Venti

The Greeks gave the winds faces and genealogies. Boreas was the cold north wind, bearded and violent, who swept down from Thrace carrying ice. Notus was the warm south wind that brought storms and fog from Libya. Eurus blew from the east with autumn rain. Zephyrus carried the gentle west wind of spring, the mildest of the four.

Aeolus kept them penned on his floating island, releasing each as Zeus or the seasons required. They were not metaphors. They were gods — Astraeus and Eos were their parents, making the winds children of the stars and the dawn. They had temples, received sacrifices, and were invoked by name before sea voyages.

Boreas was the most storied. He abducted Oreithyia, an Athenian princess, and carried her to Thrace, where she bore him winged sons — Calais and Zetes, who later sailed with the Argonauts. Athens honoured Boreas as a patron after attributing the destruction of the Persian fleet at Artemisium to his intervention. A cold-blooded ally, but an effective one.

Zephyrus was involved in tragedy. Jealous of Apollo's love for the youth Hyacinthus, Zephyrus blew a discus off course, striking and killing the boy. From Hyacinthus's blood grew the hyacinth flower.

The Tower of the Winds in Athens, built around 50 BC, depicted all eight winds (the four cardinal plus four intercardinal) as relief sculptures. It served as a combination sundial, water clock, and weather vane — a building designed to read the mood of gods who were also meteorological phenomena.