Classical compass winds


In the ancient Mediterranean world, the classical compass winds were names for the points of geographic direction and orientation, in association with the winds as conceived of by the ancient Greeks and Romans. Ancient wind roses typically had twelve winds and thus twelve points of orientation, sometimes reduced to eight or increased to twenty-four.
Originally conceived as a branch of meteorology, the classical wind rose had only a tentative relationship with actual navigation. The Classical 12-point wind rose was eventually displaced by the modern compass rose, adopted by seafarers during the Middle Ages.

Origins

It is uncertain when or why the human sense of geographic orientation and direction became associated with winds. It is probable that for ancient settled populations, local physical landmarks were the initial and most immediate markers of general direction. Astral phenomena, in particular the position of the sun at dawn and dusk, were also used to denote direction.
The association of geographic direction with wind was another source. It was probably farming populations, attentive to rain and temperature for their crops, that noticed the qualitative differences in winds – some were humid, others dry, some hot, others cold – and that these qualities depended on where the wind was blowing from. Local directional names were used to refer to the winds, eventually giving the wind itself a proper name, irrespective of the observer's position. This was likely furthered by sailors who, far from landmarks at sea, nonetheless recognized a particular wind by its qualities and referred to it by a familiar name. The final step, completing the circle, was to use the proper names of the winds to denote general cardinal directions of the compass rose. This would take a little longer to work itself through.

Biblical

In the Hebrew Bible, there is frequent reference to four cardinal directions. The names of the directions seem to be associated with physical landmarks for the ancient Israelites living in the region of Judea, e.g. East is referred to as , which may derive from "edom", and may be a reference to the color of the rising dawn, or the red sandstone cliffs of the Land of Edom to the east; North is referred to as saphon, from Mount Zaphon on the northern edge of Syria, South is often negev, from the Negev desert to the south, and West is yam. 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.
The association of cardinal directions with winds is implied at several places in the Old Testament. "Four winds" are referred to in the Bible in several places. Kedem is used frequently as the name of a scorching wind that blows from the east. It is related to the modern word קדימה "kadima", meaning "forward". There are several passages referring to the scattering of people "to all the winds".

Greek

Unlike the Biblical Israelites, the early Greeks maintained two separate and distinct systems of cardinal directions and winds, at least for a while.
Astral phenomena were used to define four cardinal points: arctos, anatole , mesembria and dysis . Heraclitus, in particular, suggests that a meridian drawn between the north and its opposite could be used to divide East from West. Homer already spoke of Greeks sailing with Ursa Major for orientation. The identification of the Pole Star as the better indicator of the North seems to have emerged a little later.
Distinct from these cardinal points, the ancient Greeks had four winds. The peoples of early Greece reportedly conceived of only two winds – the winds from the north, known as Boreas, and the winds from the south, known as Notos. But two more winds – Eurus from the east and Zephyrus from the west – were added soon enough.
The etymology of the names of the four archaic Greek winds is uncertain. Among tentative propositions is that Boreas might come from "boros", an old variant of "oros". An alternative hypothesis is that it may come from "boros" meaning "voracious". Another is that it comes from the phrase ἀπὸ τῆς βοῆς, a reference to its violent and loud noise. Notos probably comes from "notios". Eurus and Zephyrus seem to come from "brightness" and "gloominess" respectively, doubtlessly a reference to sunrise and sunset.

