Source Verification: Boreas
Every claim below is either what a named ancient source attests, in its own line or section, or a point where the sources themselves disagree.
What the Sources Attest
Who were Boreas's parents?
The dawn goddess Eos and the Titan Astraeus. Hesiod's Theogony names their three sons together as "the strong-hearted winds": Boreas, Zephyrus the West Wind, and Notus the South Wind.
Source: Hesiod, Theogony 378-380
How did Boreas get Oreithyia?
By force, after courtship failed. Apollodorus's Library says Boreas wanted to marry Oreithyia, daughter of the Athenian king Erechtheus, but when asking for her went nowhere, he simply seized her while she was playing by the Ilissus river and carried her to Thrace.
Source: Apollodorus, Library 3.15.1-3.15.3
Who were Boreas's children, and what did his sons do?
With Oreithyia, Boreas had two daughters, Cleopatra and Chione, and two winged sons, Zetes and Calais. The sons later sailed with Jason on the Argo and drove the Harpies away from the tormented seer Phineus during the voyage.
Source: Apollodorus, Library 3.15.1-3.15.3
Why did the Athenians consider Boreas their son-in-law?
Because he had married Oreithyia, an Athenian princess, the daughter of their own legendary king Erechtheus. Herodotus records that this marriage was the exact reason the Athenians prayed to Boreas by name for help during the Persian invasion.
Source: Herodotus, Histories 7.189
Did Boreas actually help the Athenians against the Persians?
Herodotus reports that the Athenians believed so: when a storm damaged the Persian fleet after their prayer, they credited Boreas directly and founded a sacred precinct to him beside the Ilissus river in thanks - the same river where he had once seized Oreithyia.
Source: Herodotus, Histories 7.189
Where Accounts Differ
- whether Oreithyia's abduction was a real event rationalized rather than a myth
- Later, more rationalist Greek writers offered a demythologized reading of the Oreithyia story: Plato has Socrates mention, half-jokingly, a version where she was simply blown off a nearby cliff by a gust of wind while playing and only afterward said to have been carried off by the god Boreas. This page follows Apollodorus's straightforwardly mythological account rather than the rationalized one.
Sources
- Hesiod, Theogony 378-380
- Apollodorus, Library 3.15.1-3.15.3
- Herodotus, Histories 7.189
- Homer, Iliad 23.192-230
- Homer, Odyssey 5.282-296
- Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica
- Timothy Gantz, Early Greek Myth (1993)