The Classical Review http://journals.cambridge.org/CAR Additional services for The Classical Review: Email alerts: Click here Subscriptions: Click here Commercial reprints: Click here Terms of use : Click here The Greek Winds D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson The Classical Review / Volume 32 / Issue 3-4 / May 1918, pp 49 - 56 DOI: 10.1017/S0009840X00011276, Published online: 27 October 2009 Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0009840X00011276 How to cite this article: D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson (1918). The Greek Winds. The Classical Review, 32, pp 49-56 doi:10.1017/S0009840X00011276 Request Permissions : Click here Downloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/CAR, IP address: 130.179.16.201 on 16 Feb 2015 The Review MAY—JUNE, 1918 ORIGINAL CONTRIBUTIONS THE GREEK WINDS. IN the orientation ot the Greek Caecias, Eurus, Lips, and Argestes Winds—that is to say, in the interpre- (Z, A, F, E) are (on this interpretation) tation of the Greek ' wind-rose,' or set midway between the four cardinal compass - card — there lies a pretty problem, which to my thinking is but little understood by scholars. The sub- K ject has been touched on of late by Sir Arthur Hort in his translation of Theo- phrastus De Signis, and by Mr. E. S. Forster in his Oxford translation of the Ps. Aristotelian Ventorum Situs et Appel- lationes. Both writers borrow their statements and their diagrams from W. Capelle's paper on the treatise De Mundo ('Die Schrift von der Welt,' Neue Jahrb. xv. 1905), as Capelle in turn had followed for the most part in the steps of Kaibel ('Antike Windrosen,' Hermes, xx. pp. 579-624, 1885). Our T scholars, in short, have followed the Germans, and these Germans (as I hope M to show) are wrong. FIG. 1.—Capelle and Kaibel's interpretation of The wind-rose of the Greeks, as the Aristotelian wind-rose. interpreted by Kaibel and Capelle and copied by Forster and Hort, is unsym- winds. They are described as N.E., metrical, or has at best a curiously S.E., S.W., and N.W. winds respec- imperfect symmetry (Fig. 1). It shows tively ; and they are so defined in us (1) the four cardinal winds, N., S., Liddell and Scott, with no manner of E., and W.; (2) next, and midway in doubt or hesitation. the four quadrants, the N.E., S.E., S.W., Now Aristotle's account, as set forth and N.W. winds; and, lastly (3), four for instance in the Meteorologica (2, vi. more winds intercalated midway in the 363a), is very different from this ; more- two northern and two southern octants, over it is very plain and simple,1 and so that the whole circle is divided into all the more so if we be careful to read twelve sectors, of which four are large and interpret it in the light of Aris- and eight are small, the eight small ones being each just one-half the size of 1 Save only for a textual difficulty in a single the other four. In other words, our sentence (364a 13), pointed out by Salmasius circle of 3600 is divided into four sectors and by Idekr. Ideler's restoration of the text 0 {Arist. Meteor. 1834, vol. i., p. 576) was subse- of 45 , and eight sectors of 22^° each. quently rediscovered by Mr. F. H. Fobes, in The main point is that the four winds C.R. 1916, p. 48.] NO. CCLXIX. VOL. XXXII. THE CLASSICAL REVIEW totle's repeated statements that the ©F, ®A), so as to give four new points, winds are dependent on the sun (cf. I, K, M, N. Only, according to the e.g. op. cit. 2, v. 361b, o 8' tf\i,o<s ical account in the Meteorologica, while the Travel ical o~vve$-opp& ra irvevp.aTa). winds 0pao-Kia<i and \iAar\s are hereby He bids us construct our compass- defined as blowing from I and K re- card as follows (Figs. 2, 3): Let A be the spectively, it so happens that opposite to these (viz. at M and N), no winds actually occur, or none at least are conspicuous in Nature. As to the I original eight, they go in pairs, dia- metrically opposite: ovroi fiev ovv ol KaTa SidfieTpov T6 Keifievoi avepjoi, teal oil elalv ivavTioi. The rest have no an- tagonists—no winds diametrically oppo- site to them—erepoi 8' elal icad' ov? OVK ea-Tiv evavTia irvevfuna. And these are, as we have already said, Thrascias and Meses: airb fiev yap TOV I, bv KaXovac dpaaicLav, OVTOI yap ytteffo? dpyeo-Tov ical airapxriov • dnb 8e rov K, bv ica\ovo~i fiiarjv, OUTO? yap fieo-os jcaiKiov ical a-iraptcrlov • ivavTia 8e TOVTOK oiiic ecrTt Tot? irvevfiacriv, ovre T<3 dpaaicla ovre T§5 pAtr-g. But, after all, Aristotle immediately proceeds to FIG. 2.