Homer

The archaic Greek poet Homer refers to the four winds by name – Boreas, Eurus, Notos, Zephyrus – in his Odyssey, and in the Iliad. However, at some points, Homer seems to imply two more: a northwest wind and a southwest wind. Some have taken this to imply that Homer may have had as many as eight winds. However, others remain unconvinced, and insist Homer only had a four wind-rose.
Writing several centuries later, Strabo notes that some contemporaries took Homer's ambiguity to imply that the Homeric system may already anticipate the summer and winter distinction later made famous by Aristotle. This refers to the fact that the "east" and "west" 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 and Notos on the meridian axis, and the other four on diagonals: Zephyrus, Eurus, Apeliotes and Argestes.
Strabo, quoting Posidonius notes that Homer sometimes used epithets of qualitative attributes to append ordinal directions to the cardinal winds, e.g. as western winds bring rain, then when Homer says a "stormy Boreas" he means a different wind from a "loud Boreas" Nonetheless, while it seems that Homer may have realized that there were more than four winds, he did not use those epithets systematically enough to permit us to conclude that he also embraced a six- or eight-point windrose. Other classical writers, e.g. Pliny the Elder, are adamant that Homer mentioned only four winds.
Hesiod in his Theogony gives the four winds mythical personification as gods, the Anemoi, the children of the Titan gods Astraeus and Eos. But Hesiod himself refers to only three winds by name – Boreas, Notos and Zephyrus – which he called the "good winds" and the "children of the morning". Hesiod refers to other "bad winds", but not by name.
The Greek physician Hippocrates, 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 He does, however, recognize six geographic points – north, south and the summer and winter risings and settings – using the latter to set the boundaries for the four general winds.

Aristotle

The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, in his Meteorology, introduced a ten-to-twelve wind system. One reading of his system is that there are eight principal winds: Aparctias, Caecias, Apeliotes, Eurus, Notos, Lips, Zephyrus and Argestes. Aristotle then goes on to add two half-winds, Thrascias and Meses, noting that they "have no contraries". Later, however, Aristotle suggests the Phoenicias wind for the SSE, but suggests nothing for SSW. So, seen this way, Aristotle really has an asymmetric windrose of ten winds, as two winds are effectively missing or only local.
North Aparctias
the top meridian
North-Northeast Meses the polar "rise"
Northeast Caecias the summer sunrise
East Apeliotes the equinox sunrise
Southeast Eurus
the winter sunrise
South-Southeast No wind
South Notos the bottom meridian
South-Southwest No wind
Southwest Lips the winter sunset
West Zephyrus the equinox sunset
Northwest Argestes
,
Sciron 		the summer sunset
North-Northwest Thrascias the polar "set"

Notice that in the Aristotelean system, old Eurus is shunted from its traditional position in the cardinal East by Apeliotes, meaning "from the Sun" or from "the heat of the Sun". Old Boreas is mentioned only as an alternative name to Aparctias, which means "from the Bear", that is, the Ursa Major, the Arctic circle. Among the new winds are the Argestes meaning "clearing" or "brightening", a reference to the northwest wind sweeping away clouds. Argestes's variants, Olympias and Sciron are local Athenian names, a reference to Mount Olympus and the Sciros rocks in Megara. The remaining winds also seem to be geographical. Caecias means from Caicus, a river in Mysia, a region northeast of the Aegean. Lips means "from Libya", to the southwest of Greece. Phoenicias comes "from Phoenicia" and Thrascias from Thrace. Finally, Meses might simply mean "middle", presumably because it was a half-wind.
The implication of reading Thrascias and Meses as half-winds, and the others as principal winds, is that this implies Aristotle's construction is asymmetric. Specifically, the half-winds would be at 22½° on either side of the North, while the principal eight would be at 45° angles from each other. However, an alternative hypothesis is that they will be more equally spaced around 30° from each other. 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. Using his alphabetical notation, Aristotle notes that during the summer solstice the sun rises at Z and sets at E ; during the equinox, it rises at B and sets at A, and finally during the winter solstice it rises at Δ and sets at Γ. So drawn on a compass rose, Aristotle's explanation yields four parallels:
Assuming the viewer is centered at Athens, it has been calculated that this construction would yield a symmetric compass rose with approximately 30° angles all around.
If set out on a compass card, Aristotle's system could be conceived of as a twelve-wind rose with four cardinal winds, four "solstitial winds", two "polar winds" and two "non-winds".
Aristotle explicitly groups Aparctias and the half-winds Thrascias and Meses together as "north winds" and Argestes and Zephyrus together as "west winds" — but he goes on to note that both the north and west winds could be classified as "generally northerly", since they all tend to be cold. Similarly Lips and Notos are "south winds" and Eurus and Apeliotes are "east winds", but once again, both south and east winds are "generally southerly" because are all relatively warm. With this general classification, Aristotle manages to account for the archaic Greek two-wind system.
The exception to this system is Caecias, which Aristotle notes is "half north and half east", and thus neither generally northern nor generally southern. The local Phoenicias, is also designated as "half south and half east".
Aristotle goes on to discuss the meteorological properties of the winds, e.g. that the winds on the NW-SE axis are generally dry, while the NE-SW winds are wet. N and NNE bring snow. Winds from the whole northwestern sector are described as cold, strong, cloud-clearing winds that can bring lightning and hurricanes with them. Aristotle also makes special note of the periodic bending summer Etesian winds, which comes from different directions depending on where the observer lives.
Aristotle had aggrandized the wind system beyond Homer to ten winds, but he left it unbalanced. It would be left to subsequent geographers to either add two more winds to make it into a symmetric 12-wind compass, or subtract two winds to make it into a symmetric 8-wind compass.

