The Anemoi

The family of the winds

The Anemoi are the winds of Greek myth, each one pictured as a person. The early Greek poet Hesiod gives the main helpful winds a family. They are the children of Eos, the goddess of dawn, and Astraeus, the god of dusk. Dawn and dusk produce Zephyrus, Boreas and Notus, along with the Morning Star and the other stars. This family tree sets the regular winds inside the daily order of the sky.

Other gusts have a different origin. After Zeus defeats the monster Typhoeus, Hesiod says, destructive winds come from it. They blow to no good purpose. They scatter ships, ruin fields and die out without names. Hesiod expressly keeps Notus, Boreas and Zephyrus out of this brood.

Both groups can be violent. Boreas can wreck a fleet, and Notus can bring heavy rain. What sets the named winds apart is that they have a direction, family ties and a place in the order of the gods. The harmful gusts are disorder with no fixed identity.

Two winds come to a funeral fire

In the Iliad, Homer’s epic poem about the war at Troy, the hero Achilles holds a funeral for his friend Patroclus. The pyre, the pile of wood on which the body will burn, will not catch fire. Achilles steps away and pours libations, offerings of drink, to Boreas and Zephyrus. He prays to both winds and promises them offerings if they come and fan the flames. Iris, the messenger of the gods, hears him. She runs to the house of Zephyrus, where the winds are feasting together.

They rise at her message. Clouds scatter before them, waves swell beneath them, and the pyre roars when they reach Troy. Boreas and Zephyrus blow all night, while Achilles pours wine on the earth and calls to Patroclus.

The scene treats the winds as more than weather. They keep a house, hold a feast, hear a messenger of the gods and answer a mortal’s prayer. Yet their physical effect is exact: moving air feeds the fire. Person and weather act together.

Aeolus, keeper of the winds

The Odyssey, Homer’s poem about the voyage home of Odysseus, adds Aeolus. Zeus has made Aeolus keeper of the winds, and he can calm or release each one. Odysseus visits Aeolus on his floating island. When he leaves, Aeolus ties up the winds that would blow against him inside a bag made of ox hide. He lets only Zephyrus blow, to carry the ships towards Ithaca, the home of Odysseus.

The companions of Odysseus think the bag holds treasure. They open it while their captain sleeps. All the winds rush out, raise a storm and drive the fleet back to Aeolus, who refuses to help a second time.

In this episode Aeolus controls the winds, but he is not one of them. The Anemoi are the powers moving inside the bag. Their keeper controls where they blow only while the knot holds.

Eight winds carved in Athens

The Horologion of Andronikos stands near the Roman Agora, an old market square on the northern slope of the Acropolis in Athens. It dates to the late Hellenistic period, possibly the end of the second century BC. The building has eight sides, rises almost 14 metres and is made mainly of Pentelic marble.

Around the frieze, the carved band near the top, eight winds appear as figures in relief: Boreas to the north, Kaikias to the north-east, Apiliotis to the east, Euros to the south-east, Notos to the south, Livas to the south-west, Zephyrus to the west and Skiron to the north-west. Each carries symbols of the weather linked with its direction.

Below them, lines cut into the stone formed eight sundials. A bronze Triton, a sea figure, probably turned on the roof as a weather vane. Inside, water pressure drove a mechanism that has been read as a clock or as a device that showed the planets. The tower used wind, sunlight and water to measure time and direction.

One diagram, many wind lists

The Roman architect Vitruvius also divides a circle into eight main winds, when he explains how streets should be laid out to avoid their full force. His Latin names do not match every Greek figure on the frieze in Athens. That is a warning against treating every ancient list of winds as one fixed family.

The Horologion sets out no final family tree of the winds. It gives moving air a fixed diagram. Each wind has a face on one side of the eight-sided tower, while the instruments below turn direction into information that people in the city could read.