—The Aristotelian division of the compass- card ; showing sunset and sunrise at the qualify this statement, and to suggest equinox (A, B): also at the winter solstice that, at the point N., opposite to (r, A), and at the summer solstice (E, Z), as Thrascias, there may be found a certain seen (approximately) from the latitude of wind, Phoenicias (Euronotus in Theo- Athens. (The dotted lines represent the tropic and arctic circles). phrastus and the De Mundo): el p,rj d-rr' avTov Kal eir' oKiyov irvel Tt? avefiof, place of sunset, and B of sunrise, at the bv KaXovaiv ol irepl TOV TOTTOV eicelvov equinox, the 8vcrp,if ical dvaroKrj Im/pe- dioiviKiav. We must go to other writers pivrj, when the sun rises and sets due (including the author of the De Mundo E. and W. (in accordance with the and the Ventorum Situs) for the denom- very definition of these terms); here we have what Milton, and the Italians, call ' the Levant and the Ponent winds.' A diameter H<e>, cutting AB at right angles, then gives due north and due south; and our four cardinal points are thus determined. The next step is the remarkable one: [lore*] TO 8' i<f>' ov Z dvaToXr) depivq, TO 8' «£' ov E Sva/iij Oepivrj ' TO 8' icp' ov A dvaToXi) xeifiepivi], TO 8' i<j)* ov r 8vo-firj "xeipepivq. The eight winds, blowing from these eight (poiviia<v> points, are as follows: A, §e^>v/>09 • Xifiovo'ros B, aTrrj\iwTT)<: • T, \ty' A, eSpo?- E, voros dpyeo-Ti]? (6Xvfi7rCa<s, cicipcov, laifrvg inFIG. 3.—The Aristotelian wind-rose, according to the construction shown in Fig. 2. (The wind the De Mundo) • Z, xai/cta? • H, /3opia<; XI/JOPATOS is interpolated from Theophrastus). or airaptcTias • %, I/OTO?. The third and last step consists in ination of the missing twelfth wind, subdividing four of these eight sectors, opposite to Meses—the wind termed viz. the two northern and the two Libonotus in the De Mundo by Theo- southern ones (i.e. the sectors HE, HZ, phrastus, by Pliny and by Lydus (De THE CLASSICAL REVIEW Menss. c. 3), and Leuconotus by the of the compass-card, and so he repre- author of the Ventorum Situs, by Posi- sents them in his table and diagram. donius (Strabo, i, p. 29), and by Seneca. That is to say, in his final reference to In all this not a single word is said the modern compass-card of thirty-two about dividing the four quadrants into points, or thirty-two 'winds,' he says halves, and so fixing the positions of that ' la plupart des vents de cette rose N.E. and S.E., N.W. and S.W. winds ; ont du 6tre divises par fractions, pour but, on the contrary, there is a clear correspondre aux roses anciennes, et and unmistakable injunction that the principalement a celle de douze vents, places of the four secondary winds are dont chacun ne pouvoit comprendre to be determined, like those of the que deux vents et quatre-sixiemes de cardinal winds, by a certain direct, if vent de la rose moderne(/.e.32-^2f = 12). more complicated, reference to the sun. He gives them their places, accord- Obvious as this point is, there are few ingly, in a compass-card of equal and writers who appear to have noticed it. symmetrical interspaces or sectors. In One is the learned Ideler; another is much the same way Salmasius had H. C. Genelli, who wrote (not without arranged the twelve winds in a regular help from Ideler) a very good paper, dodecagon, though, like Coray, he also ' Ueber die Windscheiben der Alten,' in had missed the essential point (which F. A. Wolfs Analecta (ii., pp. 461-500, we are now about to discuss) of the 1820); a third is Mr. James G. Wood, avaTdkr) depivq as defining the place of author of a too much neglected transla- /eaiKias. But Salmasius' learned treatise tion of the Theophrastean De Signis on the Winds (Exercitat. Plinian. pp. aadDe Ventis (London: Stanford, 1894). 1244-1253) is more than we can do Part of my object, indeed, in writing justice to here. To return to Aris- this note is to recall attention to Wood's totle : work, which has fallen into such com- When Aristotle tells us that a certain plete oblivion that Sir Arthur Hort has wind blows from the avaroXij Oepiv>] or translated the De Signis over again, Xeifiepivi], we may safely take it that he unaware that Wood had done it all means the midsummer or midwinter before, and had done it uncommonly sunrise, the rising of the tropical or well. But we shall come back in a solstitial sun, in direct relation and little while to these scholars.