Theophrastus

of Eresos, Aristotle's successor in the Peripatetic school, in his On Weather Signs and "On Winds", adopted the same wind system as Aristotle, with only some slight differences, e.g. Theophrastus misspelled Thrascias as "Thracias" and seemed to distinguish between Apractias and Boreas.
In the pseudo-Aristotelean fragment Ventorum Situs, there is an attempt to derive the etymology of the winds. As they are often named after a particular locality from where they seem to blow, different places in the Hellenistic world have come up with variant local names for the winds. In the list given in the Ventorum Situs:
The Greek-Roman physician Agathemerus, in his Geographia, gives the eight principal winds. But Agathemerus goes on to note that nearly five hundred years earlier, the navigator Timosthenes of Rhodes had developed a system of 12 winds by adding four winds to the eight. .
Timosthenes's list was Aparctias, Boreas, Caecias, Apeliotes, Eurus, "Phoenicias is also called Euronotos", Notos, "Leuconotos alias Libonotos", Lips, Zephyrus, Argestes and "Thrascias alias Circius".
In many ways, Timosthenes marks a significant step in the evolution of the compass rose. Depending on how Ventorum Situs is dated, Timosthenes can be credited with turning Aristotle's asymmetric ten-wind compass into a symmetric twelve-wind compass, by introducing the SSW wind omitted by Aristotle and Theophrastus and assigning the compound "Euronotos" in place of the local Phoenicias. His highlighting of the Italian "Circius" as a major variant of Thrascias could be the first indication of the notorious Mistral wind of the west Mediterranean. Another major change in Timoesthenes is that he shunts Boreas out of the North position and into NNE – which will become customary in later authors.
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. Timosthenes assigns each of the 12 winds to geographical locations and peoples :
Modern scholars to conjecture that Timosthenes, in his lost periplus, might have made ample use of these winds for sailing directions.
The pseudo-Aristotelean work De Mundo, the winds are named practically identically to Timosthenes. The differences of De Mundo from Timosthenes are that it introduces Libophoenix as another name for Libonotos ; two alternates to Argestes are mentioned – Iapyx and Olympias , like Aristotle, De Mundo refers to a collective of north winds, the Boreae.

Eratosthenes and the Tower of Winds

It is said that the geographer Eratosthenes of Cyrene, realizing that many winds presented only slight variations, reduced twelve winds down to eight principal winds. Eratosthenes's own work has been lost, but the story is reported by Vitruvius, who goes on to say Eratosthenes came to this conclusion in the course of measuring the circumference of the earth, and felt there were really only eight equally sized sectors, and that other winds were but local variations of these eight principal winds. If true, that would make Eratosthenes the inventor of the eight-wind compass rose.
It is worth noting that Eratosthenes was a disciple of Timosthenes and is said to have drawn principally from his work. But they part ways on this. Both recognized that Aristotle's ten-wind rose was unbalanced, but while Timosthenes restored balance by adding two winds to make it a symmetric twelve, Eratosthenes deducted two winds to make it a symmetric eight.
It seems that, in practical appeal, Eratosthenes's reduction may have won the day. The famous "Tower of the Winds" in Athens exhibits only eight winds rather than the ten of Aristotle or the twelve of Timosthenes. The tower is said to have been built by Andronicus of Cyrrhus but is commonly dated anytime after 200 BCE. It gives as its eight winds Boreas, Caecias, Apeliotes, Eurus, Notos, Lips, Zephyrus and Sciron. Boreas' reappearance in the North slot in place of Aparctias is notable. The figures on the tower are represented figuratively as gods. It is believed the tower was topped with a weather vane.

