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Tower
Mon Feb 21, 2005
Listen in RealAudio 
At the base of the Acropolis, the great hill in Athens that supports the Parthenon, sits an
octagonal marble building. Today, it is surrounded by a bustling, major city, but a
couple thousand years ago it was center to an important part of everyday life. It is a
monument to Aeolus: The Tower of the Winds. Hi, I’m Bryan Yeaton for The Weather
Notebook.
The tower was probably built around 50 BC, although some sources put the date a
century earlier. It is 48-feet tall, and once sported a wind vane at the top, which could be
the first real such instrument, according to some archaeologists. Its primary use was
as a horologion, or a timekeeper, and it has a combination of sundials and a clepsydra
or water clock.
Each of the eight sides represents a different wind, coming from both cardinal and
sub-cardinal directions, as a wind coming from a certain direction often had its own
characteristics. At the Tower of the Winds, they have their own characters, too, as
Greeks personified the winds. Probably the most famous of these is Boreas, depicted
as a heavily cloaked man blowing into a conch shell, signifying the cold and bluster of
the North Wind.
Other entities on the tower include Zephyros, the West Wind scattering flowers, Kaikos,
who dumps hailstones from the Northeast, and Notos, the South Wind and bringer of
rain. The Greeks apparently used their knowledge of wind to design their cities. It is
believed that buildings were erected so as to better disrupt the strong winds as they
poured into town.
The tower was excavated in the middle 1800’s and is a popular tourist attraction amid
the Agora.
The Weather Notebook is supported by Subaru of America, and all of our past shows
can be found at our website: www.weathernotebook.org.
Today's Links
The Tower of the Winds
http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/TowerWinds.htm
North American Sundial Society
http://sundials.org/links/local/tower/tower.htm
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