Anemoi – The Ancient Greek Wind Gods

 

 

 

The Anemoi, in Greek mythology, are the four chief and the four minor wind gods, each one corresponding to the direction from whence they came.

All are depicted as having large wings and all are male.

 

The Anemoi

The The Ancient Greek Wind Gods

 

The Four Chief Wind Gods

 

1. Boreas, god of the North wind and winter

2. Zephyrus, god of the West wind and Spring,

3. Notus, god of the South wind and summer

4.  Erus, god of the East wind and autumn.

 

The Four Minor Wind Gods

( The Anemoi Thuellai – the Tempest-Winds)

 

1. Kaikias, god of the Northeast wind

2. Apeliotes, god of the Southeast wind

3. Skiron, god of the Northwest wind

4. Lips or Livos, god of the Southwest wind

 

These wind gods were the sons of Eos, the dawn goddess and her husband, Astraeus, the god of dusk.

Apart from being the father of the wind gods, Astraeus was also considered to be the father of The five Astra Planeta (the Wandering Stars).

All the wind gods were ruled over by Aeolus, known as “The Keeper of the Winds”.

 

Aeolus

The Keeper of the Winds

 

 

 Aeolus is rather a confusing figure in Greek mythology as he appears as three different characters:

1. Aeolus, the son of Hippotes and keeper of the winds (Our Aeolus written about in this post)

2. Aeolus, the half-mortal son of Poseidon and Aeolus,

3. Aeolus, son of Hellen (Thought to mean Helen of Troy)

The Hellen of number three, is not even a woman but is Hellen, or Hellinas, son of Deucalion and Pyrrha, the first “Hellenes” of “Hellas”; the Greeks of Greece.

All we can really gather about Aeolus from Homer is that his father was Hippotes and that he had six daughters, whom he gave to his six sons as wives.

 Aeolus and his family lived happily on the idyllic island Aeolia, where, it is said, Aiolos kept the four minor wind gods, the Anemoi Thuellai( the Tempest-Winds), kept locked away inside a cave on his island.

Aeolus unleashed the Anemoi Thuellai, only on the say so of Zeus, when it was time to wreak devastation upon the world.

 

The Mythical Floating Island of Aeolia

The Kingdom of Aeolus

 

Aeolus, Keeper of the winds, ruled over the Kingdom of the mythical island of Aeolia.

Various writers, through the ages, have come to associate Aeolia with one or another of the Lipari Islands (also called the Aeolian Islands), north of eastern Sicily.

Strabo, Greek geographer, philosopher and historian (63 B.C. – 24 AD), thought that Strongyle (modern Stromboli), one of the Lipari Islands, was the Aeolus island, yet others were convinced it was the island of Lipara (modern Lipari).

 

 

Homer writes, in his epic work,” The Odyssey”, that:

“Aeolia was purely mythical, a floating island surrounded by “a wall of unbreakable bronze” where the “cliffs run up shear“.

Today, the Aeolian Islands, also known as the Lipari Islands, are a volcanic archipelago in the Tyrrhenian Sea north of Sicily.

They consist of seven significant islands: Lipari, Vulcano, Salina, Stromboli, Filicudi, Alicudi and Panarea plus a set of much smaller islands and rocks.

Could these islands be the legendary kingdom of Aeolus?

 

Boreas

God of the North Wind and Winter

 

 

 

 Boreas, whose name meant North Wind or Devouring One, (perhaps derived from the Greek verb boraô meaning “to devour”), was extremely strong and had a violent temper to match!

He was the bringer of snow and hail, the strongest and fastest of all winds, known for his capacity for great destruction.

 

Hyperborea

The Land of the North Wind

 

 

In most of the older myths, Boreas lived in a splendid white palace in caves on the mountains of Thrace, in northern Greece.

However, many ancient historians identify Hyperborea as being the home of Boreas, the North wind.

In Greek mythology, the Hyperboreans were a mythical people living in the far north of the known world; the land beyond Boreas.

There was some debate between ancient scholars on exactly where Hyperborea actually was but the main consensus was that it was to be found somewhere in the far north.

Homer placed Hyperboreans in Thrace, northern Greece, as did Sophocles and Aeschylus.

 

Notus

 God of the South Wind and Summer

 

 

Notos was god of the cooling south wind, a rain-bringer, whose job it was to bring rain-clouds, which would and refresh the earth and bring forth new life.

 On the other hand though, he was linked to hot, dry winds which appeared with the rise of The Dog Star Sirius after midsummer, which was thought to bring the storms of late summer and autumn; the destroyer of crops.

Known as “Notus the south wind; sultry and very wet”, it was a vigorous, stormy and dangerous wind, particularly to sailors, who feared him, especially when he blew together with the north wind.

Notus was said to live in a palace in Aithiopia; in ancient times the unmapped land found south of the Sahara desert.

It’s thought each of the Anemoi; the Greek wind gods, had their own palace at the furthest reaches of the earth.

However, as it often is with families, the four winds were frequently found together, at the home of their father, on the floating, mythical island of Aeolia.

 In contrast to his more renowned brothers, Notus is hardly mentioned in mythology, when he is, it’s mostly in conjugation with his brothers.

 

 Eurus

 God of the East Wind and Autumn

 

 

Eurus was god of the East wind, a turbulent wind which tossed ships about on the sea and as a wind of storms,  brought rain and tornadoes.

He was a competitor of his brothers Zephyros, the West Wind and Notos the South Wind, however, he was much kinder to people than his brothers.

Thought of as a as a melancholic and rainy wind, Eurus is usually shown as an old man with a rather sad face, long hair and an unkempt beard, wearing heavy clothes.

