envisages his future artist-self "a winged form flying above the waves ... a hawk-like man flying sunward above the sea, a prophecy of the end he had been born to serve”.

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    The only thing missing here is the prophecy part, maybe it came from a little mix-up with the myth of oedipus? I know that as a kid I woud mix up stories quite a bit
    – Calaom
    Mar 20, 2020 at 9:46
  • Yes it is similar but I thought maybe I was mixing things up. In the one I “remembered” the son was kept in a large property up a hill?
    – Owensteam
    Mar 31, 2020 at 13:52
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Zeus and Sarpedon (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarpedon_(Trojan_War_hero)), note that Zeus is the highest deity in the Greek pantheon. For the reasons of his inability to save Sarpedon cf.

To the Moirai (Moirae, Fates) the might of Zeus must bow; and by the Immortals' purpose all these things had come to pass, or by the Moirai's ordinance.

source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moirai

The Moirai and the Horae are children of Zeus and Themis. Themis symbolizes a universal balance and order that can never be broken, not even by Zeus :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Themis

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Perhaps you're thinking of the opposite of "a father had a prophecy that his son would die", in which case it is the story of Oedipus.

  • An oracle tells the king that his new son Oedipus will one day kill him.
  • To prevent this, he sends his son to be adopted by a king in a different country.
  • Years later, an oracle tells grown-up Oedipus that he will eventually kill his father.
  • To prevent this, not realizing that he was adopted, Oedipus flees to another country to be far away from the person he thinks is his father.
  • You can guess which country he goes to and what happens after he gets there.

In both cases, the person's actions end up causing what they are trying to avoid, a situation that effectively defines Greek Tragedy.

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