Roman

The Greek wind system was adopted by the Romans, partly under their Greek nomenclature, but increasingly also under new Latin names. Roman poet Virgil, in his Georgics refers to several of the winds by their old Greek names, and introduces a few new Latin names – notably, "black Auster", "cold Aquilo" and "frigid Caurus".

Seneca

The Roman writer Seneca, in his Naturales quaestiones, mentions the Greek names of some of the major winds, and goes on to note that Roman scholar Varro had said there were twelve winds. As given by Seneca, the Latin names of the twelve winds are:
North Septentrio
North-Northeast Aquilo
Northeast Caeciassame as Greek
East Subsolanus
Southeast Vulturnuswith variant Eurus also used.
South-Southeast EuronotusSame as Timosthenes
South Austerwith Notus used as variant
South-Southwest LibonotusSame as Timosthenes
Southwest Africus
West Favoniuswith variant Zephyrus also used.
Northwest Coruswith variant Argestes also used
North-Northwest Thrasciassame as Greek.

.
Oddly, Seneca says the meridian line arises from Euronotus, not Auster, and that the "highest" point in the north is Aquilo, not Septentrio. This might imply an awareness of magnetic declination, the difference between the magnetic north and the true north.

Pliny

in his Natural History after noting that twelve was an exaggeration, goes on to note that the "moderns" have reduced it to eight. He lists them as Septentrio, Aquilo, Subsolanus, Vulturnus, Auster, Africus, Favonius and Corus.
Notice that Caecias is not part of this octet. Instead, Pliny puts the half-wind Aquilo there instead. It seems Pliny is aware Aquilo is a half-wind, because since he says it lies "in between Septentrio and the summer sunrise". If the first version is taken, this means Pliny's eight-wind compass is asymmetric. Pliny goes on to mention that Aquilo is also "named Aparctias and Boreas".
When he goes on to discuss half-winds, Pliny re-introduces Caecis as lying "between Aquilo and Subsolanus", thus restoring it effectively to its NE position. Evidently reading Aristotle, Pliny tries to insert long-lost Meses again "between Boreas and Caecis", thus placing Meses in a position that would be called "Northeast by north". Confusing matters, in a later chapter, Pliny goes on to say that Aquilo, in the summer, turns into the Etesian winds, the periodic wind already referred to by Aristotle. Pliny also mentions, for the other half-winds, Phoenicias, Libonotus, and Thrascias.
It is apparent Pliny had recently read Aristotle and sought to resurrect some of the abandoned Aristotelean names, albeit they appear rather awkwardly when inserted into the contemporary 12-wind compass schema.

Aulus Gellius

In his Attic Nights, the Athens-raised Latin writer Aulus Gellius, possibly inspired by the Tower of the Winds in that city, reduces the Latin rose to from twelve to eight winds, the principal winds, for which he gives both the Latin and Greek terms. He lists them as:
Among the novelties is the disappearance of Caecias, although he does make a later note that "Caecias" is mentioned in Aristotle. Aquilo/Boreas seem well-enthroned at NE. Another surprise is the re-emergence of Eurus in the East, where it has not been seen since Homer. 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". With Eurus now absent in the SE, Euronotus is promoted to the vacant SE position. Finally, a new name, Caurus, is introduced as the NW wind. This is almost certainly a misspelling of Corus.
Aulus Gellius gives some information about local winds. He mentions Circius as a local wind in Gaul, known for its dizzying, circular motion, and notes its alternate spelling Cercius in Hispania He also notes Iapyx and periodic regional Etesian winds and the "Prodromi".

