Names of the four winds
Dan Grili
Greek mythology; I think the north was Borealis but I'm not sure, and I've
no idea about the others - cheers for any help
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Notos - South
Zephyros - West
Euros - East
Matthew Montchalin
|I was just wondering if anyone could tell me the names of the four winds in
|Greek mythology; I think the north was Borealis but I'm not sure, and I've
|no idea about the others - cheers for any help
Hm... Grek.. Well, as for Latin, didn't Vitruvius have a thing or two
to say about the evils of the winds? I bet he must have named a few of
them...
Catiline
the four cardinal points of the magnetic compass. The ancients spoke
instead of their commonest winds, which came from various odd directions
with various odd associated weather and had various names, some used
synonymously. Thus
Africus - a southwest wind
Aquilo - a wet north-northeast wind
Auster - a dry south wind
Boreas - a cold north wind
Euroaquilo - a northeast wind
Eurus - a southeast wind, but poetically an east wind
Euronotus - a south-southeast wind
Fauonius - a springtime west wind
Notus - a stormy south wind
Uulturnus - a southeast wind
Zephyrus - a gentle west wind
Ancient sources are Vergil and Pliny the Elder.
Dennis M. McHenry II
He calls these Euros (East), Notos (South), Zephuros (West) and Boreês
(North).
Aristotle, in his Poetics, refers to these same "four winds" only, saying
that some believe the West to be a kind of North and the East a kind of
South.
The equivalent forms in Catiline's list are apparently borrowings from Greek
into Latin (notice that the nominative ending changes from 'os' to 'us'.)
The Greek 'Notos' is equivalent to the Latin 'Auster'. Greek 'Zephuros' is
equivalent to Latin 'Favonius'. Greek 'Boreas' (Boreês in Homer), is
equivalent to Latin 'Aquilo'. 'Euros' and Eurus are identical.
That leaves us with Africus, Euroaquilo, Euronotus, and Uulturnis.
Africus describes a southwest wind as 'African', the same way people in the
US might refer to 'Canadian winds' when cold air moves in from the north.
Euroaquilo is obviously a derivation of Eurus + Aquilo, or East + North.
Euronotus is a similar combination of Eurus + Notus, or East + South. And
finally, Vulturnis describes a southeast wind which I suppose is so named
because it either crossed over or was thought to originate in the River
Vulturnis, in Campania (southeast of Rome.)
All this is said to say that for the Greeks, at least, there were "four
winds". I'd venture to guess that these worked their way into Latin through
the influence of Greek literature, especially Homer.
Just a guess.
-dennis
Catiline <tan...@ipa.net> wrote in message news:38BE80E2...@ipa.net...
Catiline
certain about "four" winds. Thanks for setting me straight.
Catiline
Lips (lambda iota psi) is a southwest wind; Lewis and Short equate it to
Africus.
Etesiai (epsilon tau eta sigma alpha iota) are the northwest trade
winds.
Kaikias (kappa alpha iota kappa iota sigma) is the east-northeast wind.
Ap[h]eliotes (alpha pi/phi eta lambda iota omega tau eta sigma) is an
east wind.
Aparktias (alpha pi alpha rho kappa tau iota alpha sigma) is a north
wind.
Meses (mu epsilon sigma eta sigma) is a north-northeast wind.
Thraskias (theta rho alpha sigma kappa iota alpha sigma) is a
north-by-north-northwest wind.
Phoinikias (phi omicron iota nu iota kappa iota alpha sigma) is a
south-southeast wind.
Skiron (sigma kappa iota rho omega nu) is a northwest wind in Athens.
Olympias (omicron lambda upsilon mu pi iota alpha sigma) is a northwest
wind on Euboea.
Hellespontias is a synonym for kaikias.
Argestes (alpha rho gamma epsilon sigma tau eta sigma) means "clearing"
but can be a synonym for Zephyros.
Also in Latin:
Corus is a northwest wind.
