Īccording to Nonnus, Aura's surviving child by Dionysus, is Iacchus, a minor deity connected with the Eleusinian mysteries, although other accounts have Iacchus, when not identified with Dionysus himself, the son of Demeter or Persephone. Her breasts became the spouts of falling water, the stream was her body, the flowers her hair, her bow the horn of the horned River in bull-shape, the bowstring changed into a rush and the whistling arrows into vocal reeds, the quiver passed through to the muddy bed of the river and, changed to a hollow channel, poured its sounding waters. Aura then drowns herself in the river Sangarios, where Zeus turned her into a spring: However, Artemis spirits the other child safely away.
So Aura seizes one of the boys, flings it high into the air, and after it falls back to hit the ground, she eats it. She gives them to a lioness to eat, but it refuses to do so. After a painful labor, Aura gives birth to twin boys. When Aura awakes, discovering she is no longer a virgin, but not knowing who is responsible, enraged, she "made empty the huts of the mountainranging herdsmen and derenched the hills with blood". But knowing that he will never be able to seduce the obdurately virginal Aura, Dionysus drugs Aura with wine, ties her up, and rapes her while she is unconscious and unmoving. Dionysus is made mad with desire for Aura, by an arrow from the bow of Eros. Deeply offended, the angry Artemis goes to Nemesis, the goddess of divine retribution, who arranges for Aura to be punished by losing her virginity. Aura then teases Artemis, saying that her breasts were better than Artemis's, since hers were small and round like a man's, while Artemis's were large and voluptuous like a woman's, and so belied Artemis' supposed "unviolated maidenhood". For relief from the midday heat, the hunting party stops for a swim. Her name was like her doings: Aura the Windmaid could run most swiftly, keeping pace with the highland winds. No, she carried her tawny quiver to shoot down hillranging tribes of ravening lions, with her shafts that were death to wild beasts. Often in hunting she ran down the wild bear, and sent her swift lance shooting against the lioness, but she slew no prickets and shot no hares. She grew up taller than her yearsmates, a lovely rosy-armed thing, ever a friend of the hills. She kept aloof from the notions of unwarlike maids, like a younger Artemis, this daughter of Lelantos for the father of this stormfoot girl was ancient Lelantos the Titan, who wedded Periboia, a daughter of Oceanos a manlike maid she was, who knew nothing of Aphrodite. She was yet unacquainted with love, a comrade of the Archeress.
There grew Aura the mountain maiden of Rhyndacos, and hunted over the foothills of rocky Dindymon. Then left the halls of Pallene and Thracian Boreas, and went on to Rheia’s house, where the divine court of the prolific Cybele stood on Phrygian soil. She was "Aura the Windmaid", as fast as the wind, "the mountain maiden of Rhyndacos", a "manlike" virgin, "who knew nothing of Aphrodite", and huntress, who "ran down the wild bear" and "ravening lions", and "kept aloof from the notions of unwarlike maids".
Īura was a resident of Phrygia and companion of the goddess Artemis. Nonnus seems to imply that Aura's mother was the wife of Lenatos, the Oceanid nymph Periboia, although elsewhere, he calls Aura the "daughter of Cybele". In this account, Aura is the nymph daughter of the Titan Lelantos. Nonnus' tells the story of the rape of Aura, by Dionysus, in the final book of his epic poem the Dionysiaca (early 5th century).