Classical compass winds local reference to a seaborne breeze. Vitruvius's 24-wind list does not seem to have impressed later Roman writers (Seneca, Pliny, etc.), who all went back to 12- or 8-wind systems. Vitruvius's treatment has a touch of carelessness. He does not bother assigning Latin-to-Greek equivalents, give variants or provide any descriptions of the winds. It seems as if he is merely making a long list of all the wind names he has heard, giving each their own separate position in a single system, regardless of duplication. The shifts of some old Greek winds (Boreas, Eurus, Argestes, Leuconotos) into non-traditional positions (sometimes
Greek mythology Petrarch, Boccaccio and Dante in Italy. In Northern Europe, Greek mythology never took the same hold of the visual arts, but its effect was very obvious on literature. The English imagination was fired by Greek mythology starting with Chaucer and John Milton and continuing through Shakespeare to Robert Bridges in the 20th century. Racine in France and Goethe in Germany revived Greek drama, reworking the ancient myths. Although during the Enlightenment of the 18th century reaction against Greek myth spread throughout Europe, the myths continued to provide an important source of raw material for dramatists, including those who wrote the