Snatched away by the blasts of solar wind

Several ancient texts demonstrate the existence of an analogical relation between the annual solar movement and the life-cycle of humans. The interaction between these two conceptual domains is derived from the postulated analogy between an observable physical phenomenon interpreted in personalistic terms and the unobservable human afterlife destiny, explaining the latter in terms of the former. This phenomenon is exemplified in several variants of the story treating the Boreads' pursuit of Harpies, which belongs to a wider cluster of myths that engage with certain eschatological tenets in the form of stories of mythic abductions. These stories include the abductions performed by the Harpies, but also the north wind-god Boreas and the goddess of dawn, who all represent paradigmatic variants embedded in a relatively stable syntagmatic structure. The stories treating these mythic abductions exemplify a rare phenomenon in Greek myth, which involves their apparent structuring upon the phenomenon of solar movement.