Boreas, like the rest of the wind gods, was said to be the son of Eos, the goddess of the dawn, by her husband Astraeus, a minor star-god.

Pliny the Elder (Natural History iv.35 and viii.67) thought that mares might stand with their hindquarters to the North Wind and bear foals without a stallion.

The Greeks believed that his home was in Thrace, and Herodotus and Pliny both describe a northern land known as Hyperborea "Beyond the North Wind" where people lived in complete happiness and had extraordinarily long lifespans.

When Athens was threatened by Xerxes, the people prayed to Boreas, who was said to have then caused winds to sink 400 Persian ships.

In some versions of Hyacinthus's story, Boreas supplants his brother Zephyrus as the wind-god that bore a one-sided love for the beautiful Spartan prince, who preferred Apollo over him.

[11] During the journey of the Argo, Argonauts Zetes and Calais, Boreas's sons, describe Apollo as "beloved of our sire", perhaps implying a romantic connection between the two gods.

[13][14] In the words of William Smith, this was "commonly explained as a mere figurative mode of expressing the extraordinary swiftness of those horses.

[15][16] When the goddess Leto, pregnant with Artemis and Apollo, was due, Boreas was ordered by Zeus to bring her to Poseidon, who in turn led her to the island of Ogygia where she could give birth to the twins, as Zeus' wife Hera had ordered all places and land to shun Leto.

Helios shone bright then, and the traveller, overcome with the heat, removed his cloak, giving him the victory (the moral being that persuasion is better than force).

[19] When Sirius, the dog star, began to burn hot after he could not have his beloved Opora, a minor goddess connected to the harvest, Boreas dealt with the intense heat by ordering his sons to deliver Opora to Sirius, while he cooled the earth down with blast of cold wind.

Now had the sun rolled through the year's full circle, and the waves were rough with icy winter's northern gales[24] For the wind which came directly from the north the Romans sometimes used the name Septentrio, which refers to the seven (septem) stars of the Plow or Big Dipper constellation.