Aeolus

Also Known As: Greek Aiolos; also called Hippotades, “son of Hippotes”; keeper of the winds and king of the island of Aeolia
Region/Culture: Southern Europe
Mythos: Greek Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Gods and Deities
Mythical Attributes: By the grant of Zeus he can still any wind or rouse any wind at will, and he once sealed all of them but one inside a bag of ox-hide.
Role in Mythos: Aeolus is the steward of the winds to whom Odysseus, Hera, Iris and Virgil’s Juno turn whenever a voyage needs to be helped home or wrecked.
Relation to Humans: He gave Odysseus a month of hospitality and a fair wind for Ithaca, then drove him off as a man the gods hated when the gift was wasted. Later Greek writers turned him into a pious king of the Lipari islands who taught sailors to use sails and to read the coming winds from volcanic fire.

A bag made from the hide of a full-grown ox lies in the hold of a Greek ship, its neck tied with a glittering silver cord so tight that not a breath can leak out. Inside it is every wind in the world except one. The west wind, left outside on purpose, fills the sail and pushes the fleet steadily toward Ithaca for nine days and nine nights. The man who packed that bag is Aeolus, son of Hippotes, and in the Odyssey he is one of the few powers on that sea who give Odysseus exactly what he asks for. It goes about as well as everything else on that voyage.

Homer puts him on the Aeolian island, a floating island ringed by a wall of unbreakable bronze, with sheer rock rising above it. His household is small and very strange. He has twelve children, six daughters and six sons, and he has given the daughters to the sons as wives. The whole family feasts without end beside their father and their mother, and all day the hall is heavy with savoury smells and murmurous with music. At night each couple sleeps on inlaid bedsteads under coverlets. The deathless gods count him their friend. Homer never calls him a god.

What makes him matter is a single appointment. Zeus, Homer says, made him warden of all the winds, to still any of them or rouse any of them as he pleased. The word is tamies, a keeper or steward, not a lord. Aeolus did not make the winds, and Homer does not make him their father. He keeps them, the way a great house keeps its stores.

Odysseus reaches him after the cave of the Cyclops. For a whole month Aeolus entertains him and questions him about Troy, the Argive ships and the Achaeans’ voyages home, and when Odysseus asks for help he gives it without hesitation. He packs the winds into the ox-hide bag, stows it in Odysseus’s own ship, ties it with the silver cord, and gives the west wind alone the task of blowing the ships home. On the tenth day Ithaca heaves into sight, so close that the crew can see men tending their fires on shore. Odysseus, who has kept the steering-oar in his own hands the entire way, falls asleep. His men mutter that he wins friends and treasure everywhere while they go home empty-handed, and they decide the bag must be full of gold and silver. They untie it. Every wind comes out at once, and the storm drives the fleet across the whole distance it has just crossed, back to Aeolus’s shore.

The return visit is short. Odysseus walks up to the palace with two companions and finds the family at dinner again, and he sits down on the threshold by the doorposts. The household asks in amazement what malicious god has sent him back. Aeolus answers for all of them: away from this island, most despicable of creatures, for he is forbidden to welcome or help a man whom the blessed gods abhor. There is no second bag. The mythographer Apollodorus, retelling the scene centuries later, has him say simply that he could not save Odysseus while the gods had other ideas.

Homer’s steward grew into a god in the hands of later poets. In Apollonius of Rhodes, in the third century BC, Hera sends Iris to Aeolus, king of the winds, asking him to silence every breeze but a soft one from the west so that the Argo can reach the Phaeacians. In Quintus Smyrnaeus, writing much later, Zeus sends Hermes to him when the pyre of Achilles needs fanning, and Aeolus summons Boreas and Zephyrus. Later in the same poem Iris flies down to Aeolia, an isle of caves and echoing dungeons, and asks for a storm to wreck the Greeks sailing home from Troy. Aeolus steps out of his hall, strikes the mountainside, and the shrieking winds pour out of the split rock toward the cliffs of Caphereus.

Virgil gave the Roman world its picture of him in the opening storm of the Aeneid. Juno comes to Aeolia, where the winds are chained inside a huge cavern and bellow behind the bars until the whole mountain murmurs. Aeolus sits above them on a throne with a sceptre in his hand, soothing and disciplining them, because Jupiter piled mountains over the winds and gave them a king bound to rein them in or let them run only when ordered. Juno offers him Deiopea, the loveliest of her fourteen nymphs, if he will sink the Trojan fleet. He answers that his duty is to obey, and that it is through her that he sits at the gods’ table at all. He strikes the flank of the hollow mountain with his spear and the winds burst through the gates in a mass. The Trojan ships scatter. Then Neptune rises from the sea, deeply troubled, and orders the winds to tell their master that the trident was given to him and not to Aeolus, who may play the king in his prison of rock and nowhere else. It is one of the few great storms in literature that ends in a complaint about jurisdiction.