Vatican table

The "Vatican table" is a marble Roman anemoscope dating from the 2nd or 3rd Century CE, held by the Vatican Museums. Divided into twelve equal sides, on each of its sides, it has inscribed the names of the classical winds, both in Greek and in Latin. The Vatican table lists them as follows:
WindLatin inscriptionGreek inscriptionGreek read as:Notes
NSeptentrioΑΠΑΡΚΙΑϹAparkias Greek misspelling.
NNEAquiloΒΟΡΕΑϹBoreas as in Timosthenes
NEVulturnusΚΑΙΚΙΑϹCaecias Vulturnus is in wrong place.
This should be 'Caecias'.
ESolanusΑΦΗΛΙΩΤΗϹApheliotes Greek misspelling.
New Latin name.
SEEurusΕΥΡΟϹEurus New Latin name. Vulturnus should be here.
SSEEuroausterΕΥΡΟΝΟΤΟϹEuronotos )New Latin name
SAusterΝΟΤΟϹNotos
SSWAustroafricusΛΙΒΟΝΟΤΟϹLibonotos New Latin name
SWAfricusΛΙΨLips
WFavoniusΖΕΦΥΡΟϹZephyrus
NWChorusΙΑΠΥΞIapyx Latin name misspelled
NNWCirciusΘΡΑΚΙΑϹThrakias Greek misspelled,
New Latin name,
from Timosthenes

There are several spelling mistakes, both in Greek and Latin. 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. This error will be repeated later. There is also a significant new Latin name, Austroafricus, in place of Libonotus, and Circius in place of Thrascias. The old "Iapyx" also makes a comeback.

Isidore of Seville

Centuries later, after the fall of Rome, Isidore of Seville set about compiling much of Classical knowledge in his Etymologiae. In the chapter on winds, Isidore provided a list practically identical to that of the marble Roman amenoscope held at the Vatican. 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. As such, his system of winds perhaps ought to be considered before the others. But Seneca quotes Varro as the source of his 12-wind system, and Varro wrote before Vitruvius. Moreover, Vitruvius's system is sufficiently distinct and peculiar to defy comparison with the others, and merits treatment in a special category all its own.
Vitruvius, in his De architectura, makes a rather approving mention of Eratosthenes's reduction of the winds from twelve to eight principal winds. But Vitruvius then goes on to note there are many other winds, only slightly different from the core eight, which have been given names of their own in the past. In a rather hurried fashion, Vitruvius relates an ample list of two variations on either side of the eight principal winds, which yield a wind rose of 24 winds. Although the 24 winds might be easier to draw equally spaced at 15° from each other, they are easier to list using modern half- and quarter-wind notation. No insinuation about degrees should be read into either case :
NSeptentrio
N by EGallicus
NNESupernas
NEAquilo
ENEBoreas
E by NCarbas
EastSolanus
E by SOrnithiae
ESEEurocircias
SEEurus
SSEVulturnus
S by ELeuconotos
SAuster
S by WAltanus
SSWLibonotus
SWAfricus
WSWSubvesperus
W by SArgestes
WFavonius
W by NEtesiae
WNWCircius
NWCaurus
NNWCorus
N by WThrascias

Many of the names in Vitruvius's list have appeared before elsewhere. Among the changes worth noting is the insertion of Gallicus and Supernas in the very NE, nudging Aquilo to the NE. Old Boreas is shunted further east – it has never been so far displaced from its ancient perch in the North. Caecias disappears from the NE altogether. Carbas, already noted as a Cyrene variant for the SE, is placed in the northeast quadrant. Latin Vulturnus is rightfully in the southeast, adjoining its Greek alternate Eurus. Greek Argestes is given here separately, adjoining Favonius in the west, albeit below its usual northwesterly quadrant. Leuconotos, previously a variant for Libonotus, is separated off and sent to the southeast quadrant. There is nonetheless a similar-sounding Eurocircias nearby in the southeast, which might be the Biblical euroaquilo.
by an anonymous geographer from Ravenna, c. 650 CE, gridded by a 24-wind compass
Among other things worth noting, Solanus does not have its sub prefix and the wind Caurus is inserted between Corus and Circius. Notice that Caurus and Corus are treated differently here, rather than one as just a misspelling of the other. Altanus is probably a local reference to a seaborne breeze.
Vitruvius's 24-wind list does not seem to have impressed later Roman writers, who all went back to 12- or 8-wind systems. Vitruvius's treatment has a touch of carelessness. He does not bother assigning Latin-to-Greek equivalents, give variants or provide any descriptions of the winds. 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 into non-traditional positions, 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. One can almost detect a touch of mockery in his construction, almost as if to ridicule elaborate wind systems that try to push beyond the basic eight winds.
Although usually ignored, Vitruvius's list of 24 winds re-emerged occasionally. Vitruvius's list of winds was articulated again in Georgius Agricola's De Re Metallica.

