User:Paul August/Aeolia (mythical island)

Aeolia (mythical island)

To Do

• Tripp
• Grimal
• Parada
• Smith
• Gantz
• Hard
• Fowler
• Brill's New Pauly
• Loeb search
• LIMC

New text

Aeolia ('Αἰολία), the island kingdom of Aeolus, the ruler of the winds, visited by Odysseus in Homer's Odyssey. In the Odyssey, Aelolus' Aeolia was purely mythical, a floating island surrounded by "a wall of unbreakable bronze" where the "cliffs run up shear".

Homer does not say anything about where the island was located, but later writers came to associate Aeolia with one, or another, of the Lipari Islands (also called the Aeolian Islands), north of eastern Sicily. The Greek geographer Strabo, reports that Strongyle (modern Stromboli), one of the Lipari Islands, was said to be Aeolus' island. Others associated the island of Lipara (modern Lipari) with Aeolia.

References

• Grimal, Pierre, The Dictionary of Classical Mythology, Wiley-Blackwell, 1996. ISBN 978-0-631-20102-1. Internet Archive.

• Hard, Robin, The Routledge Handbook of Greek Mythology: Based on H.J. Rose's "Handbook of Greek Mythology", Psychology Press, 2004, ISBN 9780415186360. Google Books.

• Homer, The Odyssey with an English Translation by A.T. Murray, PH.D. in two volumes. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1919. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.

• Pausanias, Description of Greece with an English Translation by W.H.S. Jones, Litt.D., and H.A. Ormerod, M.A., in 4 Volumes. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1918. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.

• Smith, William, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, London (1873). Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.

• Strabo, Geography, translated by Horace Leonard Jones; Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. (1924). LacusCurtis, Online version at the Perseus Digital Library, Books 6–14.

• Tripp, Edward, Crowell's Handbook of Classical Mythology, Thomas Y. Crowell Co; First edition (June 1970). ISBN 069022608X.

• Virgil, Aeneid, Theodore C. Williams. trans. Boston. Houghton Mifflin Co. 1910. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.

Sources

Ancient

Homer

Odyssey

10.1–4

“Then to the Aeolian isle we came, where dwelt Aeolus, son of Hippotas, dear to the immortal gods, in a floating island, and all around it is a wall of unbreakable bronze, and the cliff runs up sheer.

Pausanias

10.11.3

The people of Lipara too dedicated statues to commemorate a naval victory over the Etruscans. These people were colonists from Cnidus, and the leader of the colony is said to have been a Cnidian, whose name was Pentathlus according to a statement made by the Syracusan Antiochus, son of Xenophanes, in his history of Sicily. He says also that they built a city on Cape Pachynum in Sicily, but were hard pressed in a war with the Elymi and Phoenicians, and driven out, but occupied the islands, from which they expelled the inhabitants if they were not still uninhabited, still called, as they are called by Homer,1 the Islands of Aeolus.

Strabo

6.2.11

Of Lipara, then, and Thermessa I have already spoken. As for Strongyle,¹ it is so called from its shape, and it too is fiery; it falls short in the violence of its flame, but excels in the brightness of its light; and this is where Aeolus lived, it is said.

1 i.e., "Round," the Stromboli of today.

Virgil

Aeneid

8.416

An island near Aeolian Lipara

Modern

Grimal

s.v. Aeolia 1

('Αἰολία) I. the Odyssey the island of Aeolia is the home Aeolus the Lord of the Winds. It was a rocky floating island, surrounded by a wall of bronze. In later days it was sometimes identified as the island of Strongyle (today's Stromboli) and sometimes as the island of Lipari, both of which belong to the group of Aeolian Islands. [Hom. Od. 10.1ff.; Strabo 1.2.32, p. 40; Diod. Sic. 5.9]

Hard

p. 494.

His [Aeolus'] kingdom is a purely mythical place in the Odyssey, a floating island surrounded by cliffs of unyielding bronze; but it came to be suggested in the later tradition that he lived on one of the Aeolian (Lipari) islands to the north of Sicily.

Smith

s.v. Aeolus

The Aeolian island of Homer was in the time of Pausanias believed to be Lipara (Paus. 10.11.3), and this or Strongyle was accordingly regarded in later times as the place in which the god of the winds dwelled. (Verg. A. 8.416, 1.52; Strab. vi. p.276.) Other accounts place the residence of Aeolus in Thrace (Apollon. 1.954, 4.765; Callim. Hymm. in Del. 26), or in the neighbourhood of Rhegium in Italy. (Tzetz. ad Lycophr. 732; comp. Diod. 5.8.)

Tripp

s.v. Aeolia

The island kingdom of Aeolus, keeper of the winds. Homer did not locate the island in the Odyssey, but later writers identified it as one or another of the islands north of eastern Sicily that are called the Aeolian Islands (Isole Eolie), as well as the Lipari Islands, their more modern name.