Now as to the time that you asked about, it seems to me most correct to say that one should hardly venture over-seas later than the beginning of October. For at that time the sea begins to grow very restless, and the tempests always increase in violence as autumn passes and winter approaches. And about the time when we date the sixteenth of October, the east wind begins to look sorrowful and thinks himself disgraced, now that his headgear, the golden crown, is taken away. He puts a cloud-covered hat on his head and breathes heavily and violently, as if mourning a recent loss. But when the southeast wind sees how vexed his neighbor is, he is stricken with a double grief: the one sorrow is that he fears the same deprivation as the east wind has suffered; the other is grief over the misfortunes of his good and estimable neighbor. Stirred by the distress of a resentful mind, he knits his brows under the hiding clouds and blows the froth violently about him. When the south wind sees the wrath of his near neighbors, he wraps himself in a cloud-lined mantle in which he conceals his treasures and his wealth of warm rays and blows vigorously as if in terrifying defence. And when the southwest wind observes how friendship has cooled, now that the truce is broken, he sobs forth his soul’s grief in heavy showers, rolls his eyes above his tear-moistened beard, puffs his cheeks under the cloudy helmet, blows the chilling scud violently forward, leads forth huge billows, wide-breasted waves, and breakers that yearn for ships, and orders all the tempests to dash forward in angry contest.
But when the west wind observes that a wrathful blast and a sorrowful sighing are coming across to him from the east, whence formerly he was accustomed to receive shining beams with festive gifts, he understands clearly that the covenant is broken and that all treaties are renounced. Deeply grieved and pained because of the unpeace, he puts on a black robe of mourning over which he pulls a cloud-gray cloak, and, sitting with wrinkled nose and pouting lips, he breathes heavily with regretful care. And when the ill-tempered northwest wind observes how sorrowful his neighbors look, and sees how he himself has suffered the loss of the evening beauty which he was formerly accustomed to display, he shows at once his temper in stern wrath: he knits his brows fiercely, throws rattling hail violently about, and sends forth the rolling thunder with terrifying gleams of lightning, thus displaying on his part a fearful and merciless anger. But when the north wind misses the friendliness and the kind gifts which he was wont to get from the south wind, he seeks out his hidden treasures and displays the wealth that he has most of: he brings out a dim sheen which glitters with frost, places an ice-cold helmet on his head above his frozen beard, and blows hard against the hail-bearing cloud-heaps. But the chill northeast wind sits wrathful with snowy beard and breathes coldly through his wind-swollen nostrils. Glaring fiercely under his rimy brows, he wrinkles his cheeks beneath his cold and cloudy temples, puffs his jowl with his icy tongue, and blows the piercing drift-snow vigorously forth.