Chloris- Greek SpiritSpirit · Nymph

The West Wind's Bride

Zephyrus found Chloris wandering through a spring meadow and seized her. She tried to speak as he carried her off, but roses poured from her lips instead of words. The warm west wind made her his wife, and in Ovid's Fasti, Chloris herself tells what followed: the god made amends by granting her dominion over all flowers. He gave her a garden filled with every kind of blossom, tended by the Horae — the goddesses of the seasons — and watered by clear springs. Wherever she walked, flowers sprang from the earth, and the honey that bees gathered from her blooms fell under her care. She scattered color and fragrance over fields that had been barren through winter, and when Persephone returned each spring from the underworld, it was Chloris who coaxed the first blossoms from the warming ground.

Chloris told of another gift she had given. Juno, jealous that Jupiter had produced Minerva from his own head, wanted a child conceived without a father. Chloris gave her a flower from the fields of Olenus whose touch alone could cause conception. Juno pressed it to her body and conceived Mars — the god of war born from a blossom.

Flora

In Ovid's telling, Chloris reveals that she and the Roman goddess Flora are one and the same — the Greek nymph became the Latin deity through her marriage to the wind. The Romans honored Flora each spring at the Floralia, a six-day festival in late April and early May that marked the start of summer's warmth. Revelers scattered flowers through the streets and pelted each other with beans, and the nights were given over to theater performed by torchlight. When the west wind blows and the flower nymph walks abroad, the world blooms again.