Winged Boreads (WAS: Re: heracles alienomachy?)

On Tuesday, April 27, 2004, James Butrica wrote

: I can think of one place where Hercules is associated with
: a pair of winged figures, though not as directly as this image
: suggests: in Propertius 1.20, an account of the rape of Hylas,
: Hylas is pestered by Zetes and Calais, the winged Boreads
: (winged, I believe, only in Propertius), but Hylas has to fight
: them off himself.

Propertius is certainly not the only poet to have winged Boreads:  they
appear at least as early as Apollonios Rhodios, *Argonautika* 1.211-23.  In
Latin (though later than Propertius), the Boreads are also winged in Ovid,
*Metamorphoses* 6.711-21 (where their wings develop along with their beards
at maturity!) and in Valerius Flaccus, *Argonautica* 4.501-2, 527-8.

By the way, in Apollonios, Herakles is responsible for the death of the
Boreads:  he will kill them as they return from the funeral games for Pelias
(AR 1.1300-9).


Terrence Lockyer
Johannesburg, South Africa