From a just consideration of these passages, it becomes clear that the four winds of Homer were not at equidistant points of the compass, but that each two of them were capable of association, while neither member of one pair is ever described, except in a single passage, which I will presently notice, as cooperating with one of the other. Of course I do not refer to those cases, where the Poet raises all the four winds at once, simply to create a hurricane; no bad conjecture, I will add, for those times, in anticipation of the modern discovery that hurricanes are eddies, and that it is their circular motion which makes them seem to blow almost simultaneously in all directions[557]. [557] See General Reid’s Law of Storms and Variable Winds. London. 1849. Let us now inquire what can be done towards ascertaining more particularly the leading points of these winds, of which we have surveyed the general descriptions. ~_Points of origin for Zephyr and Boreas._~ I begin with the more prevailing pair, Zephyr and Boreas. There can, I think, be no hesitation in deriving Ζέφυρος from ζόφος. It may be well to remind the reader that ζόφος is the same word in substance with κνέφας and νέφος[558]. [558] Buttmann. Lexil. voc. κέλαινος. Thus the north-west is his cradle. But he is so closely associated with Thrace and with Boreas, the former being his residence, and the latter[559] his companion, that though he may mean any wind from west up to north, we must consider him as usually leaning from the north-west towards the north, while he properly belongs to the north-west rather than any other given point of the compass. [559] Il. xxiii. 214. The position of Boreas is the best defined of all the winds of Homer. He cannot come from any point to the west of due north: for all that space is appropriated to Zephyr. He is equally well defined on the other side. For he blows from Thrace, both generally, as in Il. ix. 5, and particularly on the Plain of Troy[560]. I hold to be of no authority, as fixing the direction of this wind, the Boreas which carries the pseudo-Ulysses from Crete to Egypt[561]: for there Homer is already beyond the Inner World, and he only knows the position of Egypt from Phœnician report. But we have other trustworthy indications from within the sphere of Greek nautical knowledge, in his carrying Hercules from Ilium to Cos[562], in his preventing a voyage from Crete to Ilium[563], and in the fate of Ulysses, who, in rounding Malea, is carried off by Boreas to the westward of Cythera[564]. All these operations can be performed only by a wind blowing from the quarter between east and north-east. [560] Il. xxiii. 214, as above. [561] Od. xiv. 253. [562] Il. xiv. 255. xv. 26. [563] Od. xix. 200. [564] Od. ix. 81.