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44-625: Zephyrus, similarly to his brothers, also received a minor cult during ancient times, although his worship was fairly minor compared to others and he was overshadowed by the more important gods such as the Twelve Olympians . Nevertheless, traces of it are found in Classical Athens and surrounding regions and city-states, where it was usually joint with the cults of the other wind gods. His equivalent in Roman mythology and religion

88-422: A beautiful Spartan prince named Hyacinthus , who nevertheless rejected him and became the lover of another god, Apollo . One day that the prince and Apollo were playing a game of discus, Zephyrus deflected the course of Apollo's discus, redirecting it right onto Hyacinthus's head, fatally wounding him. His blood then became a new flower, the hyacinth. In some versions, Zephyrus is supplanted by his brother Boreas as

132-490: A bull, tricked another princess, the Phoenician Europa , into riding him, transported her to Crete and then mated with her while Notus expresses his jealousy and complains of seeing nothing noteworthy. Like all the other wind gods, Zephyrus is represented in ancient Greek art with wings, due to which he is sometimes hard to distinguish from Eros, another winged youthful god, though tellingly unlike Zephyrus Eros

176-403: A month gracefully. As they part, Aeolus gives Odysseus a bag containing all the winds, except for Zephyrus himself, who is let free to blow Odysseus's ship gently back to Ithaca ; Odysseus's crewmates however foolishly open the bag, thinking it to contain some treasure, and set free all the other winds as well, blowing the ships back to Aeolia. Many years later, right after Odysseus left Calypso ,

220-560: A single altar. Many other places had cults of the twelve gods, including Delos , Chalcedon , Magnesia on the Maeander , and Leontinoi in Sicily . As with the twelve Olympians, although the number of gods was fixed at twelve, the membership varied. While the majority of the gods included as members of these other cults of twelve gods were Olympians, non-Olympians were also sometimes included. For example, Herodorus of Heraclea identified

264-510: A type of rice), Hebrew ( kulmus , meaning quill ) and Latin ( calamus ) as well as the ancient Greek Κάλαμος ( Kalamos ). The Arabic word قلم qalam (meaning "pen" or "reed pen") is likely to have been borrowed from one of these languages in antiquity. The Swahili word kalamu ("pen") comes from the Arabic qalam . The Greeks also used the term for various wind instruments, especially but not necessarily reed instruments , including

308-545: Is a genuine accident on Apollo's part. Another time, Zephyrus became lovers with another beautiful youth named Cyparissus ("cypress"). The youth, wanting to preserve his beauty, fled to Mount Cassium in Syria , where he was transformed into a cypress tree. This myth which might be of Hellenistic origin seems to have been modeled after that of Apollo and Daphne . It also, along with Zephyrus's role in Hyacinthus's story, fits

352-547: Is not depicted pursuing males. In ancient vases, he is most commonly pursuing the young Hyacinthus or already holding him in his arms in an erotic and sexual manner; on a red-figure vase in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts , Zephyrus's erect penis thrusts into the folds of the young man's clothes as they fly together, while vase 95.31 from the same museum depicts intercrural sex between the two. Various other vases also show scenes of Zephyrus grabbing and seizing Hyacinthus. On

396-587: Is the god Favonius . The ancient Greek noun ζέφυρος is the word for the wind that blows from the west. His name is attested in Mycenaean Greek as ze-pu 2 -ro ( Linear B : 𐀽𐁆𐀫 ), which points to a possible Proto-Hellenic form *Dzépʰuros . Further attestation of the god and his worship as part of the Anemoi is found in the word-forms 𐀀𐀚𐀗𐀂𐀋𐀩𐀊 , a-ne-mo-i-je-re-ja , 𐀀𐀚𐀗𐄀𐀂𐀋𐀩𐀊 , a-ne-mo i-je-re-ja , that is, "priestess of

440-533: Is unlikely, and most evidence in fact points to the contrary. It could also be of pre-Greek origin, though Beekes is not sure either way. Due to his role as the west wind, his name and various derivatives of it were used to mean 'western', like for example the Greek colony of Locri Epizephyrii in southern Italy , west of Greece . Zephyrus, like the rest of the wind gods, the Anemoi ( Boreas , Eurus and Notus )

484-522: The Dionysiaca , all four live together with their father Astraeus; Zephyrus plays sweet notes with an aulos for Demeter when she pays them a visit. In the myth of Eros and Psyche , Zephyrus serves Eros , the god of love, by transporting his bride-to-be, the mortal princess Psyche with his soft breeze from the cliff she had been left in on an oracle's suggestion to Eros's palace. Later, he also helps rather reluctantly Psyche's two sisters transport

