Aeolus
Aeolus, in the works of Homer and other ancient Greek poets, divine controller of the winds and ruler of the floating island of Aeolia. He had dominion over the Anemoi, or personifications of the four winds: Boreas (north wind), Eurus (east wind), Zephyrus (west wind), and Notus (south wind). The Anemoi were sometimes depicted as horse-shaped entities living on Aeolia (identified with present-day Lipari, off the coast of Sicily). Aeolus’s symbols were a scepter and a bag of winds, and he had the power to raise storms and to calm the ocean. Although he appears as a human in Homer’s Odyssey, Aeolus later was described as a minor god.
While Aeolus was sometimes regarded as a son of Poseidon, his parents were more commonly given as the mortal Hippotes and the nymph Melanippe. He fathered six sons and six daughters with his wife, Cyane, and they lived an isolated life on Aeolia, which was surrounded by steep cliffs and a bronze wall. Three of his sons—Cretheus, the hero Jason’s grandfather, Athamas, and Minyas—were mentioned in the Argonautic myth. In one account Aeolus forced his daughter Canace to kill herself because of her incestuous relationship with her brother Macareus.
Aeolus was associated with several mythic heroes. He was asked by Hera to calm the winds as Jason and his Argonauts fled Colchis with the Golden Fleece. In the Odyssey Aeolus gave Odysseus a favorable wind and a bag in which the unfavorable winds were confined. Odysseus’s companions opened the bag; the winds escaped and drove them off course. In Virgil’s Aeneid, again at Hera’s behest, Aeolus raised a storm against Aeneas’s fleet. However, the scattered ships were saved by the intervention of Poseidon, who calmed the sea.
" height="20" alt="HEW Logo">
