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The Isle of Aeolus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

E. D. Phillips
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Extract

Among the adventures of Odysseus described in the Odyssey one of the least A favourable to ancient or modern attempts to make a geography of his wanderings is traditionally his visit to the isle of Aeolus, who bound the winds for him in a bag. The famous geographer Eratosthenes said of the whole problem: ‘It will only be discovered where Odysseus’ wanderings lie when the cobbler is discovered who stitched together the bag of the winds’. Others have not failed to point out that Homer makes it a floating island anyhow, as if he were determined that no one should find it, and that the procedure of tying the winds in a bag is a piece of magic, known in practice or recorded in folk-lore in too many parts of the world for a definite location to be possible.

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Type
Research Article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 30 , Issue 120 , December 1956, pp. 203 - 208
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1956

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References

1 Quoted by Strabo I, 2, 15.

2 E.g. Wilamowitz, Homerische Untersuchungen (Berlin : Weidmann, 1884), 164.

3 E.g. Reinhold Strömberg, The Aeolus Episode and Greek Wind-Magic (Symbolae Philohgicae Gotobttrgenses : Göteborgs Högskolas Arsskrift, LVI, 1950 : 3, 17-84).

4 For the details, see Roscher, Mythologisches Lexikon, s.v. ‘Aiolos’ or P. Grimai, Dictionnaire de la Mythologie Grecque et Romaine (Paris : Presses Univ. de France, 1951). s.v. Éole.

5 1-79.

6 3-4 V. Bérard in l. 3 reads ‘and enclosed’.

7 Quoted by Eustathius 1644. For particulars of other such islands, see A. B. Cook, Zeus (Cambridge, 1940), III, 2. Appendix P ‘Floating Islands’. There is surely more difference than Cook seems to recognize between islands that floated loose, such as Delos, and others, such as Rhodes, which rose from the bed of the sea, for even in ancient times it would be seen that volcanic or seismic action could produce the latter in the course of nature. But the ancients seem to have connected this action with both kinds of island.

8 L’Odyssée, Poésie Homérique (Paris : Les Belles Lettres, 1933), 11, 34, where he translates ‘une côte de bronze, infrangible muraille, l’encercle toute entière’.

9 Op cit. III, 1, 106.

10 Genèse de l’Odyssée (Paris ; Presses Univ. de France, 1954), 155.

11 Op cit. 154-78. Cf. D. E. W. Wormell ‘Walls of Brass in Literature’ (Hermathena, LVIII, 1941), 116-20.

12 Op. cit. 182-4. But it is more plausible to make him in origin a priest-king, as Germain does also, op. cit. 185-9.

13 Quoted by Pausanias, X, 11, 3.

14 III, 88, 1.

15 V, 7.

16 From Metapontium, he says at IV, 67, 6, where he makes him identical with the second Aeolus and seems to be using a different version of the legend, though still an Italiote Greek one.

17 1645.

18 VI, 2, 10.

19 Meteorologica, 11, VIII, 367a.

20 Aeneid, 1, 50-80.

21 See, for instance his two chief works on this subject, Les Phéniciens et l’Odyssée, 2 vols. (Paris : A. Colin, 1902-3, reprinted 1927) and Les Navigations d’Ulysse (Colin, 1927-9). I refer here to the first, as he did not change his identifications. The excellent photographs in his posthumous volume, Dans le Sillage d’Ulysse (Colin, 1933) are well worth consulting.

22 Les Phéniciens, 11, 183-208.

23 Op. cit. 187, quoting Spallanzani, Voyage des Deux Sidles (tr. G. Toscan, Berne, 1795-7), 11, 73-7, not otherwise known to me.

24 Bérard, op. cit., II, 192-6, and Spallanzani, op. cit. 11, 10-12, quoted by him.

25 Folktale, Fiction and Saga in the Homeric Epic (University of California Press, 1946).

26 E.g. É. Mireaux, Les Poèmes Homeriques et l’Histoire Grecque, 2 vols. (Paris : Hachette, 1954).

27 For a brief mention of them, see T. J. Dunbabin, The Western Greeks (Oxford, 1948) 1-2. Orsi and his colleagues wrote numerous reports in the Bollettino di Paletnologia Italiana from 1889 onwards.

28 These finds have already been mentioned by the Editor, who gives a general account (with frontispiece) of the excavation at Lipari and of Professor Brea’s new museum just by the site in vol. XXIX, no. 16, Dec. 1955, pp. 194-5, so that their importance should be well known to readers.

29 Brea’s publications on the Liparaean finds include : ‘Civiltà preistoriche delle isole eolie’ (Archivo de Prehistoria Levantina III (1952), 69-93 with plates) ; ‘Villagio dell’ età del bronzo nell” isola di Panarea’ (Bollettino d’Arte del Ministerio della Publica Istruzione (1951), 31) and ‘Lai Sicilia prehistorica y sus relaciones con Oriente e con la Peninsula Iberica’ (Ampurias XV-XVI: (1953-4), 137–213) especially 176-205 on the Aegean connections of Sicily and the prehistory of the Lipari Islands. Capo Graziano yielded LH IA pottery (Ampurias loc. cit. 182). Some signs belonging to an Aegean script occur on a few potsherds, but are probably no more than potters’ marks. See Brea ‘Segni grafici e contrassegni nelle ceramiche dell’ età del bronzo nelle isole eolie’ (Minos 11 (1952), 5-28).

30 See G. Buchner and E. Rittmann, Origine e Passato dell’ isole d’Ischia (Naples : Macchiaroli 1948), 36. I was told by Mr Dunbabin that a Mycenaean sherd had been picked up on the beach near Cumae.

31 I have touched on this matter on pp. 63-4 of my article ‘Odysseus in Italy’ (Journal of Hellenic Studies, LXXIII (1953), 53-67).

32 See Brea ‘Civiltà preistoriche’ 12-15 and ‘La Sicilia préhistorica ‘ 201-3 for full details. This Ausonian culture of Lipari, as Brea calls it, continues in degenerate form to the time of the classical Greek settlement.

33 See, for instance, his review of Germain’s book in Revue des Études Grecques, LXVII (1954), 505-6, where he insists on the importance of Brea’s discoveries and is clearly thinking of his father’s work.