Orithyia gave Boreas two daughters, Chione and Cleopatra (the wife of Phineus) and two sons, Calais and Zetes, both known as the Boreads.[8] These sons grew wings like their father and joined the Argonauts in the quest for the golden fleece.[9]
Boreas, the north wind, fell in love with Orithyia. At first he attempted to woo her, but after failing at that he decided to take her by force, as violence felt more natural to him.[10] While she was playing by the Ilissos River,[11] Orithyia was carried off to Sarpedon's Rock, near the Erginos River in Thrace. There she was wrapped in a cloud and attacked.[12]Aeschylus wrote a satyr play about the abduction called Orithyia which has been lost.
Plato wrote somewhat mockingly that there may have been a rational explanation for her story. She may have been killed on the rocks of the river when a gust of northern wind came, and so she was said to have been 'taken by Boreas'. He also mentioned in another account that she was taken by Boreas not along the Ilissos, but from the Areopagus, a rock outcropping near the Acropolis where murderers were tried.[13] However, many scholars regard this as a later gloss.[14]
Plato also recounted that Orithyia was playing with a companion nymphPharmacea.[15]
Because she was in Thrace with Boreas, she did not die when her sisters who either committed suicide or were sacrificed so that Athens could win a war against Eleusis.[citation needed]
In the Posthomerica of Quintus Smyrnaeus, she gave Penthesileia a very swift horse when she visited Thrace.
[16]
Orithyia was later made into the goddess of cold mountain winds. It is said that prior to the destruction of a large number of barbarian ships due to weather during the Persian War, the Athenians offered sacrifices to Boreas and Oreithyia, praying for their assistance.[17]
Pindar, The Odes of Pindar including the Principal Fragments with an Introduction and an English Translation by Sir John Sandys, Litt.D., FBA. Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1937. Greek text available at the Perseus Digital Library.
Quintus Smyrnaeus, Posthomerica. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 2018. Vol. 19. Book 1.165-169.
Stephanus of Byzantium, Stephani Byzantii Ethnicorum quae supersunt, edited by August Meineike (1790-1870), published 1849. A few entries from this important ancient handbook of place names have been translated by Brady Kiesling. Online version at the Topos Text Project.
Suida, Suda Encyclopedia translated by Ross Scaife, David Whitehead, William Hutton, Catharine Roth, Jennifer Benedict, Gregory Hays, Malcolm Heath Sean M. Redmond, Nicholas Fincher, Patrick Rourke, Elizabeth Vandiver, Raphael Finkel, Frederick Williams, Carl Widstrand, Robert Dyer, Joseph L. Rife, Oliver Phillips and many others. Online version at the Topos Text Project.