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528-569: The Horae , the Graces , the Muses , Eileithyia , Iris , Dione , and Ganymede . Besides the twelve Olympians, there were many other various cultic groupings of twelve gods throughout ancient Greece. The earliest evidence of Greek religious practice involving twelve gods ( Greek : δωδεκάθεον , dōdekátheon , from δώδεκα dōdeka , "twelve", and θεοί theoi , "gods") comes no earlier than

572-728: The Meander river while the two were competing in a swimming contest. In his grief, Kalamos allowed himself to drown also. He was then transformed into a water reed, whose rustling in the wind was interpreted as a sigh of lamentation. The acorus calamusare water reed which has a fragrant scent (more commonly known as Sweet Flag) is named after Calamus and this myth. Walt Whitman 's " Calamus " poems in Leaves of Grass may have been inspired by this story. Similar words can be found in Sanskrit (कलम kalama , meaning "reed" and "pen" as well as

616-739: The Tower of the Winds , a clocktower/horologion in the Roman agora of Athens, the frieze depicts Zephyrus alongside seven more of the wind gods above the sundials. Zephyrus is presented as a beardless youth carrying a cloak full of flowers. On the Pergamon Altar , which depicts the battle of the gods against the Giants (known as the Gigantomachy), Zephyrus and the other three wind gods are shown in

660-559: The Alpheus, to the "twelve ruling gods": [Heracles] enclosed the Altis all around and marked it off in the open, and he made the encircling area a resting-place for feasting, honoring the stream of the Alpheus along with the twelve ruling gods. Another of Pindar's Olympian odes mentions "six double altars". Herodorus of Heraclea (c. 400 BC) also has Heracles founding a shrine at Olympia, with six pairs of gods, each pair sharing

704-482: The Trojan prince Tithonus . The Athenian playwright Aeschylus however in his fifth-century BC play Agamemnon writes that Zephyrus is the son of the goddess Gaia (the mother earth) instead (the father, if one exists at all, is not named). In Greek tradition, Zephyrus became the consort of Iris , the goddess of the rainbow and messenger of the gods. According to Nonnus , a late-antiquity poet, together they became

748-462: The beginning of spring? Unlike Greek authors, Roman writers held that Zephyrus/Favonius married not Iris but rather a local vegetation and fertility goddess named Flora (identified and linked by Ovid with a minor Greek nymph named Chloris and her legend) after abducting her while she tried to run away and escape him; he gave her dominion over flowers, thus making amends for his violence and abduction of her. Some analysts have suggested that Carpus,

792-613: The birds of prey and wild beasts below. Zephyrus seems to have had a connection to swans; in Philostratus the Elder 's works, he joins them twice in their song, once while they are carrying the Erotes and another when the young Phaethon is killed driving his father Helios 's fiery chariot. This apparently symbolizes the belief that swans took to singing when the mild west wind blew. In his most notable myth, Zephyrus fell in love with

836-616: The dialogues by the satirical author Lucian of Samosata ; in the Dialogues of the Sea Gods , he appears in two dialogues with his brother Notus, the god of the south wind. In the first, they discuss the Argive princess Io and how she was loved and got turned into a heifer by Zeus in order to hide from his jealous wife Hera , while in the second, Zephyrus enthusiastically recounts the scene he has just witnessed of how Zeus transformed into

880-463: The god Hermes divide a sacrifice of two cows he has stolen from Apollo, into twelve parts, on the banks of the river Alpheus (presumably at Olympia): Next glad-hearted Hermes dragged the rich meats he had prepared and put them on a smooth, flat stone, and divided them into twelve portions distributed by lot, making each portion wholly honorable. Pindar, in an ode written to be sung at Olympia c. 480 BC, has Heracles sacrificing, alongside

924-491: The late sixth century BC. According to Thucydides , an altar of the twelve gods was established in the agora of Athens by the archon Pisistratus (son of Hippias and the grandson of the tyrant Pisistratus ), around 522 BC. The altar became the central point from which distances from Athens were measured and a place of supplication and refuge. Olympia apparently also had an early tradition of twelve gods. The Homeric Hymn to Hermes ( c.  500 BC ) has

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968-565: The local priest offered sacrifice to them, and in Coronea , a town in Boeotia . It is also known that the citizens of Laciadae in Attica had erected an altar for Zephyrus. According to a fragment doubtfully attributed to the fifth-century BC poet Bacchylides , a Rhodian farmer named Eudemus built a temple in honour of the west wind god, in gratitude for his help. Zephyrus's Roman equivalent