The Roman poet Valerius Flaccus imagined the world before that appointment. In his Argonautica the winds once had no master, and in those days the sea broke Calpe away from Libya and tore Sicily from the Italian mainland, until Jupiter thundered and gave them a king behind iron and a double wall of rock. When even that king cannot hold their roaring, he opens the doors himself and lets them out to quiet them.

Nobody in antiquity managed to keep the name straight. There was also an Aeolus son of Hellen, the ancestor of the Aeolian Greeks, and the Latin mythographer Hyginus calls the wind-keeper who hosted Odysseus by that parentage. Ovid makes the king of the winds the father of Alcyone, and says that for seven calm days in winter, while she broods on her floating nest as a kingfisher, Aeolus keeps his squalls locked up for his grandchildren’s sake. In Ovid’s Heroides his daughter Canace writes that her father is fiercer than his own east winds and rules them better than his temper. The historian Diodorus Siculus tried to stitch the families together by making Hippotes a grandson of the elder Aeolus, and William Smith’s classical dictionary, following him, counted three men of the name.

Diodorus also explained the whole thing away. His Aeolus, son of Hippotes, sailed to Lipara with companions, married Cyane, the daughter of the aged king Liparus, and ruled the island jointly with its natives. He was pious, just and kind to strangers, he taught seafarers to use sails, and by long observation of what the fire foretold he learned to predict the local winds, which is why the myth calls him their keeper. His six sons became kings from the coast near Rhegium to the far side of Sicily. Pliny the Elder, in his Natural History, placed his reign on Stromboli and reported that the islanders could read the winds three days ahead from the volcano’s smoke. The rationalist Palaephatus went further and made him an astronomer who told Odysseus which winds to expect from the rising of the stars, and the bronze wall nothing more than a guard of armed soldiers.

The powers that belong to him are plain in every version. He can still any wind or loose any wind, send one out alone or all at once, pack them into a skin or hold them under a mountain, and grant a sailor a straight run home. The limits are just as consistent. Every storm he releases is released for someone else: Zeus appoints him, Hera and Juno and Iris ask, and Virgil’s Aeolus says outright that his duty is to obey. Neptune can undo his work in a moment and confine him to his rock. His greatest gift was only as safe as a sleeping captain’s crew, and once the gods had turned against Odysseus, the keeper of every wind in the world had nothing left to give him.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Aeolus in Greek mythology?

Aeolus is the keeper of the winds, the son of Hippotes, who rules the floating island of Aeolia. In Homer’s Odyssey Zeus has made him warden of all the winds, able to calm or stir any of them as he pleases. Homer presents him as a king who is a friend of the gods, while later poets treat him as a god of the winds.

What was in the bag Aeolus gave Odysseus?

The bag held every wind except the west wind. Aeolus made it from the hide of a full-grown ox, tied it with a silver cord, and put it in Odysseus’s ship, leaving only the west wind free to carry the fleet home. When Ithaca was in sight, Odysseus’s crew opened the bag hoping to find gold and silver, and the released winds blew the ships back to Aeolia.

Why did Aeolus refuse to help Odysseus a second time?

Aeolus refused because he decided Odysseus was hated by the gods. When Odysseus came back and sat on his threshold asking for help, Aeolus called him the most despicable of creatures and said he was forbidden to help a man the blessed gods abhor. Apollodorus retells the scene with Aeolus saying he could not save Odysseus while the gods opposed him.

Is Aeolus a god or a mortal king?

Aeolus began as a mortal king and was later treated as a god. In the Odyssey he is a king whom the gods count as a friend, given charge of the winds by Zeus. Later poets such as Apollonius of Rhodes, Virgil, Ovid and Quintus Smyrnaeus portray him as the king of the winds with divine standing, while Diodorus Siculus explained him as a pious king of Lipara who learned to predict the winds.

Where did Aeolus keep the winds?

In Homer Aeolus lives on Aeolia, a floating island surrounded by a wall of unbreakable bronze. Virgil describes the winds chained inside a huge cavern under a mountain, with Aeolus enthroned above them holding a sceptre. Ancient writers including Diodorus Siculus and Pliny the Elder identified his home with the islands north of Sicily, Diodorus with Lipara and Pliny with Stromboli.