Boreasmi
or
Boreasmus (
βορεασμοί or
βορεασμός). A festival celebrated by the Athenians in honour of
Boreas, which, as Herodotus (vii. 189) seems to think, was instituted during the Persian War,
when the Athenians, being commanded by an oracle to invoke their
γαμβρὸς ἐπίκουρος, prayed to Boreas. The fleet of Xerxes was soon afterwards
almost entirely destroyed by a north wind, near Cape Sepias, and the grateful Athenians
erected to his honour a temple on the banks of the Ilissus. Possibly, however, this merely
revived an earlier celebration. A similar festival of Boreas was celebrated annually at
Megalopolis, and by the Thurians. See Aelian,
V. H. xii. 61.
