The son of Eos (the goddess of the dawn) and Astraeus, Zephyrus is the most gentle and favourable of the winds, associated with flowers, springtime and even procreation.

[2] Zephyrus, similarly to his brothers, received a cult during ancient times although his worship was minor compared to the Twelve Olympians.

The Athenian playwright Aeschylus in his fifth-century BC play Agamemnon writes that Zephyrus is the son of the goddess Gaia (the mother earth).

By the Harpy Podarge (who is Iris's sister) he became the father of Balius and Xanthus, the two fast, talking horses that were given to Achilles,[15][16] when he mated with her while she was grazing on a meadow near the banks of the Ocean, implied in the form of a mare.

[19] In some sources Zephyrus has a son named Carpus ("fruit") by a nymph Hora, who drowned in the Maeander river when the wind drove a wave right into his face, driving his lover Calamus into despair, who went on to take his life.

[27][28] In the Dionysiaca, all four live together with their father Astraeus; Zephyrus plays sweet notes with an aulos for Demeter when she pays them a visit.

[32] Zephyrus seems to have had a connection to swans; in Philostratus the Elder's works, he joins them twice in their song, once while they are carrying the Erotes and another when the young Phaethon is killed driving his father Helios's fiery chariot.

[35] In his most notable myth, Zephyrus fell in love with a beautiful Spartan prince named Hyacinthus, who nevertheless rejected him[36] and became the lover of another god, Apollo.

[37] Not every version of this tale features Zephyrus, however, and his participation is a secondary narrative; in many of them he is absent, and Hyacinthus's death stems from a genuine accident on Apollo's part.

In the first, they discuss the Argive princess Io and how she was loved and got turned into a heifer by Zeus in order to hide from his jealous wife Hera,[45] while in the second, Zephyrus enthusiastically recounts the scene he has just witnessed of how Zeus transformed into a bull, tricked another princess, the Phoenician Europa, into riding him, transported her to Crete and then mated with her while Notus expresses his jealousy and complains of seeing nothing noteworthy.

[53] On the Pergamon Altar, which depicts the battle of the gods against the Giants (known as the Gigantomachy), Zephyrus and the other three wind gods are shown in the shape of horses who pull the chariot of the goddess Hera in the eastern frieze of the monument;[54][55] the equine forms of the Anemoi are also found in Quintus Smyrnaeus's works, where the four brothers pull Zeus's chariot instead.

[61] According to a fragment doubtfully attributed to the fifth-century BC poet Bacchylides, a Rhodian farmer named Eudemus built a temple in honour of the west wind god, in gratitude for his help.

[63] The Roman poet Horace writes:[64] quid fles, Asterie, quem tibi candidi primo restituent vere Favonii?

Unlike Greek authors, Roman writers held that Zephyrus/Favonius married not Iris but rather a local vegetation and fertility goddess named Flora (identified and linked by Ovid with a minor Greek nymph named Chloris and her legend[65]) after abducting her while she tried to run away and escape him; he gave her dominion over flowers, thus making amends for his violence and abduction of her.

[1][66] Some analysts have suggested that Carpus, the son Zephyrus had by Hora/a Hora (season goddess), is supposed to have been actually mothered by Flora/Chloris instead, although this is not confirmed in any ancient text.