His symbol is water spilling from an upside down vase.

His Roman counterpart was Vulturnus, not to be confused with Volturnus, a tribal river-god who later became a Roman deity of the River Tiber.

 

 Zephyrus

 God of the West Wind and Spring

 

 

 Zephyrus was the gentle wind god of the west who brought the spring rains, so valuable for reawakening nature and the blooming of the lands; hence people called him the protector of the plants, because he brought them humidity.

Zephyrus, regarded as the gentlest of the four wind gods, was said to live in a cave in the area of Thrace, in Northern Greece.

He was described as a young man with a beautiful face and long wavy hair and carried within the cloak, which encircled his body, a mass of flowers and fruit.

 

The Minor winds

 Anemoi Thuellai – The Tempest-Winds

 

 

In addition to the four chief winds, were four lesser winds; the Anemoi Thuellai, the Tempest-Winds:

 

  1. Apeliotus – the south-east wind

 2. Lips or Livos – the south-west wind

 3. Sciron – the north-east wind

 4. Kaikias – the north-west wind

 

Legend has it that these four minor winds were  wicked and violent daemons, created by Typhon, a monstrous serpentine giant; one of the deadliest creatures in Greek mythology.

 

Apeliotes

God of the Southeast Wind

 

 

Apeliotes was the god of the Southeast wind, thought to bring refreshing rain, advantageous to farmers.

He is usually shown as a clean-shaven man with a friendly expression and curly hair, wearing gumboots and carrying fruit, draped with a transparent cloth which conceals either flowers or grain.

Apeliotes or Apheliotes means, in Greek, “from the rising sun”.

The Roman equivalent to Apeliotes was Apeliotus.

 

Lips or Livos

God of the Southwest Wind

 

 

 Lips or Livos was the god of the southwest wind.

He is usually depicted barefoot with the stern of a ship under his arm, which could either mean shipwrecks, or good sailing weather.

The Roman equivalent to Lips or Livos was Africus, thought to be derived from the name of a North African tribe, the Afri, owing to the Roman province Africa being southwest of Italy.

 

Skiron

God of the Northwest Wind

 

Skiron, or Skeiron, was the Greek god of the northwest wind.

His name is associated to Skirophorion, the last three months of spring in the Attic festival calendar.

 He is shown as a bearded man holding an upturned pot of hot ashes and charcoal, symbolizing either the coming of winter or maybe forest fires.

Skiron was the name used in Athens for the wind which blew from the Scironian rocks, near Kineta, to the west of Athens.

The Roman equivalent to Skiron or Skeiron was Sciron.

 

Kaikias

God of the Northeast Wind

 

 

Kaikias, whose name derives from the Greek kakía (κακία), meaning “badness” or “evil” was the god of the northeast wind, the bearer of snow, coldness and blizzards.

He is depicted as a bearded man holding a shield full of hail-stones.

The Roman equivalent to Kaikias was Caecius.

 

Tower of the Winds – Roman Agora – Athens

Named for the Eight Greek Wind Gods

 

 

The Tower of the Winds, an octagonal structure, also known as a horologion, meaning timepiece, may have been an astronomical clock, built to measure time, which showed a calendar and the movements of the major star groups.

 It stands in the Roman Agora, under the Acropolis, in Athens.

The Tower of the Winds is thought to have been designed by Andronicus Cyrrhestes an astronomer from Cyrrhus in Macedonia in about 50 BC at the latest, as it was mentioned  in De re rustica (“On Agriculture”) or Res rusticae (“Agriculture”) written in  about 37 BC by Marcus Terentius Varro (116 – 27 B.C.), who was regarded as ancient Rome’s greatest scholars.

The tower was originally topped by a bronze statue of a Triton, holding a rod which acted as a weather vane which, sadly, has completely disappeared.

It also housed a large water clock and incorporated sundials placed prominently on its exterior faces

Raised on three steps, the Tower of the Winds is 12 meters (39 ft) tall with a diameter of about 8 meters (26 ft).

 

Frieze Depicting the Eight Greek Wind Gods

 

 

All eight of the ancient Greek wind gods can be seen in relief form, decorating the top part of the octagonal, Tower of the Winds.

Each of its eight sides faces a point on the compass and features a frieze depicting reliefs of the eight wind gods and was probably originally painted, with each of their names carved above them.

The eight wind gods portrayed are the four chief wind gods; Boreas – god of the North wind, Notus – god of the South wind, Eurus – god of the East wind, Zephyrus – God of the west wind and the four minor winds, Kaikias – Northeast, Apeliotes – Southeast, Lips or Livos – Southwest and Skiron – Northwest.

 

The Wind Tower as a Qadirî Tekke

 

 

The Tower was converted into a Qadirî tekke, sometime between 1749 and 1751 and was used as a gathering place for the Qadirî dervish orders, who performed their religious rituals there until it was evacuated after the Greek revolt of 1821.

 

1762

The Tower of the Winds now is well and truly on the Map

 

 

The tower of the Winds became better known outside Greece after 1762, when a description and several engraved illustrations were published in London in the first volume of The Antiquities of Athens.

Originally published in four volumes that appeared between 1762 and 1816, James “Athenian” Stuart and Nicholas Revett’s monumental Antiquities of Athens was the first accurate assessment of ancient Greek architecture ever accomplished.

 Based on exact measured drawings, done in situ at the ancient ruins between 1751 and 1754, the books set a new standard for archaeological research in the eighteenth century.

They changed the understanding of Greek architecture, showed us the difference between Greek and Roman examples and fueled the Greek revival movement that had dominated British, European and American architecture and design for over a century.

 

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