Aquilo- Roman GodDeity"The North Wind"
Also known as: Aquilon and Septentrio
Description
Aquilo tried courting the princess Oreithyia with gentle words. The north wind was not made for gentleness. He swept her up in a whirlwind and carried her to Thrace. Each winter, his gales froze rivers solid and drove sailors from the open sea.
Mythology & Lore
Oreithyia
In the Metamorphoses, Ovid tells how Aquilo fell in love with Oreithyia, daughter of the Athenian king Erechtheus. He tried persuasion first. The wind spoke gently, asked for her hand, did everything a suitor should. It was useless. Aquilo's nature could not hold. He swept down on her in his full force, wrapped her in dark clouds, and carried her north to Thrace. There she bore him twin sons, Calais and Zetes, who grew wings like their father.
The Storm
In the Aeneid's opening, Juno went to Aeolus, king of the winds, and asked him to destroy the Trojan fleet. Aeolus struck the side of the hollow mountain with his spear, and the winds poured out. Aquilo tore into the sea alongside the south wind and the east. Waves broke over the hulls. Masts snapped. Sailors drowned. The fleet scattered across the Mediterranean until Neptune felt the disturbance, rose above the waves, and ordered the winds back to their cave. He had not given them permission.
The Farmer's Gale
Virgil writes in the Georgics of the damage Aquilo could do. His blasts froze standing water and stripped the last warmth from the fields. Farmers learned to read the sky for signs of his coming and to shelter their livestock before he arrived. Pliny records that sailors closed the shipping season when Aquilo's winter gales made the sea impassable. The Mediterranean belonged to him from November until spring.
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