Medieval Transition

The Classical age ended with the struggle between the 12-wind rose and the 8-wind rose unresolved. Loosely speaking, it seemed as if classically minded geographers favored the 12-wind system, but those of more practical bent preferred the 8-wind system. 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.

Charlemagne

The Frankish chronicler Einhard, in his Vita Karoli Magni, claimed that Charlemagne himself adopted the classical 12-wind system, replacing the Greek-Latin names with an entirely new set of Germanic names of his own invention. Einhard's lists Charlemagne's nomenclature as follows :
Charlemagne's nomenclature resolves the half-wind dilemma by word order – Northeast and Eastnorth – giving neither a priority over the other.
The Frankish suffix -roni means "running from". The etymology of Nord is uncertain ; Ost means "place of shining", Sund, from "Sun-tha" meaning "the sunned place" and Vuest from Vues-tha meaning the "dwelling place" ).
Charlemagne's nomenclature is clearly the source of the modern cardinal directions as found in most west European languages, both Germanic as well as Romance ones.

Arab translators

In the Early Middle Ages, Arab scholars came into contact with the Greek works. Abu Yahya Ibn al-Batriq and Hunayn ibn Ishaq translated Aristotle's Meteorology, and scholars like Ibn Sinna and Ibn Rushd provided commentaries on it and expanded on it for their own systems.
The 9th-century pseudo-Olympiodorus's Commentary on Aristotle's Meteorology gave the following Arabic names for the 12 Greek winds:
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 of Mediterranean seafarers. The directions, maps and nautical magnetic compass, which emerged almost simultaneously, were articulated in an eight-point compass system, with the following names:
From these eight principal winds, 16-wind roses could be constructed with half-winds which merely combined the names of the principal winds. 32-wind roses, which were already present in the early 1300s charts, relied on placing quarter-winds in between.
The eight compass winds are evidently from the Italian-tinged lingua franca in the Mediterranean Sea during the High and Late Middle Ages. Of the eight winds, only two can be traced to prior Classical winds – Ostra from the Latin Auster, and Libeccio from the Greek Lips – but the others seem to be largely conceived autonomously.
Levante and Ponente are self-evidently related to the sun's position, but are etymologically quite different from the classical terms. Tramontana, Italianate for "over the mountains", most probably relates to the Alps of northern Italy, has nothing to do with the classical Aparctias-Septentrio. The Maestro is, as noted, the west Mediterranean Mistral, a wind already given in the Latin rose as Circius, but the name here is novel.
Two Arabic words stand out: Scirocco from the Arabic al-Sharq and the variant Garbino, from the Arabic al-Gharb . In addition, there is the puzzle of Greco. As Greece lies to the southeast of Italy, this suggests strongly that the Greco wind was named in the south Mediterranean, most probably in 10th- or 11th-century Arab Sicily. A substantial part of sailing knowledge acquired by the Medieval Italian seafarers came not from their Roman ancestors, but rather from Arab seafarers via Arab-Norman Sicily.
