Classical compass winds

[1] It is probable that for ancient settled populations, local physical landmarks (e.g. mountains, deserts, settlements) were the initial and most immediate markers of general direction ("towards the coast", "towards the hills", "towards the lands of Xanadu", etc.).

[4] The final step, completing the circle, was to use the proper names of the winds to denote general cardinal directions of the compass rose.

[6][7] Orientation seems to be to the East, in the direction of the rising sun, with the result that the terms kedem, saphon and negev became generalized with "facing", "left" and "right" side of anything.

[12] Astral phenomena were used to define four cardinal points: arctos (ἄρκτος, "bear", the Ursa Major, for North), anatole (ἀνατολή, "sunrise" or eos "dawn", East), mesembria (μεσημβρία, "noon", South) and dysis (δύσις, "sunset" or hesperus, "evening", West).

[15] The identification of the Pole Star (at that time, Kochab in the Ursa Minor[16]) as the better indicator of the North seems to have emerged a little later (it is said Thales introduced this, probably learned from Phoenician seafarers).

[23] The archaic Greek poet Homer (c. 800 BC) refers to the four winds by name – Boreas, Eurus, Notos, Zephyrus – in his Odyssey,[24] and in the Iliad.

This refers to the fact that the "east" (sunrise) and "west" (sunset) are not stable on the horizon, but depend on the season, i.e. during the winter, the sun rises and sets a little further south than in the summer, Consequently, the Homeric system may have had six winds – Boreas (N) and Notos (S) on the meridian axis, and the other four on diagonals: Zephyrus (NW), Eurus (NE), Apeliotes (SE) and Argestes (SW).

The Greek physician Hippocrates (c. 400 BC), in his On Airs, Water and Places, refers to four winds, but designates them not by their Homeric names, but rather from the cardinal direction from which they blow (arctos, anatole, dusis, etc.)

[35] One reading of his system is that there are eight principal winds: Aparctias (N), Caecias (NE), Apeliotes (E), Eurus (SE), Notos (S), Lips (SW), Zephyrus (W) and Argestes (NW).

Argestes's variants, Olympias (ὀλυμπίας) and Sciron (σκίρων) are local Athenian names, a reference to Mount Olympus and the Sciros rocks in Megara.

By way of guidance, Aristotle mentions that the easterly and westerly positions are that of the sun as seen on the horizon at dawn and at dusk at different times of the year.

Aristotle also makes special note of the periodic bending summer Etesian winds, which comes from different directions depending on where the observer lives.

Timosthenes's list (according to Agathemerus) was Aparctias (N), Boreas (not Meses, NNE), Caecias (NE), Apeliotes (E), Eurus (SE), "Phoenicias is also called Euronotos" (SSE), Notos (S), "Leuconotos alias Libonotos" (first mention, SSW), Lips (SW), Zephyrus (W), Argestes (NW) and "Thrascias alias Circius" (NNW).

His highlighting of the Italian "Circius" as a major variant of Thrascias (NNW) could be the first indication of the notorious Mistral wind of the west Mediterranean.

Timosthenes is also significant for being perhaps the first Greek to go beyond treating these "winds" merely as meteorological phenomena and to begin viewing them properly as points of geographic direction.

)[55] The pseudo-Aristotelean work De Mundo (normally attributed to an anonymous copier of Posidonius, probably written between 50 BCE and 140 CE),[56] the winds are named practically identically to Timosthenes (e.g. Aparctias alone in the North, Boreas shunted to NNE, Euronotus instead of Phoenicias, Circius as alternate of Thrascias).

It gives as its eight winds Boreas (not Aparctias, N), Caecias (NE), Apeliotes (E), Eurus (SE), Notos (S), Lips (SW), Zephyrus (W) and Sciron (NW, variant of Argestes).

Oddly, Seneca says the meridian line arises from Euronotus (SSE), not Auster (S), and that the "highest" point in the north is Aquilo (NNE), not Septentrio (N).

He lists them as Septentrio (N), Aquilo (NNE), Subsolanus (E), Vulturnus (SE), Auster (S), Africus (SW), Favonius (W) and Corus (NW).

He seems to treat Eurus as a Latin name, giving the Aristotelean Apeliotes as the Greek equivalent, and reducing Subsolanus to a mere variant "from Roman sailors".

The Vatican table lists them as follows: There are several spelling mistakes or variant forms, both in Greek (Aparkias, Apheliotes, Thrakias) and Latin (Chorus with an h, Solanus minus Sub).

The principal error of the Vatican table is the misplacement of Vulturnus in NE rather than SE, with the result that the old Greek Eurus now resumes its place in Latin.

[75] Isidore also tried to supply the etymology of each of the terms: Chronologically, Vitruvius, who flourished in the late 1st century BCE, precedes all the Latin writers mentioned above: Seneca, Pliny, Aulus Gellius, etc.

[88] Among other things worth noting, Solanus does not have its sub prefix and the wind Caurus (mentioned later by Aulus Gellius) is inserted between Corus and Circius (with old Thrascias given a separate position above that).

It seems as if he is merely making a long list of all the wind names he has heard, giving each their own separate position in a single system, regardless of duplication.

The shifts of some old Greek winds (Boreas, Eurus, Argestes, Leuconotos) into non-traditional positions (sometimes even in the wrong quadrant), could reflect the relative positions of Greece and Italy – or could simply indicate that Vitruvius did not much care for this exercise, and assigned their names roughly just to get a nice symmetric system of two off-winds for every principal wind.

As the Dark Ages advanced, it could be expected for the 8-wind rose to prevail, but the guardians of classical knowledge, such as St. Isidore of Seville, preserved the 12-wind system for posterity.

The 9th-century pseudo-Olympiodorus's Commentary on Aristotle's Meteorology (translated by Hunayn ibn Ishaq) gave the following Arabic names for the 12 Greek winds:[93] The sudden emergence of Mediterranean portolan charts in the early 1300s, originally in Genoa, but soon in Venice and Majorca too, are believed to be constructed on the basis of sailing directions long written down in the piloting handbooks (portolani) of Mediterranean seafarers.

Tramontana (N), Italianate for "over the mountains", most probably relates to the Alps of northern Italy, has nothing to do with the classical Aparctias-Septentrio (although it may have a faint connection with the old Greek Boreas, which lingered in Venetian parlance as the Bora of the Adriatic Sea).

In a note in his 1558 atlas, the Portuguese cartographer Diogo Homem made one final attempt to reconcile the classical twelve with the mariner's eight by assigning 8 of the 12 to the principal winds of the compass, and the remaining four to the half-winds NNW, NNE, SSE and SSW.