Winged son of Boreas the North Wind by Orithyia, daughter of Erechtheus, and twin brother of Calais. He sailed with the Argonauts and, taking to the air, drove the Harpies away from the blind seer Phineus.1
Apollodorus tells that Boreas carried off Orithyia as she played by the Ilissus river and that she bore him the winged sons Zetes and Calais, who took their place in the muster of the Argo beside Castor and Pollux, Heracles, and the rest. At the table of the blind Phineus, whom the Harpies plagued by snatching and befouling his food, the winged brothers drew their swords and pursued the creatures through the air; for it was fated that the Harpies should perish by the sons of Boreas, and the sons of Boreas die when they could not overtake what they pursued. Apollodorus reports that the brothers met their end chasing the Harpies, in keeping with this doom, but cites Acusilaus for the rival account that Heracles killed them in Tenos.2
Apollonius names them in his roll of Argonauts: Zetes and Calais, sons of Boreas, whom Orithyia, daughter of Erechtheus, bore to the Thracian wind on the verge of wintry Thrace, after he snatched her from Cecropia as she whirled in the dance hard by the stream of the Ilissus. In the poem Zetes is the speaker of the brothers, taking the grief-worn Phineus by the hand and pitying his burden of sorrows. When the Harpies swooped on the laid table the two pursued them on the wing and grazed them with their very fingertips, and would have torn them apart at the Floating Islands had not swift Iris turned them back with an oath; Zetes then returned to recount how far they had driven the creatures and how the goddess stayed their hand.3
Ovid lingers on their nature: the twins were born wingless, void of feathers and soft down, and grew their eagle's plumage only when golden hair and beard came upon them in manhood — and so fledged they joined the Argonauts and put out to sea in the first ship after a fleece bright with shining wool.4
Hyginus makes Zetes the son of the wind Aquilo and Orithyia, winged on head and feet and dark-blue of lock, a helmsman of the Argo who with his brother drove off the three Harpies — Aellopous, Celaeno, and Ocypete — from Phineus; he records too that at the funeral games of Pelias, held by Acastus, Zetes won the long foot-race.5
Pausanias confirms the deed the brothers were remembered for: on the throne at Amyclae, Calais and Zetes were figured driving the Harpies away from Phineus.6
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the spine ignites as you read · hover a bond on the card — every mention of them lights in the story