While sailors probably could not care less about the source, scholars trained in the classics of Isidore and Aristotle, were not so easily won over. The classical 12-wind rose was still being taught in the academies well into the 15th century, e.g. in Pierre d'Ailly's Ymago Mundo. Several scholastically constructed mappa mundi inserted the classical 12-winds. Among these, are the 8th-century Beatus of Liébana mappa mundi, the 10th-century Reichenau T-O map, the 12th-century Henry of Mainz mappa mundi, the 13th-century Ebstorf map, and the 14th-century Ranulf Higden world map. Many mariners' portolan charts tipped their hat to classical and clerical authority by inserting indicators of the 12 classical winds on their nautical charts – not, of course, on a compass rose, but rather cartographers might inscribe the names or initials of the classical winds on small colored disks or coins, scattering them along the edges of the map, well out of the way.
, in his Liber Additamentorum
As early as 1250, the English scholastic Matthew Paris, in his Liber Accidentalist, attempted to reconcile the classical 12 winds he was taught with the "new" Mediterranean wind rose. In one effort, Matthew Paris assigned the 12 classical names to N, E, S, W and the half-winds, leaving the principal diagonals NE, SE, SW and NW vacant. Thus Septentrio to N, Aquilo to NNE, Vulturnus to ENE, Subsolanus to E, Eurus to ESE, Euroauster to SSE, Auster to S, and so on. . In a second effort, he decided to conjure up 16 classical-sounding names for all 16 winds of the mariner's rose. In his construction, he seemed to contemplate the following:
But Paris did not go beyond jotting these names down on a corner of the manuscript.
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. In Homem's assignment:
The following table summarizes the chronological evolution of the names of the winds in classical antiquity. Changes in name or position from the prior listing are highlighted in bold. We omit Vitruvius's 24-wind list because it is too idiosyncratic.
GreekNNNENEESESSESSSWSWWNWNNW
Cardinal PointsArctos
Anatole
Mesembria
Dysis
Homer
Boreas
Eurus
Notos
Zephyrus
Homer
BoreasEurusApeliotesNotosAgrestesZephyrus
AristotleAparctias
or Boreas		MesesCaeciasApeliotesEurus
or Euronoti		No wind
NotosNo windLipsZephyrusArgestes,
Thrascias
Aristotle
Ἀπαρκτίας,
Βορέας		ΜέσηςΚαικίαςἈπηλιώτηςΕὖρος,
Εὐρόνοτοι		ΝότοςΛίψΖέφυροςἈργέστης,
Θρασκίας
TheophrastusAparctias
or Boreas		MesesCaeciasApeliotesEurusNotosLipsZephyrusArgestesThrakias
Ventorum SitusBoreasMesesCaeciasApeliotesEurusOrthonotosNotosLeuconotosLipsZephyrusIapyx
or Argestes		Thrakias
TimosthenesAparctiasBoreasCaeciasApeliotesEurusEuronotosNotosLeuconotos
or Libonotos		LipsZephyrusArgestesThrascias
or Circius
De MundoAparctiasBoreasCaeciasApeliotesEurusEuronotosNotosLibonotos
or Libophoenix		LipsZephyrusArgestes
or Iapyx,
or Olympias		Thrascias
or Circius
Tower of the WindsBoreasCaeciasApeliotesEurusNotosLipsZephyrusSciron
RomanNNNENEESESSESSSWSWWNWNNW
SenecaSeptentrioAquiloCaeciasSubsolanusVulturnus
or Eurus		EuronotusAuster
or Notus		LibonotusAfricusFavonius
or Zephyrus		Corus
or Argestes		Thrascias
PlinySeptentrioAquilo or
Boreas or
Aparctias
CaeciasSubsolanusVulturnusPhoeniciasAusterLibonotusAfricusFavoniusCorusThrascias
Aulus GelliusSeptentrio
Aparctias		Aquilo
Boreas		Eurus
Apeliotes
Subsolanus		Vulturnus
Euronotus		Auster
Notus		Africus
Lips		Favonius
Zephyrus		Caurus
Argestes
Vatican TableSeptentrio
Aparkias 		Aquilo
Boreas 		Vulturnus
Caecias 		Solanus
Apheliotes 		Eurus
Eurus 		Euroauster
Euronotos 		Auster
Notos 		Austroafricus
Libonotos 		Africus
Lips 		Favonius
Zephyrus 		Chorus
Iapyx 		Circius
Thrakias
Isidore of SevilleSeptentrioAquiloVulturnusSubsolanusEurusEuroausterAusterAustroafricusAfricusFavoniusCorusCircius
MedievalNNNENEESESSESSSWSWWNWNNW
CharlemagneNordroniNordostroniOstnordroniOstroniOstsundroniSundostroniSundroniSundvuestroniVuestsundroniVuestroniVuestnordroniNordvuestroni
Hunayn ibn Ishaqšimālmisnisşabanazyabnu'āmājanūbhayfhur jūjdabūrmahwajirbiyā'
Diogo HomemTramontanaGreco-TramontanaGrecoLevanteSciroccoOstro-SciroccoOstroOstro-LibeccioLibeccioPonenteMaestroMaestro-Tramontana