1012-616: The original twelve being "cast out". In the Iliad , the goddess Themis , who is listed among the twelve Titans , dwells on Olympus alongside the other gods, making her a Titan and an Olympian at the same time. According to Hesiod, the children of Styx — Zelus (Envy), Nike (Victory), Kratos (Strength), and Bia (Force)—"have no house apart from Zeus, nor any dwelling nor path except that wherein God leads them, but they dwell always with Zeus". Some others who might be considered Olympians include

1056-531: The parents of Pothos , the god of desire, and according to Alcaeus of Mytilene (a six-century BC poet from the island of Lesbos ), of Eros as well, though he is more commonly a son of Ares and Aphrodite . In the same passage, Zephyrus is described as having golden hair. By the Harpy Podarge (who is Iris's sister) he became the father of Balius and Xanthus , the two fast, talking horses that were given to Achilles , when he mated with her while she

1100-418: The pattern–also fit by his brother Boreas–of a wind god appearing in the story of the creation of a plant. In all other narratives however Zephyrus is absent, and the role of Cyparissus's divine partner is filled by Apollo; furthermore, Cyparissus is transformed into a cypress by Apollo at his own request after accidentally killing his own pet deer, which caused him much stress. Zephyrus also features in some of

1144-545: The place of Vesta (Greek Hestia), who played a crucial role in Roman religion as a state goddess maintained by the Vestals . There is no single canonical list of the twelve Olympian gods. The thirteen Greek gods and goddesses, along with their Roman counterparts, most commonly considered to be one of the twelve Olympians are listed below. Some lists of the Twelve Olympians omit her in favor of Dionysus, but

1188-580: The previous generation of ruling immortal beings, the Titans , children of the primordial deities Gaia and Uranus . They were a family of gods, the most important consisting of the first generation of Olympians, offspring of the Titans Cronus and Rhea : Zeus, Poseidon , Hera , Demeter and Hestia , along with the principal offspring of Zeus: Aphrodite , Athena , Artemis , Apollo , Ares , Hephaestus , Hermes and Dionysus . Although Hades

1232-499: The river god Alpheus, with the status of the Graces (here apparently counted as one god) being unclear. Plato connected "twelve gods" with the twelve months and implies that he considered Pluto (Or Hades) one of the twelve in proposing that the final month be devoted to him and the spirits of the dead. The Roman poet Ennius gives the Roman equivalents (the Dii Consentes ) as six male-female complements, preserving

1276-497: The same way to the palace as well, when Psyche wishes to see them again. After Eros abandons Psyche over her betrayal, both sisters take advantage of the situation and each independently goes to the cliff (having both been lied to by Psyche that Eros wished to maker her his new wife), calling for Eros to make them his bride, and Zephyrus to take them to the palace. But this time Zephyrus does not act when they jump, and thus they both fall to their deaths, torn limb to limb and made food for

1320-411: The sea-god Poseidon in rage unleashed all four of them to cause a storm and raise great waves in order to drown Odysseus in the sea. In the Iliad , Zephyrus is visited by his wife Iris in his home as he dines with his wind brothers to summon him, along with Boreas, so that they blow on Patroclus 's funeral pyre following his death, as Achilles prayed for their help when the pyre failed to kindle. In

1364-545: The shape of horses who pull the chariot of the goddess Hera in the eastern frieze of the monument; the equine forms of the Anemoi are also found in Quintus Smyrnaeus 's works, where the four brothers pull Zeus's chariot instead. Ancient cult of the wind gods is attested in several ancient Greek states. According to the geographer Pausanias , the Winds were jointly worshipped in the town of Titane , in Sicyon , where

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1408-512: The six pairs of gods at Olympia as: Zeus and Poseidon, Hera and Athena, Hermes and Apollo, the Graces and Dionysus, Artemis and Alpheus , and Cronus and Rhea . Thus, while this list includes the eight Olympians: Zeus, Poseidon, Hera, Athena, Hermes, Apollo, Artemis, and Dionysus, it also contains three clear non-Olympians: the Titan parents of the first generation of Olympians, Cronus and Rhea, and

1452-605: The son Zephyrus had by Hora/a Hora (season goddess), is supposed to have been actually mothered by Flora/Chloris instead, although this is not confirmed in any ancient text. Twelve Olympians In ancient Greek religion and mythology , the twelve Olympians are the major deities of the Greek pantheon , commonly considered to be Zeus , Poseidon , Hera , Demeter , Aphrodite , Athena , Artemis , Apollo , Ares , Hephaestus , Hermes , and either Hestia or Dionysus . They were called Olympians because, according to tradition, they resided on Mount Olympus . Besides