Altanus is a southwest wind, according to Lewis and Short; Pliny (N.H.
II xliv) says that it is simply an offshore breeze, the opposite of a
tropaios (tau rho omicron pi alpha iota omicron sigma) which is an
onshore breeze [for those who do not live near large bodies of water,
the daytime wind blows off the water onto land during the day -- an
onshore breeze in English -- and in the opposite direction at night --
an offshore breeze].
Libonutus is a south-southwest wind.
Septentriones can be used to refer to a north wind, but it properly
refers to the constellation Ursa Minor.
Pliny (XVIII lxxvii) equates Euros with Uulturnus.
kai ta loipa ...
Dennis M. McHenry II
> Yeah, well, the instant I sent that post I began to regret being so
> certain about "four" winds. Thanks for setting me straight.
I'm not in a position to set anyone straight. I have a tendency to sound
like an arrogant know-it-all on NewsGroups, so let me take this opportunity
to apologize before it happens again, as I don't really know anything at
all. I cut my teeth on band mailing lists in high school, so I've acquired
some bad habits.
Best,
-dennis
Robert Stonehouse
>The notion of "four winds" is not classical, and is of course based on
>the four cardinal points of the magnetic compass.
Not magnetic: they used celestial navigation, though it was rather
primitive in the early days. Eudoxus, for example, thought there was
a fixed Pole Star; Hipparchus refutes him, giving the credit for the
original discovery to Pytheas of Massalia. (We have one now, because
the Pole has moved.)
>The ancients spoke
>instead of their commonest winds, which came from various odd directions
>with various odd associated weather and had various names, some used
>synonymously.
This is the way sailing directions were expressed, for voyages out
of sight of land. Agathemeros 'From Paphos to Alexandria five
hundred stadia with Boreas', Strabo 'From Chios to Lesbos 200 stadia
with Notus', 'From Cyrene to Criumelopon (the south-west headland of
Crete) 2000 stadia with Leuconotus', Pliny 'From Carpathus to Rhodes
50 miles with Africus'.
That is, if you were in Carpathus and wanted to sail to Rhodes, you
had to wait for Africus to blow and then you sailed 50 miles. For
practical purposes this would be far simpler than a compass
direction. The number of winds available must have made it fairly
accurate too.
The measurement in stadia or miles seems to be a development from an
original 'day's sailing', which Herodotus uses to measure the Black
Sea. Presumably at one time a day's sail was a day's sail, but later
there were faster and slower ships so that a distance was more
useful.
All this from E.G.R. Taylor, The Haven-finding Art. (No - the ships
of different speed are my speculation.)
ew...@bcs.org.uk
George Baloglou
>Also in Greek:
>
>Lips (lambda iota psi) is a southwest wind; Lewis and Short equate it to
>Africus.
This is the only one on your list that survives in modern Greek, and
rather continuously so since ancient times: indeed "livas" (a direct
evolution from "lips", of course) is found both in Emmanuil Kriaras'
Dictionary of Demotic Medieval Greek and in Skarlatos Byzantios' 1835
"Lexikon of our Greek Dialect" ("Lexikon tis kath' imas Ellinikis
Dialektou").
>[rest deleted with thanks]]
George Baloglou -- http://www.oswego.edu/~baloglou
Michel pointed out that the talks were sponsored by NATO and asked him
if he knew what NATO was. No, Grothendieck replied. Michel explained it
to him and recalls Grothendieck saying, "They never told me!"
[In "Grothendieck: The Genie of the Bois-Marie", AMS Notices, 3/99, p. 332]
Dan Grili
Ta
Dan Grili
--
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"Dan Grili" <spamdaniel....@magd.ox.ac.uk> wrote in message
news:89j7m2$qn0$1...@news.ox.ac.uk...
> I was just wondering if anyone could tell me the names of the four winds
in
> Greek mythology; I think the north was Borealis but I'm not sure, and I've
> no idea about the others - cheers for any help
>