Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Zetes.
The gallery
The Boreads Rescuing Phineus from the Harpies (red-figure column-krater)
The Leningrad Painter, c. 460 BC
On this Attic red-figure column-krater in the Louvre (inv. G364), the winged Boread brothers Zetes and Calais are shown in furious flight, driving the snatching Harpies away from the table of the blind Thracian seer Phineus. The sons of Boreas, the North Wind, were uniquely able to pursue the wind-swift monsters through the air, and as Argonauts they delivered Phineus from the curse that had let the Harpies foul his every meal. The painter sets the two sprinting youths, wings outstretched, in dynamic pursuit, capturing the moment that makes the Boreads heroes of the Argo's voyage. It is the single most celebrated ancient image of Zetes and his twin in action.
Calaïs et Zétès délivrent Phinée des Harpies (Calais and Zetes Deliver Phineus from the Harpies)
Bernard Picart, 1733
This copper engraving by the French illustrator Bernard Picart (1673-1733), made as a plate for an edition of Ovid's myths, reimagines the rescue of Phineus in the elegant Baroque idiom of the early eighteenth century. The winged Boreads Zetes and Calais swoop down with drawn weapons to scatter the harpies tormenting the aged, sightless seer, who recoils amid the chaos of his ruined feast. Picart translates the archaic vase tradition into a richly modeled scene of swirling drapery and beating wings, preserving the brothers' defining feat: that as sons of the North Wind they alone could chase the storm-spirits from the sky and free Phineus from his torment.
Phineus with the Boreads (red-figure column-krater, detail)
The Leningrad Painter, c. 460 BC
A second view of the Louvre column-krater (inv. G364) attributed to the Leningrad Painter, showing the blind seer Phineus seated at his despoiled table while the winged Boreads close in to rout the Harpies. This angle foregrounds the figure of Phineus and the encounter itself, complementing the better-known view of the brothers in flight. The vase belongs to the wider fifth-century Attic interest in the Argonautic saga, in which Zetes and Calais earn their place among the heroes by performing a service no ordinary mortal could: pursuing the wind-borne Harpies on their own inherited wings and lifting the curse that had starved the Thracian king.