1496-550: The speculation that she gave her throne to him in order to keep the peace seems to be a modern invention. Kalamos Kalamos ( Ancient Greek : Κάλαμος , lit.   ' reed , reed pen '; Latin : Calamus ) is a Greek mythological figure. He is son of Maiandros , the god of the Maeander river. A story in Nonnus 's Dionysiaca tells about the love of two youths, Kalamos and Karpos . Karpos drowned in

1540-579: The three useful and favourable winds (the east wind, Eurus, seen as bad omen). They are the three wind gods mentioned by Hesiod , as ancient Greeks avoided talking about Eurus. Zephyrus and Boreas were thought to dwell together in a palace in Thrace . In the Odyssey however, they all seem to dwell on the island of Aeolia , as Zeus has tasked Aeolus with the job of the keeper of the winds. Aeolus receives Odysseus and his wretched crew, and hosts them for

1584-422: The twelve Olympians, there were many other cultic groupings of twelve gods. The Olympians were a race of deities , primarily consisting of a third and fourth generation of immortal beings, worshipped as the principal gods of the Greek pantheon and so named because of their residency atop Mount Olympus . They gained their supremacy in a ten-year-long war of gods , in which Zeus led his siblings to victory over

1628-415: The wind drove a wave right into his face, driving his lover Calamus into despair, who went on to take his life. According to Pseudo-Oppian , he also became the genitor of tigers by an unnamed consort. Zephyrus, along with his brother Boreas, is one of the most prominent of the Anemoi; they are frequently mentioned together by poets, and along with a third brother, Notus (the south wind) they were seen as

1672-422: The wind-god that bore a one-sided love for the beautiful prince. Zephyrus's role in this myth reflects his connection to flowers and springtime as the gentle west wind, who, in spite of his traditional gentleness, is nonetheless a harsh lover like all winds are. Not every version of this tale features Zephyrus however, and his participation is a secondary narrative; in many of them he is absent, and Hyacinthus's death

1716-522: The winds", found on the KN Fp 1 and KN Fp 13 tablets. Traditionally, 'Zephyros' has been linked to the word ζόφος (zóphos) meaning "darkness" or "west". Both in turn have been connected to the Proto-Indo-European root *(h₃)yebʰ- , meaning "to enter, to penetrate" (from which οἴφω (oíphō), meaning 'to have sex', also derives). It has been noted however that a development *Hi̯- → ζ-

1760-590: Was a major deity in the Greek pantheon and was the brother of Zeus and the other first generation of Olympians, his realm was far away from Olympus in the underworld , and thus he was not usually considered to be one of the Olympians. Olympic gods can be contrasted to chthonic gods including Hades and his wife Persephone , by mode of sacrifice, the latter receiving sacrifices in a bothros ( βόθρος , "pit") or megaron ( μέγαρον , "sunken chamber") rather than at an altar. The canonical number of Olympian gods

1804-404: Was called Favonius (the "favouring") who held dominion over plants and flowers, however 'Zephyrus' was also commonly used by Romans. Some later authors would also describe him as having wings in his head. The Roman poet Horace writes: quid fles, Asterie, quem tibi candidi primo restituent vere Favonii? Why do you weep, Asterie, for the man whom the bright west winds will restore to you at

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1848-531: Was grazing on a meadow near the banks of the Ocean, implied in the form of a mare. Quintus Smyrnaeus also says that by a Harpy he had Arion , the talking horse. Like with the case of Eros, Arion's more common parentage is different, in this case the Olympians Demeter and Poseidon . In some sources Zephyrus has a son named Carpus ("fruit") by a nymph Hora , who drowned in the Maeander river when

1892-556: Was said to be the son of Eos , the goddess of the dawn, by her husband and first cousin Astraeus , a minor god related to the stars. The poet Ovid dubs the four of them 'the Astraean brothers' in reference to their paternity. He is thus also brother to the rest of Eos and Astraeus's children, namely the five star-gods and the justice goddess Astraea . His mortal half-brothers include Memnon and Emathion , sons of his mother Eos by

1936-404: Was twelve, but besides the (thirteen) principal Olympians listed above, there were many other residents of Olympus, who thus might be considered to be Olympians. Heracles became a resident of Olympus after his apotheosis and married another Olympian resident Hebe . According to Diodorus Siculus , some said that Heracles was offered a place among the twelve, but refused as it would mean one of

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